Turner, Kathleen

Romancing the Stone (Special Edition)

Director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Contact) had a hit with this 1984 comedy that first teamed Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. Turner steals the show from the guys, however, playing a pushy romance novelist who gets stuck among some dangerous figures in Colombia and has only a rumpled guide (Michael Douglas) as an ally. The chemistry between the stars is infectious (the trio went on to make a sequel, Jewel of the Nile, and then an interesting, dark comedy directed by DeVito, The War of the Roses). Zemeckis--whose specialty at the time was creating set pieces of raucous action (as in his Back to the Future)--keeps things hopping with lots of kinetic material. --Tom Keogh

When her sister is kidnapped by thugs searching for a priceless jewel in the Colombian jungle a romance novelist (Kathleen Turner) soon finds her own life filled with cliffhangers and danger. All alone she sets out to rescue her sister and meets up with a handsome fortune seeker (Michael Douglas) who convinces her to beat the bandits to the treasure.System Requirements:Running Time 105 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG UPC: 024543266945 Manufacturer No: 2236694

Serial Mom (Collector's Edition)

Director John Waters creates here a wickedly funny--and nasty--comedy starring Kathleen Turner as the ultimate suburbanite: a woman so obsessed with suburban perfection that she kills a neighbor for not separating her recyclables. Hubby Sam Waterston and kids Matthew Lillard and Ricki Lake don't have a clue that in fact it is squeaky-clean mom who is the killer at large in their Baltimore neighborhood and who has murdered, among others, the guy who dumped her daughter. The final courtroom scene is a riot, turning her into a celebrity defendant (long before O.J.) and featuring a terrific cameo by Patty Hearst (yes, that Patty Hearst). Not for the squeamish or the easily offended, Waters's fans will find him in classic form. --Marshall Fine

Director John Waters creates here a wickedly funny--and nasty--comedy starring Kathleen Turner as the ultimate suburbanite: a woman so obsessed with suburban perfection that she kills a neighbor for not separating her recyclables. Hubby Sam Waterston and kids Matthew Lillard and Ricki Lake don't have a clue that in fact it is squeaky-clean mom who is the killer at large in their Baltimore neighborhood and who has murdered, among others, the guy who dumped her daughter. The final courtroom scene is a riot, turning her into a celebrity defendant (long before O.J.) and featuring a terrific cameo by Patty Hearst (yes, that Patty Hearst). Not for the squeamish or the easily offended, Waters's fans will find him in classic form. --Marshall Fine

Director John Waters puts a twist on the everyday mediocrity of suburban life in the hilarious satire Serial Mom. See Kathleen Turner like never before as Beverly Sutphin, the seemingly perfect homemaker who will stop at nothing to rid the neighborhood of anyone failing to live up to her moral code. Featuring a digitally remastered picture and 5.1 surround sound, Serial Mom is a killer comedy that will take you over the edge with laughter!

Body Heat (Deluxe Edition)

While scoring high-profile credits as a screenwriter (including The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark), Lawrence Kasdan made his directorial debut with this steamy, contemporary film noir in the tradition of Double Indemnity and other classics from the 1940s. In one of his most memorable roles, William Hurt plays a Florida lawyer unwittingly drawn into a web of deceit spun by Kathleen Turner (in her screen debut) as a married socialite who plots to kill off her husband with Hurt's assistance. Kasdan's dialogue is a hoot (sometimes it borders on satire), and the sultry atmosphere is a perfect complement to the perspiration-soaked chemistry between Hurt and Turner, whose love scenes caused quite a stir when the film was released in 1981. John Barry's score sets the provocative mood, and both Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke are splendid in memorable supporting roles. --Jeff Shannon

William Hurt and Kathleen Turner strike sparks in Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat a sexy haunting tale of desire and skullduggery that echoes 1940s film noirs but is charged with an energy and passion that could only flare in the '80s. Aided by a sultry John Barry score Kasdan's assured directorial debut foreshadowed the emotional textures he would bring to later films The Big Chill The Accidental Tourist and Grand Canyon. Sit back and bask in this contemporary classic's wicked warmth.Running Time: 113 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569813786 Manufacturer No: 81378

The Virgin Suicides

Previously criticized for her marginal acting skills, Sofia Coppola made her directorial debut with The Virgin Suicides and silenced her detractors. No amount of coaching from her director father (Francis Coppola) or husband (Spike Jonze) could have guaranteed a film this assured, and in adapting Jeffrey Eugenides's novel, Coppola demonstrates the sensitivity and emotional depth that this material demands. Surely the pain of youth and public criticism found its way into her directorial voice; in the story of four sisters who self-destruct under the steady erosion of their youthful ideals, one can clearly sense Coppola's intimate connection to the inner lives of her characters.

