Culture Clash

Out of Africa

Sydney Pollack's 1985 multiple-Oscar winner is a sumptuous and emotionally satisfying film about the life of Danish writer Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), better known as Isak Dinesen, who travels to Kenya to be with her German husband (Klaus Maria Brandauer) but falls for an English adventurer (Robert Redford). The film is slow in developing the relationship, but it is rich in beautiful images of Africa and in the romantic tone surrounding Blixen's gradual discovery of her life and voice. One downside: while we may all love Redford, he is as convincingly British as Kevin Costner is in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. --Tom Keogh

The most acclaimed motion picture of 1985 stars Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in one of the screen's great epic romances. Directed by Oscar winner Sydney Pollack, Out of Africa is the fascinating true story of Karen Blixen, a strong-willed woman who, with her philandering husband (Klaus Maria Brandauer), runs a coffee plantation in Kenya, circa 1914. To her astonishment, she soon discovers herself falling in love with the land, its people and a mysterious white hunter (Redford). The masterfully crafted, breathtakingly produced story of love and loss earned Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay (based on material from another medium), Cinematography, Original Score, Art Direction (Set Decoration) and Sound.

Havoc (Unrated Version)

A group of wealthy Los Angeles teenagers try to become part of the "gangsta" lifestyle but soon run into trouble when they come face to face with a real gang of Latino drug dealers.Running Time: 92 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 794043843228

After making her name in The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway takes a radical detour with this edgy independent drama. As Allie, a wealthy gangsta wannabe, she makes no excuses for her delinquent behavior: "We're just teenagers and we're bored." When her Pacific Palisades posse, including pal Emily (Bully's Bijou Phillips), starts hanging out with a Latino gang (including Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodríguez), they learn what thug life is really about. Hathaway couldn't be more game: She swears, she fights--she disrobes (several times). Written and directed by Oscar winners Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) and Barbara Kopple (American Dream), Havoc plays like a B movie, in the vein of the superior crazy/beautiful, and was released straight to video. For Hathaway fans, it's a chance to see this young talent in a very different light, but for Gaghan and Kopple followers, this lurid morality tale is sure to come as a letdown. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Crossroads

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD

The legend of Mississippi blues master Robert Johnson has served as a fountainhead for generations of blues and rock musicians, as well as a powerful fable for the dark, often violent mysteries of delta blues. Johnson's mythic deal with the Devil, in exchange for his extraordinary musical gifts, has become a fixture in blues lore and an example of the enduring pull of superstitions that can be traced back to Mother Africa and Yoruba deities. Producer-director Walter Hill (The Long Riders, Streets of Fire) sought to put this uniquely American mystery on film, but when he was unable to secure a script devoted directly to Johnson himself, Hill bravely decided to proceed with a more oblique, allegorical story that retold the Satanic bargain through a fictionalized drama set in the present day. In this 1986 feature, the hero is Eugene, a classically trained guitar virtuoso pulled toward the earthier powers of blues. When he stumbles across a lost blues legend, Willie Brown (a real blues figure and Johnson peer known for his partnerships with Charley Patton and Son House, among others), Eugene begins an odyssey back to the delta country and the crossroads of the title, where both Willie and Johnson had traded their souls for blues power, to help the surviving bluesman renegotiate terms.

An opening sequence, shot in sepia-toned black and white, dramatizes Johnson's own supernatural encounter, as well as one of the bluesman's historic Texas recording sessions, and Hill's visuals combine with frequent collaborator Ry Cooder's reliably authentic slide guitar to offer a promising glimpse of cinematic conjury. Even the satanic villain--a grinning huckster named Scratch--honors the trickster figure familiar to African American superstitions, rather than a generic devil. Willie Brown (Joe Seneca) is likewise a convincing link to the blues past, but Hill's central casting choice--Ralph (The Karate Kid) Macchio--sacrifices all for marquee value, a Hobson's choice that casts a shadow of unintended parody across the film. Macchio's earlier character, not Scratch, haunts this film, and even a nifty duel between Eugene, his slashing fretwork supplied off-camera by Cooder, and Scratch's ax-wielding henchman, heavy metal virtuoso, and one-time Frank Zappa protégé Steve Vai, can't safely rescue the film. --Sam Sutherland

The Lover

Lovely to look at, this story reveals little more than the characters' nude bodies. Like couples whose only attraction is physical, this has little to offer once it leaves the bedroom. We never learn the interests or inner workings of the lovers in question. They become nothing more than attractive bodies, which makes this little more than a shallow exercise in sexuality. The story is based on the controversial, and supposedly autobiographical, bestseller by experimental French novelist Marguerite Duras. It tells the story of a young French schoolgirl who becomes sexually involved with a sophisticated, older Asian man. Set in Indochina in the late 1920s, this is stunningly photographed and artfully directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. That said, the lack of a more satisfying plot means this is merely tastefully produced soft porn. --Rochelle O'Gorman

