Race Against Time

The Bourne Supremacy (Widescreen Edition)

They should have left him alone. Academy Award winner Matt Damon is back as expert assassin Jason Bourne in the stunning non-stop action hit. Fuelled by awesome fight scenes and some of the most breathtaking chase sequences ever filmed it s a state-of-the-art espionage thriller that explodes into action and never lets up!BONUS MATERIALS : Explosive Deleted ScenesMatching Identities: CastingKeeping It RealBlowing Things UpOn the Move with Jason BourneBourne to be Wild: Fight TrainingCrash Cam: Racing Through the Streets of MoscowThe Go-Mobile Revs up the ActionAnatomy of a Scene: The Explosive Bridge Chase SceneScoring with John PowellFeature Commentary with Director Paul GreengrassCast and FilmmakersSystem Requirements: Running Time 109 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG-13 UPC: 025192499326 Manufacturer No: 24993

Good enough to suggest long-term franchise potential, The Bourne Supremacy is a thriller fans will appreciate for its well-crafted suspense, and for its triumph of competence over logic (or lack thereof). Picking up where The Bourne Identity left off, the action begins when CIA assassin and partial amnesiac Jason Bourne (a role reprised with efficient intensity by Matt Damon) is framed for a murder in Berlin, setting off a chain reaction of pursuits involving CIA handlers (led by Joan Allen and the duplicitous Brian Cox, with Julia Stiles returning from the previous film) and a shadowy Russian oil magnate. The fast-paced action hurtles from India to Berlin, Moscow, and Italy, and as he did with the critically acclaimed Bloody Sunday, director Paul Greengrass puts you right in the thick of it with split-second editing (too much of it, actually) and a knack for well-sustained tension. It doesn't all make sense, and bears little resemblance to Robert Ludlum's novel, but with Damon proving to be an appealingly unconventional action hero, there's plenty to look forward to. --Jeff Shannon

Armageddon

From the blockbuster-making team who produced and directed PEARL HARBOR and THE ROCK (Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay) comes the biggest movie of 1998 -- ARMAGEDDON! Starring the explosive talents of Bruce Willis (DIE HARD), Academy Award(R)-winners Ben Affleck (GOOD WILL HUNTING) and Billy Bob Thornton (SLING BLADE), Liv Tyler (INVENTING THE ABBOTTS), Steve Buscemi (CON AIR), and Will Patton (INVENTING THE ABBOTTS), ARMAGEDDON is a meteor storm of action-adventure moviemaking that has you on the edge of your seat forgetting to breathe! When NASA's executive director, Dan Truman (Thornton), realizes the Earth has 18 days before it's obliterated by a meteor the size of Texas, he has only one option -- land a ragtag team of roughneck oil drillers on the asteroid and drop a nuclear warhead into its core. Spectacular special effects, laugh-out-loud humor, great characters, riveting storytelling, and heartfelt emotion make ARMAGEDDON an exhilarating thrill ride you'll want to experience like there's no tomorrow.

The latest testosterone-saturated blow-'em-up from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay (The Rock, Bad Boys) continues Hollywood's millennium-fueled fascination with the destruction of our planet. There's no arguing that the successful duo understands what mainstream American audiences want in their blockbuster movies--loads of loud, eye-popping special effects, rapid- fire pacing, and patriotic flag waving. Bay's protagonists--the eight crude, lewd, oversexed (but lovable, of course) oil drillers summoned to save the world from a Texas-sized meteor hurling toward the earth--are not flawless heroes, but common men with whom all can relate. In this huge Western-in-space soap opera, they're American cowboys turned astronauts. Sci-fi buffs will appreciate Bay's fetishizing of technology, even though it's apparent he doesn't understand it as anything more than flashing lights and shiny gadgets. Smartly, the duo also tries to lure the art-house crowd, raiding the local indie acting stable and populating the film with guys like Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, Owen Wilson, and Michael Duncan, all adding needed touches of humor and charisma. When Bay applies his sledgehammer aesthetics to the action portions of the film, it's mindless fun; it's only when Armageddon tackles humanity that it becomes truly offensive. Not since Mississippi Burning have racial and cultural stereotypes been substituted for characters so blatantly--African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Scottish, Samoans, Muslims, French ... if it's not white and American, Bay simplifies it. Or, make that white male America; the film features only three notable females--four if you count the meteor, who's constantly referred to as a "bitch that needs drillin'," but she's a hell of a lot more developed and unpredictable than the other women characters combined. Sure, Bay's film creates some tension and contains some visceral moments, but if he can't create any redeemable characters outside of those in space, what's the point of saving the planet? --Dave McCoy

