One Last Heist

Wild At Heart

David Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart is an utterly random and ugly experience with pockets of startling imagery and inspired set pieces. Based on a Barry Gifford novel, the film stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as lovers on the lam whose relationship is tested and who meet some truly dangerous wackos (including an almost-simian Willem Dafoe). Lynch's thoughts seem to be everywhere, and he expects the audience to keep up with a story that seems more a collection of avant-garde whims than a coherent vision with the intuitive brilliance of his Blue Velvet. Cage gives one of his more chaotic performances, but then he was just reading Lynch's signposts. --Tom Keogh

If Lula knows one thing in this world it s she s destined to be with her ex-con boyfriends Sailor- no matter how many times her mama tries to kill him. But when she and Sailor finally hit the road in a desperate bid to find happiness their journey plunges them into a disturbing underworld filled with sexual secrets and dangerous desires that form a terrifying Tapestry of human extremity (Variety)System Requirements: Running Time 124 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 027616914606 Manufacturer No: 1007379

Absolute Power

He was where he shouldn't have been and saw what he shouldn't have seen. Now who will believe the word of a career thief and ex-con? Who will trust Luther Whitney when he says he saw a woman killed and that the man responsible for her death is the President of the United States? Clint Eastwood portrays Whitney and directs this crisp finely acted thriller based on David Baldacci's best-selling novel. A stellar cast which includes Gene Hackman and Ed Harris creates well-rounded characters that intensify constantly spiraling game of cat and mouse between Whitney local police and the highest levels of White House power. Eastwood is a master at steadily raising the stakes in thrillers. Here his mastery is absolute.Running Time: 122 min.System Requirements:Starring: Clint Eastwood Gene Hackman Laura Linney Ed Harris Special Features: Interactive Menus Production Notes Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio Standard 1.33:1 (4.3) Enhanced for 16x9 TV s Subtitles: English Spanish French Track Info: English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Closed Captioning: Yes # Discs: 1 # Sides: Dual Running Time: 121 minutes; Closed Captioned. Copyright: 1997 Warner Bros.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 012569250826

Director Clint Eastwood's 1997 box-office hit stars himself as Luther Whitney, a highly skilled thief who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, witnessing the murder of a woman involved in a secret tryst with the U.S. president (played by Gene Hackman). Determined to clear his name, Whitney cleverly eludes a tenacious detective (Ed Harris) while investigating a corruption of power reaching to the highest level of government. Adapted by veteran screenwriter William Goldman from David Baldacci's novel, this thriller balances expert suspense with well-drawn characters and an intelligent plot that's just a pounding heartbeat away from real White House headlines. Absolute Power features the great Judy Davis in a memorable supporting role as the White House chief of staff who desperately attempts to cover up the crime. --Jeff Shannon

Today You Die

Kiss of Death

This remake of a 1947 film noir casts David Caruso (freshly escaped from TV's NYPD Blue) in the role originally played by Victor Mature. He plays Jimmy Kilmartin, a reformed criminal struggling to keep straight and keep his wife (Helen Hunt) from going back to the bottle. But a favor for his cousin lands him back in the clink, and when his wife dies, he comes out ready to make a deal with the D.A. He becomes an informant, joining the crew of Little Junior Brown (Nicolas Cage), a pumped-up, asthmatic psycho who weightlifts strippers for amusement. Eventually, Jimmy finds himself forced to keep his radar up for treachery from both the criminals he's finking on and the cops he's working for. This film, directed by Barbet Schroeder, didn't do much business, despite a powerful but controlled performance by Caruso and a scarily splashy one by Cage. --Marshall Fine

In Barbet Schroeder's gritty thriller, David Caruso is an ex-con who's lured back into a life of crime for one last heist. When a detective (Samuel L. Jackson) offers him his freedom in return for turning on a gangster (Nicolas Cage), he becomes a reluctant pawn caught between federal agents and the mob. Helen Hunt, Stanley Tucci and Michael Rapaport co-star in this stylish, streetsmart film noir.

Read My Lips

Workplace dramas seem to have become a French specialty, and Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips ("Sur mes levres") proves a worthy follow-up to such notable predecessors in the genre as Human Resources and Time Out ("L'Emploi du temps"). The film also nods towards Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and Hitchcock's Rear Window, but it's none the worse for that. Carla, our anti-heroine (Emmanuelle Devos), is an ugly duckling working as a secretary for a construction company in suburban Paris. Dowdy and all-but deaf, she's exploited and put upon by her male coworkers. When her boss lets her hire an assistant she bizarrely chooses Paul (Vincent Cassel), a scruffy and none-too-bright ex-con. But an odd symbiosis grows up between this pair of losers; the combination of his petty-criminal skills and her lip-reading abilities has certain potentials.

As A Self-Made Hero, his previous movie, showed, Audiard doesn't go in for lovable characters. Carla is no long-suffering saint and Paul is frankly sleazy, but this just makes their interaction all the more intriguing. Devos, glowering malevolently beneath her dark brows, and Cassel with his greasy hair and ratty moustache, turn in relishably truculent and un-starry performances, and Audiard deftly manages the transition from office comedy to gangland heist thriller with no grinding of gears. By the end the plot starts to strain belief, but it scarcely matters. The noir-ish lighting and potent use of hand-held close-ups enhance the film's sense of nervous unease, and there's ingenious use of sound to convey Carla's hearing-impaired world. Downbeat and unblinkingly amoral, Read My Lips offers pleasures that a glossier treatment would have missed entirely. --Philip Kemp

Carla is beginning to chafe at the limitations of her career and is looking to move up. But as a 35-year-old woman with a hearing deficiency, she is not sure how. Into her life comes Paul Angeli, a new trainee. At 25, he is completely unskilled, but Carla covers for him when the need arises because of his other qualities - he's a thief fresh out of jail, very good-looking and maybe of some use to her. Starring Vincent Cassel (Birthday Girl, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Crimson Rivers).

Flickering Lights (Blinkende Lygter)

Firetrap

Neon Signs

Ilona Arrives with the Rain

A beautiful woman and her long lost lover reunite for one last caper. In steamy, cosmopolitan Panama City, tough-guy smuggler Maqroll stumbles across Ilona, his long lost love and cohort. They haven't seen each other for years. They begin a new scheme, in search of impossible wealth.

Neon Signs