Joffe, Roland

The Mission (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/13/2003

Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields) directs this fuzzy effort at a David Lean-like epic without David Lean's sense of emotional proportion. Lean's most important screenwriting collaborator, Robert Bolt, in fact wrote The Mission, which concerns a Jesuit missionary (Jeremy Irons) who establishes a church in the hostile jungles of Brazil and then finds his work threatened by greed and political forces among his superiors. Robert De Niro is briefly effective as a callous soldier who kills his own brother and then turns to Irons's character to oversee his penance and conversion to the clergy. The narrative and dramatic forces at work in this movie should be more stirring and powerful than they are--the problem being that Joffé is too removed from them to allow us in. --Tom Keogh

Super Mario Bros.

The marios rush to save a princess from koopa. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 06/03/2003 Starring: Bob Hoskins Dennis Hopper Run time: 104 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Annabel Jankel/rocky Morton

The Killing Fields

This harrowing but rewarding 1984 drama concerns the real-life relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), the latter left at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge after Schanberg--who chose to stay after American evacuation but was booted out--failed to get him safe passage. Filmmaker Roland Joffé, previously a documentarist, made his feature debut with this account of Dith's rocky survival in the ensuing madness of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign. The script spends some time with Schanberg's feelings of guilt after the fact, but most of the movie is a shattering re-creation of hell on Earth. The late Haing S. Ngor--a real-life doctor who had never acted before and who lived through the events depicted by Joffé--is outstanding, and he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Oscars also went to cinematographer Chris Menges and editor Jim Clark. --Tom Keogh

A new york times reporter and his cambodian aide are harrowingly trapped in cambodias 1975 khmer rouge revolution. Special features: original theatrical trailer and brand-new transfer and dolby surround 5.1 remix. Subtitles in english and french. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/29/2005 Starring: Sam Waterston Haing S. Ngor Run time: 141 minutes Rating: R

The Scarlet Letter

In a time when adultery is punishable by death two lovers risk their lives to be together. Roland joffe breathes new life into nathaniel hawthornes tale of forbidden love. Hester prynne is a free-thinking woman while reverend dimmesdale smolders with passion between his love for hester and his love for god. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 08/03/2004 Starring: Demi Moore Gary Oldman Run time: 135 minutes Rating: R Director: Roland Joffe

In yet another example of Demi Moore's astonishing narcissism, this appalling adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Great American Novel becomes a teary, talk-show-worthy story of a woman rediscovering the erotic, of interrupted love, of a brave-but-beleaguered heroine's personal struggle against male stupidity. Never mind that this has little to do with Hawthorne's magnificent, protofeminist book, which is a million times more relevant today than this film could ever be. Director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields) deserves to be horsewhipped for colluding with Moore's self-fascination, while Gary Oldman should be kicked in the pants for allowing the novel's main character to come off as an inconsequential ninny. Making matters worse, Robert Duvall can be seen ridiculously dancing with a deerskin on his head. If this film were a joke, it would be a very bad joke. But it's not, and that's worse. --Tom Keogh

Vatel

Vatel is hired by the Prince de Conde to impress King Louis XIV with a feast, but Vatel finds himself having an affair with the King's mistress.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 6-MAY-2003
Media Type: DVD

City of Joy

An american doctor helps transform calcuttas most dangerous neighborhood by teaching local indians the power of unity. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 07/25/2006 Starring: Patrick Swayze Pauline Collins Run time: 135 minutes Rating: Pg13

Fat Man and Little Boy

Despite the combined star power in front of and behind the camera, Fat Man and Little Boy is a largely tepid retelling of the history of the Manhattan Project, the atomic testing project that led to the U.S. bombing of Japan during World War II (said bombs were dubbed "Fat Man" and "Little Boy"). The Nevada-based project is headed by General Leslie R. Groves (a testy Paul Newman) and scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz of the TV series The A-Team), who later regretted his cooperation in the project. The problem with the film lies not with the acting, which includes solid performances by Bonnie Bedelia, Laura Dern, John Cusack, and future U.S. Senator Fred Dalton Thompson, but with the script by director Roland Joffé and Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I and Joffé's The Killing Fields). A subject as morally complex as the creation of a supreme weapon requires a strong and thoughtful script, but Fat Man and Little Boy never gets further than establishing that indeed, atomic power is something to reckon with. Joseph Sargent's 1989 made-for-TV film Day One, with Brian Dennehy as Groves and David Straithairn as Oppenheimer, covers the same story with twice the depth and avoids the pitfall of a romantic subplot (Oppenheimer's dalliance with a communist played by Natasha Richardson), which this film stumbles into. Cusack's doomed scientist is actually a combination of two real-life physicists, Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotkin, who died from radiation poisoning, albeit long after V-J Day. --Paul Gaita

Goodbye Lover

Overlooked and underrated, Goodbye Lover is a tawdry, tasty film noir with a soft spot for its scheming antiheroine. With her platinum Lulu bob, a killer wardrobe, and a Sound of Music fetish that inspires her to "climb every mountain" of bad-girl ambition, Patricia Arquette is perfectly cast as Sandra, the sweet but lethal wife of Jake (Dermot Mulroney), who works in a top-drawer ad agency with his brother Ben (Don Johnson). Weary stud Ben falls prey to simultaneous affairs with Sandra and his devoted secretary (Mary-Louise Parker), and the cynical Detective Pompano (Ellen DeGeneres) unravels the murder-for-insurance plot while her clueless Mormon partner (Ray McKinnon) tries to keep pace. Combining mordant humor and rampant depravity, this deliciously dark comedy starts fast and never lets up, liberating director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields) from the sobriety of his previous work. The entire cast is great, but it's DeGeneres who makes this a recommended sleeper. --Jeff Shannon

Vatel