Crime

No Country for Old Men

The Coen brothers make their finest thriller since Fargo with a restrained adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel. Not that there aren't moments of intense violence, but No Country for Old Men is their quietest, most existential film yet. In this modern-day Western, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a Vietnam vet who could use a break. One morning while hunting antelope, he spies several trucks surrounded by dead bodies (both human and canine). In examining the site, he finds a case filled with $2 million. Moss takes it with him, tells his wife (Kelly Macdonald) he's going away for awhile, and hits the road until he can determine his next move. On the way from El Paso to Mexico, he discovers he's being followed by ex-special ops agent Chigurh (an eerily calm Javier Bardem). Chigurh's weapon of choice is a cattle gun, and he uses it on everyone who gets in his way--or loses a coin toss (as far as he's concerned, bad luck is grounds for death). Just as Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a World War II vet, is on Moss's trail, Chigurh's former colleague, Wells (Woody Harrelson), is on his. For most of the movie, Moss remains one step ahead of his nemesis. Both men are clever and resourceful--except Moss has a conscience, Chigurh does not (he is, as McCarthy puts it, "a prophet of destruction"). At times, the film plays like an old horror movie, with Chigurh as its lumbering Frankenstein monster. Like the taciturn terminator, No Country for Old Men doesn't move quickly, but the tension never dissipates. This minimalist masterwork represents Joel and Ethan Coen and their entire cast, particularly Brolin and Jones, at the peak of their powers. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

24 - Season Six

It s 20 months after the end of season 5 and Jack is back. A series of suicide bombings across the United States has CTU pushed to their limits and the only way to stop the attacks will be to sacrifice their star agent. But are they being misled and can Jack uncover the real mastermind before the bombings begin? Of course it s going to take more than weapons to stop Bauer from uncovering the truth but what he finds it just the beginning of a much larger conspiracy involving nation states the U.S. government and a host of other factors that make this season of 24 the most exciting to date.System Requirements:Running Time: 1012 mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 024543462927 Manufacturer No: 2246292

Creating and executing a TV series in which each season takes place in the course of just one day, with each episode occupying a single hour, is no mean feat, but the makers of 24 have pulled it off admirably. And while many of the show's longtime adherents seem to agree that this sixth season (with 24 episodes offered on six DVDs, plus a seventh disc loaded with bonus features) is perhaps its weakest, relative newcomers, freed from the expectations generated by the five that preceded it, will find it to be riveting entertainment. This is a show that hits the ground running and then proceeds to relentlessly ratchet up the tension, balancing its disparate elements--terrorism and espionage, political intrigue and treachery, personal drama--with remarkable aplomb. Indeed, the first episode is barely underway before we're told that a plague of terrorist bombings is sweeping the United States, killing many hundreds and leaving the nation in disarray. President Wayne Palmer (DB Woodside), in office for just three months following the assassination of his brother, agonizes over the proper course of action while some of his advisers counsel restraint and others urge him to adopt measures that will radically restrict Americans' (especially those of Muslim descent) civil liberties. Meanwhile, Jack Bauer (star and executive producer Kiefer Sutherland) has been released after two years in a Chinese prison, but only so he can be handed over to Abu Fayed (Adoni Maropis), a particularly nasty villain who proposes to trade Jack's life for the location of Hamri Al-Assad (Alexander Siddig), who's suspected of being the mastermind behind the current reign of terror. That's only the beginning, of course. Soon Jack (who, despite being severely tortured during his imprisonment, is still cool enough to coordinate a manhunt while simultaneously disarming a bomb set to detonate in two minutes) and his counter-terrorism cronies are dealing with the specter of a nuclear holocaust on American soil, more political assassination, Jack's feckless family, and a good deal more. And that's only in the first twelve hours! It doesn't all work--especially in the second half. Some of the characters are less than convincing (Jack's brother Graem, portrayed by Paul McCrane, is weak in every respect; in fact, the entire family sideshow is fairly ridiculous), while the casting is sometimes off the mark (Woodside does his best, but he lacks the gravitas needed in a plausible Chief Executive) and the story contains multiple plot points that will challenge even those willing to totally suspend their disbelief. By and large, though, 24 more than lives up to its own hype as the tube's most addictive program. Bonus material includes commentary on selected episodes, deleted scenes, a preview of Season 7, several featurettes, and a whole lot more. --Sam Graham