From the novel of the same namewhich has sold over one million copies in 43 languagesthis "sophisticated adaptation of Marguerite Duras' best-selling memoirs" (Variety) smolders on the screen. "Masterfully acted and beautifully photographed" (Critics' Choice), The Lover brilliantly captures the essence of sexual awakening and forbidden desire like no other film has donebeforeor since. Jane March is mesmerizing in the role of a poor French teenager who engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir (Tony Leung) in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters. But though the lovers are able to transcend their differences in age, race and class'theirs is a future that French colonial Vietnamese society will never allow.

Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester could have been a shallow variant of The Karate Kid, congratulating itself for featuring a 16-year-old black kid from the South Bronx who's a brilliant scholar-athlete. Instead, director Gus Van Sant plays it matter-of-fact and totally real, casting a nonactor (Rob Brown) as Jamal, a basketball player and gifted student whose writing talent is nurtured by a famously reclusive author. William Forrester (Sean Connery) became a literary icon four decades earlier with a Pulitzer-winning novel, then disappeared (like J.D. Salinger) into his dark, book-filled apartment, agoraphobic and withdrawn from publishing, but as passionate as ever about writing. On a dare, Jamal sneaks into Forrester's musty sanctuary, and what might have been a condescending cliché--homeboy rescued by wiser white mentor--turns into an inspiring meeting of minds, with mutual respect and intelligence erasing boundaries of culture and generation.

Comparisons to Van Sant's Good Will Hunting are inevitable, but Finding Forrester is more honest and less prone to touchy-feely sentiment, as in the way Jamal and a private-school classmate (Anna Paquin) develop a mutual attraction that remains almost entirely unspoken. The film takes a conventional turn when Jamal must defend his integrity (with Forrester's help) in a writing contest judged by a skeptical teacher (F. Murray Abraham), but this ethical subplot is a credible catalyst for Forrester's most dramatic display of friendship. It's one of many fine moments for Connery and Brown (a screen natural), in a memorable film that transcends issues of race to embrace the joy of learning. --Jeff Shannon

Footloose (Special Collector's Edition)

A portrayal of the timeless struggle between innocent pleasure and rigid morality. City-boy Ren McCormick finds himself in an uptight Midwestern town where dancing has been banned.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD

Director Herbert Ross (The Turning Point) pulled a winning movie out of this almost self-consciously archetypal tale of teenage rock rebellion. Kevin Bacon stars as a hip city kid who ends up in a Bible-belt town after his parents divorce. An ill fit for a conservative community where rock is frowned upon and dancing is forbidden, Bacon's character rallies the kids and takes on the establishment. Between a good cast really embracing the drama of Dean Pitchford's screenplay, and Ross's imaginative, highly charged way of shooting the dance numbers, you can get lost in this all-ages confection, and you won't even mind Kenny Loggins's bubbly pop. Bonuses include one of John Lithgow's best performances (a bit reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart), and Christopher Penn (who sure doesn't look the same anymore) as a good-natured hick who learns to boogie. --Tom Keogh

Nashville

The drama and comedy of the lives of twenty-four major stars as seen in the five days they are in the country music capital of the world.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD

This 1975 film sits near the top of any list of the best films of the 1970s, perhaps in the top five and, in some people's minds, at the pinnacle itself. Robert Altman, at his most Altmanesque, spins together plot strands involving two dozen people over the course of one particularly busy weekend in Music City, USA. Though several of the story lines deal with country-western stars--played by Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley and Karen Black--the plot also deals with the country scene's wannabes, the business people who pull the strings and the operative for a mysterious presidential candidate who is trying to get the de facto endorsement of some of the country stars by having them appear at a rally for him. (The unknown but rocketing presidential aspirant was eerily echoed the next year, when Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the presidency.) Blakley is heartbreakingly fragile as a Loretta Lynn-like singer on the verge of total mental meltdown, while Lily Tomlin is outstanding as a housewife-gospel singer who has a dalliance with a randy folk-rock cad, perfectly played by Keith Carradine (who won an Oscar for his song "I'm Easy"). The cast also includes Jeff Goldblum, Scott Glenn, Keenan Wynn, Shelley Duvall, Geraldine Chaplin (hilarious as a fatuous British TV journalist), Barbara Harris, Michael Murphy, and Ned Beatty, with cameos by Elliott Gould and Julie Christie as themselves. Next to Mean Streets, perhaps the most influential film of the decade. --Marshall Fine

