Drama

The Dreamers (Original Uncut NC-17 Version)

A love letter to movies (and the French new wave of the 1960s in particular), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers starts with a 1968 riot outside of a Parisian movie palace then burrows into an insular love triangle. Matthew (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), an expatriate American student, bonds with a twin brother and sister, Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), over their mutual love of film--they not only quote lines of dialogue, they act out small bits and challenge each other to name the cinematic source. Matthew suspects the twins of incest, but that doesn't stop him from falling into his own intimacies with Isabelle. As the threesome becomes threatened, Paris succumbs to student riots. The Dreamers aspires to be kinky, but the results are more decorative than decadent; nonetheless, the movie's lively energy recalls the careless and vital exuberance of Godard and Truffaut. --Bret Fetzer

From Academy Award®-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor 1987) comes an erotic tale of three young film lovers brought together by their passion for movies -- and each other. When Isabelle and Theo (Eva Green Louis Garrel) invite Matthew (Michael Pitt) to stay with them what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and anything is possible. Featuring an engaging seductive cast The Dreamers is a spellbinding provocative feast!" (Ebert & Roeper)System Requirements: Running Time 115 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE

Babette's Feast

Some movies can only be described as delicious. In Babette's Feast, a woman flees the French civil war and lands in a small seacoast village in Denmark, where she comes to work for two spinsters, devout daughters of a puritan minister. After many years, Babette unexpectedly wins a lottery, and decides to create a real French dinner--which leads the sisters to fear for their souls. Joining them for the meal will be a Danish general who, as a young soldier, courted one of the sisters, but she turned him away because of her religion. The village elders all resolve not to enjoy the meal, but can their moral fiber resist the sensual pleasure of Babette's cooking? Babette's Feast deservedly won the 1987 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This lovely movie is impeccably simple, yet its slender narrative contains a wealth of humor, melancholy, and hope. --Bret Fetzer

Artistic, sensual and sacred passions unite in Babette's Feast. Written and directed by Gabriel Axel, from a short story by Out of Africa's Isak Dinesen, this Oscar(r)-winning*film offers "an irresistible mixture of dry wit and robust humanity" (Newsweek). Onthe desolate coast of Denmark live Martina and Philippa, the beautiful daughters of a devout clergyman who preaches salvation through self-denial. Both girls sacrifice youthful passion to faith and duty, and even many years after their father's death, they keep his austere teachings alive among thetownspeople. But with the arrival of Babette, a mysterious refugee from France's civil war, life for the sisters and their tiny hamlet begins to change. Soon, Babette has convinced them to try something truly outrageousa gourmet French meal! Her feast, of course, scandalizes the local elders. Just who is this strangely talented Babette, who has terrified this pious town with the prospect of losing their souls for enjoying too much earthly pleasure? *1987: Foreign Language Film

The Story of O

A milestone of cinematic eroticism, The Story of O was an art house sensation in 1975, and it's still worthy of intelligent discussion. As with the controversial French novella by Pauline Réage, reactions to Just Jaeckin's sumptuous adaptation range from moral outrage to masturbatory indulgence, yet this remains one of the few sex films that stand the test of time (and a lot of academic study). Championed by practitioners of bondage and discipline and vilified by feminists, this metaphorical "love dream" (as Jaeckin has called it) follows the beautiful fashion photographer "O" (Corrine Clery) as she, like many gorgeously naked women before her, is "trained" for a seemingly satisfying life of love and discipline, her freedom sacrificed to the man (Anthony Steel) whom she willingly obeys. The debate whether Jaeckin's feminine-empowerment ending, which differs from that of the novella, justifies a story of humiliating submission is just one more reason why The Story of O endures. (Note: This DVD presents the 97-minute version of the film, edited by the director to improve pacing and not for purposes of censorship.) --Jeff Shannon

The Pianist

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture and winner of 3 The Pianist stars Oscar winner Adrien Brody in the true-life story of brilliant pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman the most acclaimed young musician of his time until his promising career was interrupted by the onset of World War II. This powerful ultimately triumphant film follows Szpilman s heroic and inspirational journey of survival with the unlikely help from a sympathetic German officer (Thomas Kretschmann). A truly unforgettable epic testifying to both the power of hope and the resiliency of the human spirit The Pianist is a miraculous tale of survival masterfully brought to life by visionary filmmaker Roman Polanski in his most personal movie ever.System Requirements:Starring: Adrien Brody Thomas Kretschmann Frank Finlay Emilia Fox Maureen Lipman Jessica Kate Meyer Julia Rayner Ed Stoppard Directed By: Roman Polanski Running Time: 150 Min. Color Copyright Universal Studios 2003Format: DVD MOVIE

