Futuristic

Batman Beyond - Return of the Joker (The Original Uncut Version)

Some diehard Batfans have been slow to warm to the animated series Batman Beyond even though it was created by the same team responsible for the excellent Batman cartoon of the early '90s. The Dark Knight should be a brooding avenger in a noir-nightmare Gotham City, the purists argue, not some smart-aleck teen four decades in the future, with jet packs, invisibility shields, and other sci-fi gizmos loaned him by an elderly Bruce Wayne (voiced, excellently as always, by Kevin Conroy, his stony bass given a raspy hint of old age), now confined to hobbling about on a cane and monitoring his protégé's activities from the Batcave. Between its respectful reexamination of the "tortured hero" mythos and its sleek, anime-inspired look, this feature-length movie should go a long way toward quieting their complaints. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they've brought back the most legendary figure in the Rogues Gallery (voiced by Mark Hamill, deliciously deranged), but exactly how and why the Joker has managed to turn up 40 years after his last meeting with Batman still as youthful and diabolical as ever is explained not only logically but terrifyingly as well. The secret behind his arrival is perhaps the saddest, grimmest twist any purported "kids' show" has dared to attempt. (Parents may well want to preview this tape before screening it for the very young.) Once again, Warner Brothers' cartoon Batman has outshone all the live-action films, never allowing the thrilling action set pieces or flashes of wry humor to drown out the drama, even tragedy, of the all-too-human superheroes. --Bruce Reid

The greatest villain of all comes out of the past to threaten Batman, Bruce Wayne and all of Gotham City in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the first feature-length Batman Beyond movie. The sleeker, deadlier and seemingly immortal Clown Prince of Crime is back with his own unique brand of havoc and mayhem. While trying to uncover the Joker's secrets, the new Batman, Terry McGinnis, discovers the greatest mystery in the life of the original Caped Crusader: What happened the night he fought the Joker for the last time. When Bruce Wayne is almost killed in one of the Joker's latest attacks, Batman vows to avenge his mentor and put the Joker to rest forever. Get ready for heart-stomping action, awesome adventure and amazing revelations in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by the filmmakers
Biographies:Animated Character Biographies
DVD ROM Features:Links to Warner Bros. Family Entertainment web sites, Special web events, Sampler trailers
Deleted Scenes
Documentary:Behind the scenes documentary
Interactive Menus
Music Video:"Crash" by Mephisto Odyssey (featuring Static X)
Other:Animation tests
Production Notes
Scene Access
Theatrical Trailer

Mad Max (Special Edition)

The Road Warrior is already a classic, sans condescending genre distinctions like "sci-fi" or "action." But the story of Mel Gibson's stately antihero begins in Mad Max, George Miller's low-budget debut in which Max is a "Bronze" (cop) in an unspecified postapocalyptic future with a buddy-partner and family. But unlike most films set in the devastated future, Mad Max is especially notable because it is poised between our industrialized world and total regression to medieval conditions. The scale tips towards disintegration when the Glory Riders burn into town on their bikes like an overamped cadre of Brando's Wild Ones. Representing the active chaos that will eventually overwhelm the dying vestiges of civil society, they take everything dear to Max, who will exact due revenge. His flight into the same wilds that created the villains artfully sets up the morally ambiguous character of the subsequent films. --Alan E. Rapp

Setting Mel Gibson on a sure path to superstardom this highly acclaimed crazy collide-o-scope (Newsweek) of highway mayhem cinematically defined the postapocalyptic landscape (TV Guide). Featuring eye-popping stunts that are electrifying and very convincing (Variety) and an authentically nihilistic spirit (The Village Voice) Mad Max is pure cinematic poetry (Time). In the ravaged near future a savage motorcycle gang rules the road. Terrorizing innocent civilians while tearing up the streets the ruthless gang laughs in the face of a police force hell-bent on stopping them. But they underestimate one officer: Max Rockatansky (Gibson). And when the bikers brutalize Max s best friend and family they send him into a mad frenzy that leaves him with only one thing left in the world to live for -- revenge!Special Features:New Digitally Remastered Anamorphic TransferNew-To-The-U.S.! Original Australian LanguageOriginal Mono Audio Track Mel Gibson: The Birth Of A Star Documentary Mad Max: The Film Phenomenon DocumentaryTheatrical TrailersAudio Commentary With Jon Dowding David Eggby Chris Murray & Tim Ridge Road Rants Trivia & Fun Fact TrackPhoto GalleryTV SpotsAnd More!System Requirements: Running Time 94 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 027616869241 Manufacturer No: 1002726