The Man Who Cried

Fans of the testudinate pace and art-house vibe of writer-director Sally Potter's other works (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) will likely enjoy The Man Who Cried. Fegele (Christina Ricci) is a Russian Jew separated from her father as a child. Raised as "Susie" by an English family, she makes her way to Paris, where although the city's multiculturalism is vibrant, the Nazis are already on the rise and the secret of her origin becomes increasingly dangerous. The cast of The Man Who Cried is excellent; Cate Blanchett, Johnny Depp, John Turturro, and Harry Dean Stanton all do fine jobs in what could have easily degenerated into an accentfest. Depp and Ricci do very well with minimal dialogue--both go through the entire movie almost without speaking. The film moves at a leisurely pace and is beautifully shot. Not a film to show to a roomful of action movie fans, but it's well suited to people who like their films a little more European in flavor. --Ali Davis

Mississippi Burning

Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe star in this well-intentioned and largely successful civil rights-era thriller. Mississippi Burning, using the real-life 1964 disappearance of three civil rights workers as its inspiration, tells the story of two FBI men (Hackman and Dafoe, entertainingly called "Hoover Boys" by the locals) who come in to try to solve the crime. Hackman is a former small-town Mississippi sheriff himself, while Dafoe is a by-the-numbers young hotshot. Yes, there is some tension between the two. The movie has an interesting fatalism, as all the FBI's best efforts incite more and more violence, which becomes disturbing--the film's message, perhaps inadvertently, seems to be that vigilantism is the only real way to get things done. The brilliant Frances McDormand, here early in her career, is not given enough to do but still does it well enough to have racked up an Oscar® nomination for Best Supporting Actress. (Hackman also received a nomination for Best Actor, and the film won an Academy Award for Cinematography). The story line of Mississippi Burning is ultimately unsatisfying--it is, after all, the story of white men coming in to rescue poor blacks--but it is beautifully shot and very watchable and features a terrific cast playing at the top of their games. --Ali Davis

Starring two-time Oscar® winner Gene Hackman* and Academy Award® nominee Willem Dafoe** Mississippi Burning ranks as one of the most potent and insightful views of racial turmoil yet produced (Variety). Nominated for six Oscars® and winner of an Academy Award® for Best Cinematography this emotionally charged film vividly captures a crucial chapter in American history (Time)! As three civil rights activists drive down a desolate stretch of highway headlights ominously draw near. Telling each other to stay calm they have no way of knowing that in minutes they will disappear into the night and spark one of the most explosive murder investigations in history. Enter straight-laced Ward (Dafoe) and deceptively easy-going Anderson (Hackman). Can these two philosophically opposed FBI agents overcome their differences and uncover the chilling mystery of a small Ku Klux Klan-ridden community before an entire town is torn apart by racism?System Requirements: Running Time 127 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 027616860996 Manufacturer No: 1001829

Hawaii

George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) directed this adaptation of James Michener's novel about the history of the 50th state. Max von Sydow plays a zealous missionary with a Calvinist bent, intent on enlightening the natives even as his wife (Julie Andrews) is romanced by the dashing Richard Harris. The film is both a glossy vision of Hawaii in the early 19th century and a sometimes-brutal drama full of death, a rough childbirth, stormy weather, etc. Hill's blunt editing, meant to emphasize the more terrifying aspects of the natural order of life, makes the film look particularly dated and mannered today. This is best appreciated for its cast, all of whom were making inroads in Hollywood at the time. --Tom Keogh

Two cultures collide in this vast lavish and truly spectacular film starring Julie Andrews Max Von Sydow Richard Harris Gene Hackman and Carroll O'Connor. Adapted from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and nominated* for seven Oscars® this "majestic gorgeously framed epic is adventuresome picture-making a credit to the industry" (The Film Daily) and riveting entertainment!They came to bring God but instead brought disease and destruction. The Rev. Abner Hale (Von Sydow) and his gentle wife Jerusha (Andrews) attempt to convert early 19th-century Hawaiian natives to Christianity but find themselves ill-equipped to endure the unexpected tribulations of paradise. Surging with the excitement of windstorms firestorms shark attacks and magnificent island scenery Hawaii shines as passionately as the island paradise itself!*1966: Supporting Actress (Jocelyne LaGarde) Cinematography Color Costume Design Color Special Visual Effects Score Song SoundSystem Requirements:Running Time: 161 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 027616921918 Manufacturer No: 1008152