Winner of the prestigious Golden Palm award at the 2002 Cannes film festival, The Pianist is the film that Roman Polanski was born to direct. A childhood survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski was uniquely suited to tell the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew and concert pianist (played by Adrien Brody) who witnessed the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, miraculously eluded the Nazi death camps, and survived throughout World War II by hiding among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. Unlike any previous dramatization of the Nazi holocaust, The Pianist steadfastly maintains its protagonist's singular point of view, allowing Polanski to create an intimate odyssey on an epic wartime scale, drawing a direct parallel between Szpilman's tenacious, primitive existence and the wholesale destruction of the city he refuses to abandon. Uncompromising in its physical and emotional authenticity, The Pianist strikes an ultimate note of hope and soulful purity. As with Schindler's List, it's one of the greatest films ever made about humanity's darkest chapter. --Jeff Shannon

Hotel Rwanda

Solidly built around a subtle yet commanding performance by Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda emerged as one of the most highly-praised dramas of 2004. In a role that demands his quietly riveting presence in nearly every scene, Cheadle plays real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in the Rwandan capital of Kigali who in 1994 saved 1,200 Rwandan "guests" from certain death during the genocidal clash between tribal Hutus, who slaughtered a million victims, and the horrified Tutsis, who found safe haven or died. Giving his best performance since his breakthrough role in Devil in a Blue Dress, Cheadle plays Rusesabagina as he really was during the ensuing chaos: "an expert in situational ethics" (as described by critic Roger Ebert), doing what he morally had to do, at great risk and potential sacrifice, with an understanding that wartime negotiations are largely a game of subterfuge, cooperation, and clever bribery. Aided by a United Nations official (Nick Nolte), he worked a saintly miracle, and director Terry George (Some Mother's Son) brings formidable social conscience to bear on a true story you won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon

Once you find out what happened in Rwanda, you'll never forget. OscarÂ(r) nominee* Don Cheadle (Traffic) gives "the performance of his career in this extraordinarily powerful" (The Hollywood Reporter) and moving true story of one man's brave stance against savagery during the 1994 Rwandan conflict. Sophie Okonedo (Dirty Pretty Things) co-stars as the loving wife who challenges a good man to become a great man. As his country descends into madness, five-star-hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Cheadle) sets out to save his family. But when he sees that theworld will not intervene in the massacre of minority Tutsis, he finds the courage to open his hotelto more than 1,200 refugees. Now, with a rabid militia at the gates, he must use his well-honed grace, flattery and cunning to protect his guests from certain death. *2004: Actor, Hotel Rwanda

David Lynch's Inland Empire (Limited Edition Two-Disc Set)

Laura Dern plays an actress whose latest role sends her through a Lynchian looking glass of dark dreams and transformation.EXTRAS:LYNCH 2 (BEHIND THE SCENES OF INLAND EMPIRE WITH DAVID LYNCH)TALKS WITH LAURA DERN AND DAVID LYNCH MORE THINGS THAT HAPPENED (ADDITIONAL CHARACTER EXPERIENCES)THEATRICAL TRAILERS (3)STILLS GALLERY (73 PHOTOS)DAVID LYNCH COOKS QUINOAFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 858334001145 Manufacturer No: 183036

Though Inland Empire's three hours of befuddling abstraction could try the patience of the most devoted David Lynch fan, its aim to reinvigorate the Lynch-ian symbolic order is ambitious, not to mention visually arresting. The director's archetypes recognizable from previous movies once again construct the film's inherent logic, but with a new twist. Sets vibrate between the contemporary and a 1950s alternate universe crammed with dim lamps, long hallways, mysterious doors, sparsely furnished rooms and, this time, a vortex/apartment/sitcom set where rabbit-masked humans dwell, and a Polish town where women are abused and killed. Instead of speaking backwards, mystic soothsayers and criminals speak Polish. Filmed on video, the film's look has the sinister, frightening feel of a Mark Savage film or a bootlegged snuff movie. Constant close-ups, both in and out of focus, make Inland Empire feel as if a stalker covertly filmed it. A straightforward, hokey plot unravels during the first third of Inland Empire to ground the viewer before a dive off the deep end. Actor Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) is cast as Susan Blue, an adulterous white trash Southerner, in a film that mimics too closely her actual life with an overbearingly jealous and dangerous husband. When Nikki and co-star Devon (Justin Theroux) learn that the cursed film project was earlier abandoned when its stars were murdered, the pair lose their grasp of reality. Nikki suffers a schizophrenic identity switch to Sue that lasts until nearly the film's end. Suspense builds as Nikki's alter ego sleuths her way through surreal situations to discover her killer, culminating in Sue's gnarly death on set. Sue's actions drag on because any sign of a narrative thread disappears due to idiosyncratic editing. Non-sensical scenes still captivate, however, such as when Sue stumbles onto the soundstage where she finds Nikki (herself) rehearsing for Sue's part. In this meta-film about identity slippage, Dern's multiple characters remind one of how a victim can become the hunter in their fight for survival. Lynch's portrayal of Nikki/Sue's increasing paranoia is, in its own confusion, utterly realistic. Laura Dern has created her own Lady Macbeth, undone by her guilt over infidelity. Even though Inland Empire is too long and too random, Laura Dern's performance coupled with Lynch's video experiments make it magical. --Trinie Dalton

More Films from David Lynch

Wild At Heart

Mulholland Drive

Blue Velvet