Played in a delicate minor key, the film is heartbreaking, mysterious, and soulfully funny, set in a Michigan suburb of the mid-1970s but timeless and universal to anyone who's been a teenager. The four surviving Lisbon sisters lost a sibling to suicide, and as its title suggests, the film will chart their mutual course to oblivion under the vigilance of repressive parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods, perfectly cast). But The Virgin Suicides is more concerned with life in that precious interlude of adolescence, when the Lisbon girls are worshipped by the neighborhood boys, their notion of perfection epitomized by Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and her storybook love for high-school stud Trip (Josh Hartnett). Unfolding at the cusp of innocence and sexual awakening, and recalled as a memory, The Virgin Suicides is, ultimately, about the preservation of the Lisbon sisters by their own deaths--suspended in time, polished to perfection, and forever untainted by adulthood. --Jeff Shannon

In a quiet Michigan community in the mid-1970s, neighborhood boys try to piece together the lives of the five Lisbon sisters, kept isolated by their over-protective parents.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 9-AUG-2005
Media Type: DVD

The War of the Roses

Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito reunited for a third time to fabulous effect in this dark, disturbing comedy of martial trauma and revenge, which couldn't be more different from their sunnier outings in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile. Douglas and Turner, in career-best performances, are the materialistic, consumer-driven Roses of the title (Oliver and Barbara) whose seemingly perfect marriage has soured beyond repair; their only point of contact, aside from their two college-bound kids, is their meticulously maintained dream house, which Douglas bought and Turner decorated to perfection. When Turner gets a taste of financial independence, she asks Douglas for divorce--all she wants is the house and everything in it (aside from his clothes and shaving kit). He laughs at her and she punches him in the face. Things only get worse from there, as nasty divorce proceedings (with DeVito as Douglas's lawyer) give way to insults, threats, ruined dinner parties, and pet abuse. And through it all, the Roses begin destroying their beloved home and its contents, just to spite each other. DeVito, who also directed, takes Michael Leeson's blacker-than-black screenplay and gives it a hyperstylized spin, complete with skewed camera angles and wonderfully expressionistic cinematography (by Stephen Burum) as Douglas and Turner barricade themselves in their house, both refusing to give an inch. Shocking for a mainstream studio picture, with its unsympathetic protagonists, escalating bitterness, and disturbing finale, Roses is a poisonously funny valentine to both marriage and '80s materialism, tempered only by its framing device as a cautionary tale. Definitely not a date movie. --Mark Englehart

In this blackest of comedies, a perfect 18-year marriage suddenly becomes unglued and the gleefully evil Barbara (Kathleen Turner) and Oliver (Michael Douglas) Rose single-mindedly inflict as much misery as possible on each other. Rather than just get divorced, they declare war, fighting to the bitter end over their huge mansion and every possession in it. Not even the calculating guidance of Oliver's lawyer (Danny DeVito) can stop this uncompromisingly nasty two some as their vicious battle sends them on an increasingly dark and dangerous path.

Monster House (Fullscreen)

The spooky shadows and eerie creaking of a rickety old house are brought to life via lush CGI in Monster House. A young boy named DJ has suspicions about the house across the street and the cranky old man (voiced by Steve Buscemi, Fargo) who lives there. When the old man has a heart attack and is carried away by an ambulance, DJ thinks the danger is over. Unfortunately, as he, his friend Chowder, and a candy-selling prep-school girl named Jenny discover, the house itself has plans--plans that include eating all the kids who'll be trick-or-treating that Halloween night. Monster House begins with some deliciously creepy scenes that will send chills down children's spines (and may be too intense for younger viewers); animated movies rarely make such effective use of what isn't being shown. The animation is vivid and detailed (though CGI still has a ways to go in capturing the full range of human facial expressions). But like most horror movies, the anticipation of horror is much more exciting than the horror itself; as the secrets of Monster House are revealed, the movie's thrills unravel. The noisy explosions at the end aren't half as much fun as the slow twitches of a few blades of grass in the movie's elegant beginning. --Bret Fetzer