Twister

The house rips apart piece by piece. A bellowing cow spins through the air. Tractors fall like rain. A 15,000-pound gasoline tanker becomes an airborne bomb. A mile-wide, 300 miles-per-hour force of total devastation is coming at you: Twister is hitting home. In this adventure swirling with cliffhanging excitement and awesome special effects, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton play scientists pursuing the most destructive weatherfront to sweep through mid-America's Tornado Alley in 50 years. By launching electronic sensors into the funnel, the storm chasers hope to obtain enough data to create an improved warning system. But to do so, they must intercept the twisters' deadly path. The chase is on!

Twister was a mega-million-dollar blockbuster--helmed by a director (Dutchman Jan de Bont) hot off another scorcher hit (Speed)--that flaunted state-of-the-art digital effects and featured a popular leading actress (Helen Hunt) who would win an Academy Award for her next film (As Good As It Gets). But ask anybody who's seen it and they'll tell you who the real star of Twister is: the cow. Not to give anything away, but the cow is one of those inspired little touches (like, say, Bronson Pinchot's career-making cameo in Beverly Hills Cop) that adds a touch of personality to a gigantic Hollywood production. The story is blown out the window after an impressive prologue in which Hunt's character, as a little girl, witnesses her daddy being sucked into a tornado. Basically, Hunt and Bill Paxton are thrill-seeking meteorologists chasing twisters in order to study them (and help warn people of them, of course) with a new technology they've developed. If you thought the Kansas tornado in The Wizard of Oz was every bit as scary as the Wicked Witch of the West, then this may be the movie for you. --Jim Emerson

The Day After Tomorrow (Widescreen Edition)

Supreme silliness doesn't stop The Day After Tomorrow from being lots of fun for connoisseurs of epic-scale disaster flicks. After the blockbuster profits of Independence Day and Godzilla, you can't blame director Roland Emmerich for using global warming as a politically correct excuse for destroying most of the northern hemisphere. Like most of Emmerich's films, this one emphasizes special effects over such lesser priorities as well-drawn characters and plausible plotting, and his dialogue (cowritten by Jeffrey Nachmanoff) is so laughably trite that it could be entirely eliminated without harming the movie. It's the spectacle that's important here, not the lame, recycled plot about father and son (Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal) who endure an end-of-the-world scenario caused by the effects of global warming. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the awesome visions of tornado-ravaged Los Angeles, blizzards in New Delhi, Japan pummeled by grapefruit-sized hailstones, and Manhattan flooded by swelling oceans and then frozen by the onset of a modern ice age. It's all wildly impressive, and Emmerich obviously doesn't care if the science is flimsy, so why should you? --Jeff Shannon

When global warming triggers the onset of a new Ice Age, tornadoes flatten Los Angeles, a tidal wave engulfs New York City and the entire Northern Hemisphere begins to freeze solid. Now, climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and a small band of survivors must ride out the growing superstorm and stay alive in the face of an enemy more powerful and relentless than any they've ever encountered: Mother Nature!

The Rock

Between his high-octane debut, Bad Boys, and 1998's wannabe blockbuster Armageddon, hotshot director Michael Bay forged his dubious reputation with this crowd-pleasing action extravaganza. In it a psychotically disgruntled war hero (Ed Harris) seizes the island prison of Alcatraz and threatens to wage chemical warfare against nearby San Francisco unless the government publicly recognizes the men who were killed under Harris's top-secret command. Nicolas Cage plays the biochemist who teams up with the only man ever to have escaped from Alcatraz (Sean Connery) in an attempt to foil Harris's terrorist scheme. As one might expect, what follows is an action-packed barrage of bullets, bodies, and climactic confrontations, replete with enough plot contrivances to give even the most jaded action fan cause for alarm. It's a load of hooey, but the cast is obviously having a grand old time, and there's enough wit to make the recycled action sequences tolerable. If you're ordering this movie on DVD, be careful with the volume knobs on your home-theater sound systems, because The Rock could cause partial hearing loss and structural damage to your home. --Jeff Shannon

Gone in 60 Seconds

TouchStone Gone In 60 Seconds 2000 - DVD
Gone in Sixty Seconds is about automobile aficionado Randall "Memphis" Raines, a car thief of legendary proportion. No fancy lock or alarm could stop him; your car would be there, and then suddenly gone in 60 seconds.For years, Memphis eluded the law while boosting every make and model imaginable. When the heat became too intense, he abandoned his life of crime and left everything and everyone he loved to find a different life. Now, when his kid brother tries tofollow in his footsteps, only to become dangerously embroiled in a high stakes caper, Memphis is sucked back into his old ways-in order to save his brother's life.

Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi) is a cocky young car thief working with a crew to steal 50 cars for a very bad man whose nickname is "The Carpenter." Being young and cocky, Kip messes up, so it's up to his big brother, Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage), to come out of car thief retirement and save him. With a cast that includes Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Cage, and Ribisi, it would be easy to say this story wastes all their talents--which it does, but that's not the point. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film. A good story and complex characters would only get in the way of the action scenes and slow the movie down. No, Gone in 60 Seconds (based on the cult 1974 film of the same name) is not about the stars as much as it's about cars. Fast cars. Rare cars. Wrecked cars. All cars. Too bad director Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) doesn't come across as more of a gearhead; he seems less interested in fast cars than fast cuts. But is this movie fun? Absolutely, and it's fun because it's so stupid. With pointless car chases and hackneyed dialogue in one of the most predictable plots of the year, Gone in 60 Seconds is a comic film that's not quite a parody of itself, but darn close. --Andy Spletzer

The Running Man (Special Edition)

In this action thriller based on an early story by Stephen King, Los Angeles in the year 2017 has become a police state in the wake of the global economy's total collapse. All forms of entertainment are government controlled, and the most popular show on television is an elaborate game show in which convicted criminals are given a chance to escape by running through a gauntlet of brutal killers known as "Stalkers." Anyone who survives is given their freedom and a condominium in Hawaii, so when a wrongly accused citizen (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is chosen as a contestant, all hell breaks loose. Cheesy sets and a slimy role for game-show host Richard Dawson make this violent mess of mayhem a candidate for guilty pleasure; it is the kind of movie that truly devoted Arnold fans will want to watch more than once. And check those credits--choreography by Paula Abdul! --Jeff Shannon

Air Force One

Beacon

You know that old dramatic principle of suspension of disbelief? You'll have to rely on it for this box-office smash, but you won't be disappointed. Harrison Ford plays a U.S. president who single-handedly employs his rigid antiterrorism policy when a band of Russian thugs hatch a mid-flight takeover of Air Force One. Gary Oldman, who chews the scenery as the lead terrorist, will shoot a hostage at the slightest provocation. Glenn Close plays the sternly pragmatic vice president who negotiates with Oldman from her Washington seat of power. If you can believe that the aircraft's pressurized cabin can sustain hundreds of rounds of machine-gun fire, you'll buy anything in this entertaining potboiler, especially thanks to Ford's stalwart heroics and some nifty special effects. Director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot) keeps the action moving so fast you won't be sweating the details. Don't forget your parachute! --Jeff Shannon

Ong-Bak - The Thai Warrior

No computer graphic can ever surpass what a real human body can do--and what the body can do is on spectacular display in Ong-Bak, a Thai action movie starring the lithe and flexible Tony Jaa. When the head is stolen from a holy statue in Jaa's rural village, he goes to Bangkok to get it back. Of course, it just so happens that the thief is connected to a bar where criminal big shots gamble over bare-knuckle brawls, and Jaa is--despite his virtuous efforts--drawn into the game. But that's only the beginning; a chase through the city streets rivals the ingenious acrobatics of Jackie Chan, with Jaa leaping between panes of glass, over a bicycle in motion, and through a wreath of barbed wire. Jaa's fighting prowess has been compared to Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and just about every other martial arts master, but he has an equal degree of charisma as well. He won't win acting awards, but his engaging presence carries the movie. One word of warning: The numerous fights will make you wince as much as gape in astonishment. Ong-Bak follows the action-flick tradition that the hero needs to be as battered as possible before he ultimately triumphs, and the battering is intense. --Bret Fetzer

When the head of his village's sacred Buddha statue is stolen, simple country boy Ting (Tony Jaa) is sent to Bangkok to retrieve it. Raised by a monk who has trained him in Muay Thai, Ting has vowed to never use his lethal martial arts skills. But once he arrives in the big city, Ting is forced to fight. It's non-stop action as Ting infiltrates Bangkok's seedy underworld and takes on a series of lowlifes and criminals in his quest to obtain the sacred head.

The Black Cauldron (Disney Gold Classic Collection)