Holocaust

The 30th anniversary edition of Holocaust marks the first time this remarkable, nine-and-a-half-hour television miniseries has been released on DVD. Originally broadcast on NBC as part of an ongoing TV phenomenon in the 1970s called "The Big Event," Holocaust was an original story written by Gerald Green, who later scripted Kent State and Wallenberg: A Hero's Story, the latter another Holocaust-era tale. Holocaust narrowed the enormous story of the Nazis' systematic destruction of Jews by focusing on one family living in Berlin. Fritz Weaver plays Dr. Josef Weiss, a Pole with a longtime family practice. Weiss debates with his wife, Berta (Rosemary Harris), the wisdom of moving out of Germany with their family. She insists they should not be chased away by Hitler, and by the time she thinks otherwise, it's too late for her, her parents, Josef, and the three Weiss children: Karl (James Woods), Rudi (Joseph Bottoms), and Anna (Blanche Baker). Holocaust begins with the marriage of Karl to Inga (Meryl Streep), a Christian, an arrangement already frowned upon by the rising Nazi regime in 1935. In time, Karl, a harmless artist, is dragged off to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, leaving Inga vulnerable to a predatory camp officer who passes notes between the husband and wife. Poor young Anna meets a grim fate that reveals something of the way Hitler was determined to eliminate the mentally ill along with Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other groups of people. The rebellious Rudi ends up fighting the Germans from a different front, while Josef is deported to Warsaw, eventually joined by Berta. There, Holocaust details the plight of the walled-in, so-called Warsaw ghetto, and the despair of the people within. Meanwhile, the destiny of another important character, a rather effete lawyer named Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty), offers a peek into the internal workings of the Holocaust machinery. Dorf takes a much-needed job as an aide to Reinhard Heydrich (David Warner), Gestapo head and chair of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which finalized plans for the extermination of European Jews. Holocaust was criticized at the time of its broadcast for allegedly cheapening genocide by shrinking the dimensions of the Nazis' organized evil for commercial television. But as a story free to extend into different aspects of the war on Jews, Holocaust is a real eye-opener. Tom Bell, Ian Holm, Robert Stephens, and Sam Wanamaker are also featured in the cast. --Tom Keogh

An original TV dramatization of one of the most monstrous crimes in world history - the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. Dramatically and definitively, the story covers an entire decade, the eventful years from 1935 to 1945. HOLOCAUST focuses on the tragedy and triumph of a single family - the Weiss family. Their story is told in counter-poise to that of another fictional family, that of Erik Dorf, who portrays a Nazi aide to Germany's infamous Heydrich. Starring a brilliant international cast and filmed on location in Berlin and Vienna.

The Godfather DVD Collection (The Godfather/ The Godfather - Part II/ The Godfather - Part III)

The complete saga of the Mafia Corleone family, from Don Corleone's childhood in Sicily, his son Michael Corleone's rise to power and finally the struggle to succeed him. Contains, as originally released, the 3 Godfather films.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD

Throughout his long, wandering, often distinguished career Francis Ford Coppola has made many films that are good and fine, many more that are flawed but undeniably interesting, and a handful of duds that are worth viewing if only because his personality is so flagrantly absent. Yet he is and always shall be known as the man who directed the Godfather films, a series that has dominated and defined their creator in a way perhaps no other director can understand. Coppola has never been able to leave them alone, whether returning after 15 years to make a trilogy of the diptych, or re-editing the first two films into chronological order for a separate video release as The Godfather Saga. The films are our very own Shakespearean cycle: they tell a tale of a vicious mobster and his extended personal and professional families (once the stuff of righteous moral comeuppance), and they dared to present themselves with an epic sweep and an unapologetically tragic tone. Murder, it turned out, was a serious business. The first film remains a towering achievement, brilliantly cast and conceived. The entry of Michael Corleone into the family business, the transition of power from his father, the ruthless dispatch of his enemies--all this is told with an assurance that is breathtaking to behold. And it turned out to be merely prologue; two years later The Godfather, Part II balanced Michael's ever-greater acquisition of power and influence during the fall of Cuba with the story of his father's own youthful rise from immigrant slums. The stakes were higher, the story's construction more elaborate, and the isolated despair at the end wholly earned. (Has there ever been a cinematic performance greater than Al Pacino's Michael, so smart and ambitious, marching through the years into what he knows is his own doom with eyes open and hungry?) The Godfather, Part III was mostly written off as an attempted cash-in, but it is a wholly worthy conclusion, less slow than autumnally patient and almost merciless in the way it brings Michael's past sins crashing down around him even as he tries to redeem himself. --Bruce Reid