The Road Warrior

A strong candidate for the designation of most thrilling action movie ever made (the turbo-charged exhilaration of its full-throttle highway chases has never been equaled), the second part of George Miller's post-apocalyptic trilogy is also a magnificently imagined movie myth. Like the Star Wars trilogy (by that other George) the Mad Max films draw their inspiration from the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell. In the 1979 original, Max (Mel Gibson) is a policeman, the last guardian of civilization and order in a devastated world reduced to chaos. But when a leather-clad gang of sadomasochistic speed demons mows down Max's family, his remaining connections to humanity are also permanently severed. After brutally exacting his revenge, Max wanders off into the wasteland alone, "a burned out shell of a man" who (to paraphrase The Searchers) is destined to wander forever between the winds. In The Road Warrior, Max rediscovers a sliver of his shattered humanity, and a spark of redemption, when he helps an embattled colony of pioneers fight off the savages who are after that most precious of all commodities: "guzzline." Max is transformed into a legendary hero, just as Mel Gibson was catapulted to international movie stardom. With its final stirring images, The Road Warrior transcends its genre (whatever that may be--science fiction? Western? action adventure?) and becomes something timeless. It's a great movie. --Jim Emerson

The Island

When you add up all the best things about The Island, you might just conclude that there's hope yet for Hollywood's most critically reviled hit-maker, Michael Bay. Recruited by Steven Spielberg to direct this lavish and often breathtaking sci-fi action thriller, Bay rises to the occasion with an ambitious production that is, by his standards (and compared to Bay's earlier hits like The Rock and Armageddon), surprisingly intelligent as it explores the repercussions of cloning in a sealed-off society where humans are cultivated for spare parts, surrogate parenthood, and full-body replacements for wealthy clientele. But when two of the clones (Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johanssen) begin to question their fate and the motives of their keepers, they escape into the real world and The Island becomes just another Michael Bay action extravaganza, albeit an impressively exciting one. With elaborate chase scenes and a high-tech feast of CGI to dazzle the eye, The Island recycles much of the plot from 1979's Clonus while borrowing elements from Logan's Run, Gattaca and Minority Report, and while it's not as smartly conceived as those earlier films, there's no denying that, in many ways, it's Bay's best film to date. --Jeff Shannon

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

Escape From L.A.

Kurt Russell reprises his role as Snake Plissken, of the near-future thriller Escape from New York, in this reworking of that film's basic premise. Instead of New York being a maximum-security prison, this time it's L.A., which through the agency of earthquakes has become an island of the damned. This penal colony is where the film's future rulers, something very like the Moral Majority, send those deemed guilty of "moral crimes." But something has gone wrong in this new moral order, because the President's daughter has absconded to L.A. with a detonation device, and Snake is commandeered to retrieve it. The film's dark dystopia, with its satrical elements taking aim at our dwindling freedoms, and the eclipsing of democracy by narrow interests, are more the subject this time. As a result the action suffers, and the plot devices are sometimes weak and predictable. But just below the surface there is a coiled Snake ready to strike. Steve Buscemi's performance as a weasely hawker of L.A. tour maps is a standout, and the presence of Peter Fonda and Pam Grier adds to the fun. In fact, just the sight of Fonda surfing down the flooded corridor of Sunset Boulevard is reason enough to check this movie out. --Jim Gay

Snake Plissken is sent to post-earthquake-devastated Los Angeles to retrieve a doomsday device in the hear 2013.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: RUSSELL/KEACH/BUSCEMI
Title: ESCAPE FROM L.A.
Street Release Date: 12/15/1998
Domestic
Genre: ACTION / ADVENTURE