Three kids DJ (Mitchel Musso) Chowder (Sam Lerner) and Jenny (Spencer Locke) discover that the house across the street from DJ's is alive. It eats anything that goes on its property. They try to convince the babysitter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) the police and some weirdo named Skull (Jon Heder). They try to unravel the mystery of the house and they have to go inside to find that the house is voiced by Kathleen Turner. Oh my god it's Kathleen Turner! Run for the hills!System Requirements:Run Time: 91 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: PG UPC: 043396157705 Manufacturer No: 15770

Undercover Blues

When fun-loving American agents Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner are called back from maternity leave for a special assignment in New Orleans, the spy parents decide to skip the sitter and give their bouncing baby girl the adventure of a lifetime. There's nothing to the dumb story about a deadly arms dealer (Fiona Shaw) in the Louisiana Bayou, but you'd be hard put to find a friskier pair of doting parents. Quaid is all dimpled grins and cocky cool and Turner is the most maternal martial arts mom you've ever seen, but Stanley Tucci almost steals the film as the hot-blooded threat thug Morty ("That's Muerte!"). His macho mission of vengeance becomes pure slapstick silliness punctuated by girlish squeals of alarm. Dumb? Sure, but the deft comic direction of Herbert Ross and bubbly chemistry of Quaid and Turner make Undercover Blues far more fun that it should be. --Sean Axmaker

Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid are "in top form [in] this winning comedy" (The Hollywood Reporter) about a couple of super spies persuaded out of maternity leave and into world-class espionage action! Co-starring Stanley Tucci Park Overall and Tom Arnold and set in atmospheric New Orleans Undercover Blues is "guaranteed to leave you giddy and grateful" (The Houston Post)!Jeff and Jane Blue (Quaid and Turner) are the doting parents of a new baby girl. They also happen to be America's best chance at national security. Just as they embark on that perilous adventure known as parenting they are asked to save the world from a treacherous arms embezzler. But are their martial-arts skills cunning and high-tech know-how any match for a diabolic terrorist and a ten-pound tyrant?System Requirements:Running Time: 90 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 027616884558 Manufacturer No: 1004376

The Jewel of the Nile (Special Edition)

In the blockbuster Romancing The Stone novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and wanderer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) went sailing off into the sunset together. In this thrill-packed sequel Ralph (Danny DeVito) is back on their trail and they're back in the fast lane on a perilous trek through the fierce North African Desert. Not even treacherous tribes deadly dungeons and semingly endless villains can stop this trio from finding once and for all that mysterious "jewel."System Requirements:Running Time 106 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG UPC: 024543266976 Manufacturer No: 2236697

This sequel to 1984's rip-snorting romantic-adventure, Romancing the Stone, is a moderately entertaining tale that pales by comparison to its predecessor. Romance novelist Kathleen Turner and retired soldier-of-fortune Michael Douglas return as a now-complacent couple. Bored with life on a yacht, they find excitement thrust upon them when she accepts a speaking engagement in the Middle East. Once there, she is abducted and finds herself involved with the "jewel" everyone is chasing. Douglas teams up once more with Danny DeVito to rescue his love. Less charming and more predictable than the original, this suffers for one simple reason: the characters have nowhere to go. In the original story we watched Turner blossom from timid storyteller to lusty adventuress. In this flick she is too much like all the other action adventure babes we've seen before. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Peggy Sue Got Married

Francis Ford Coppola's passable 1986 comedy stars Kathleen Turner as an unhappy, middle-aged woman who goes back in time to her high school years and meets her future husband (Nicolas Cage) all over again. A lightweight entry from Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), the film has some clever, backward-looking jokes (Turner's character laughs incredulously when someone turns up with a brand-new Edsel); and the lead actress does bring intelligence and searching emotions to her role. Cage (Coppola's nephew), who specialized in these dumb-guy roles back then (see Raising Arizona), is in sharp, raw form. Worth a visit, but don't expect to be bowled over this time by the legendary director. The DVD release has optional full-screen and widescreen presentations, theatrical trailer, optional Spanish soundtrack and optional Spanish and French subtitles. --Tom Keogh

A woman goes to her 25th high school reunion and is sent back in time-- giving herself a chance to change her life and create a different future.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 23-MAR-2004
Media Type: DVD

Romancing the Stone / Jewel of the Nile

ROMANCING THE STONE SPECIAL EDITION and JEWEL OF THE NILE SPECIAL EDITION are new releases of these hit comic adventures starring Michael Douglas KathleenTurner and Danny DeVito with never-before-seen deleted scenes and featurettes. The titles are available as a slipcased giftset for $29.98 & $45.98.Disk 1: Romancing The Stone Special EditionDisk 2: Jewel of The NileFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 024543267003 Manufacturer No: 2236700