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Although Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third part of George Miller's post-apocalyptic Mad Max trilogy, is certainly the least of the bunch (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is the undisputed masterpiece, and maybe the best action movie ever made), it has still got a good share of imaginative industrial-wasteland-pastiche imagery. And casting Tina Turner as Aunty Entity, the queen of Bartertown, was a masterstroke. Mel Gibson's character Max is pitted in a battle to the death against the bizarre Master Blaster in the Thunderdome, flying around on rubbery straps inside a sort of gigantic overturned colander with bloodthirsty spectators clinging to the outside. Miller's producing partner, Byron Kennedy, was killed in a helicopter crash while scouting locations for this film. Miller was devastated, only agreeing to direct the action sequences--and, somehow, you feel his heart wasn't entirely in it. --Jim Emerson

Gibson stars as Max, the world-weary hero who stands alone against the barbarians of a post-nuclear Australia. Turner is Auntie Entity, the ruler of Bartertown.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 3-FEB-2004
Media Type: DVD

Metropolis

Adapted from Osamu Tezuka's 1949 manga, Metropolis (in Japanese with English subtitles) is an opulently beautiful film that fails to present a coherent story worthy of its extraordinary visuals. Evil Duke Red (voice by Taro Ishida) plans to rule the world from Ziggurat, his newly completed art deco tower. A new robot is being developed by his henchman Dr. Laughton (Junpei Takeguchi) to control all the machines in the world from Ziggurat. Japanese detective Shunsaku Ban (Kousei Tomita) and his nephew Kenichi (Kei Kobayashi) arrive in Metropolis in pursuit of Laughton and are plunged into Red's plot. When the duke's maniacal adopted son Rock (Kohki Okada) attacks Laughton's hidden lab, Kenichi and the waiflike android Tima (Yuka Imoto) flee into the city's subterranean slums and fall in love. Despite a protracted series of chases and violent shootouts, there's little excitement and less character development. Director Rintaro (Hayashi Shigeyuki) borrows heavily from Fritz Lang's 1926 Metropolis, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, but his staging makes much of the action hard to follow. The film takes an unintentionally hilarious turn when Ziggurat crumbles to Ray Charles's "I Can't Stop Loving You." The computer-generated skyscrapers, machines, and airships offer dazzling vistas of an overscaled and sinister deco-dystopia. But Tezuka's flat little characters, with their big eyes, round noses, and bubble-shaped feet, don't fit into that realistic three-dimensional environment. MPAA rating: PG. Contains considerable violence and grotesque imagery. --Charles Solomon

No Escape

From the director of Goldeneye. The year is 2022 . A former marine captain has been sentenced to life on a remote island prison where the most violent and feared criminals have been secured. There is no escape ... or is there?

Robocop 2

With the surprise success--both critical and commercial--of Robocop, it was inevitable that a sequel would emerge (actually, two sequels). But this follow-up lacked the dyspeptically funny vision of filmmaker Paul Verhoeven and wound up skimming the surface to repeat only the most superficial elements of the original: the big, clunky hero (played by Peter Weller), the ultra-violence (minus a dark sense of humor), and the plethora of action sequences. What plot there is deals with the corporation that runs the cops and its two-pronged attempt to squeeze every dime out of the populace and the city: create a new drug crisis (with an incredibly addictive synthetic drug the corporation manufactures, spread by a charismatic drug lord) and then attack with a bigger robot, one that eliminates Robocop at the same time. Would that they had. --Marshall Fine

Robocop returns to fight his toughest opponent yet: his replacement! Filled with explosions and hundreds of thousands of rounds fired by automatic weaponry (Variety) Robocop™ 2 pits two unstoppable cyborgs against each other in a battle to the death that will leave only the strongest standing! When Detroit s descent into chaos is further compounded by a police department strike and a new designer drug called Nuke only Robocop can stop the mayhem. But in his way are an evil corporation that profits from Motor City crime and a bigger and tougher cyborg with a deadly directive: Take out Robocop. Containing the latest in gadgetry and weaponry as well as the brain of the madman who designed Nuke this new cyborg isn t only more sophisticated than his predecessor he s psychotic and out of control! And it s going to take everything Robocop has maybe even his life to save Detroit from complete and utter anarchy.System Requirements: Running Time 117 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 027616909251 Manufacturer No: M102652