No Country for Old Men [Blu-ray]

The Coen brothers make their finest thriller since Fargo with a restrained adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel. Not that there aren't moments of intense violence, but No Country for Old Men is their quietest, most existential film yet. In this modern-day Western, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a Vietnam vet who could use a break. One morning while hunting antelope, he spies several trucks surrounded by dead bodies (both human and canine). In examining the site, he finds a case filled with $2 million. Moss takes it with him, tells his wife (Kelly Macdonald) he's going away for awhile, and hits the road until he can determine his next move. On the way from El Paso to Mexico, he discovers he's being followed by ex-special ops agent Chigurh (an eerily calm Javier Bardem). Chigurh's weapon of choice is a cattle gun, and he uses it on everyone who gets in his way--or loses a coin toss (as far as he's concerned, bad luck is grounds for death). Just as Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a World War II vet, is on Moss's trail, Chigurh's former colleague, Wells (Woody Harrelson), is on his. For most of the movie, Moss remains one step ahead of his nemesis. Both men are clever and resourceful--except Moss has a conscience, Chigurh does not (he is, as McCarthy puts it, "a prophet of destruction"). At times, the film plays like an old horror movie, with Chigurh as its lumbering Frankenstein monster. Like the taciturn terminator, No Country for Old Men doesn't move quickly, but the tension never dissipates. This minimalist masterwork represents Joel and Ethan Coen and their entire cast, particularly Brolin and Jones, at the peak of their powers. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Miramax No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray)
Acclaimed filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen deliver their most gripping and ambitious film yet in this sizzling and supercharged action-thriller. When a man stumbles on a bloody crime scene, a pickup truck loaded with heroin, and two million dollars in irresistible cash, his decision to take the money sets off an unstoppable chain reaction of violence. Not even West Texas law can contain it. Based on the novel byPulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, and featuring an acclaimed cast led by Tommy Lee Jones, this gritty game of cat and mouse will take you to the edge of your seat and beyond - right up to its heart-stopping final moment.

Mad Money

Academy Award® winner Diane Keaton Academy Award® nominee Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes are all in for the crime of their lives! Deep inside the most secure bank in America three desperate women from very different worlds cook up the most unlikely heist of the century: Smuggle out millions of dollars in worn-out currency headed for a Federal Reserve shredder every day. Taking the cash is going to be easy but getting away with it will be insane! Ted Danson Christopher McDonald (HAPPY GILMORE) Roger Cross (24) and Stephen Root (OFFICE SPACE) co-star in this wild comedy caper from the creator of THELMA & LOUISE about chasing your dreams beating the system and paying the price for MAD MONEY!System Requirements:Running Time: 104 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/COMEDY OF ERRORS Rating: PG-13 UPC: 013138000095 Manufacturer No: DV80000

Take three women in need of cash, a slew of money about to be shredded, and a plot that nicks a bit from 2005's Fun with Dick and Jane and you've got Mad Money. Diane Keaton stars as Bridget, a stay-at-home wife whose life as she knows it ends when her husband loses his cushy, high-paying job. Her college degree in literature turns out to be useless, so she accepts a janitorial position at the local bank. There she meets Nina (Queen Latifah) and Jackie (Katie Holmes), who could use some spare scratch as well. Suddenly, it dawns on Bridget that the bank has plenty of what they need: money! Because the gals are so cute and nice, it's clear they're not really going to rob the bank. What they will do, though, is take the old bills headed for the shredder and recycle it back into the economy by spending it. (Oh heck, they're basically stealing the money.) Played for laughs, the movie doesn't bother to discuss the economic ramifications of what would happen if too much money was recirculated, but that's neither here nor there. The trio of personable actors--particularly Keaton--does a good job of making the characters likable, even in some unbelievable situations. But Keaton deserves better than Mad Money, which isn't really funny enough to be a comedy and doesn't have enough romance to qualify as good chick flick. Still, Keaton, Latifah and Holmes share warm camaraderie. It'd be fun to see them reunited in a film that had a little more weight to it. Ironically, Mad Money was directed by directed by Callie Khouri, who wrote Thelma & Louise and Something to Talk About--movies that had all the key components (compelling storyline and characters worth cheering on) that Mad Money is lacking. --Jae-Ha Kim

To Kill a Mockingbird (Collector's Edition)

Ranked 34 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Films, To Kill a Mockingbird is quite simply one of the finest family-oriented dramas ever made. A beautiful and deeply affecting adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, the film retains a timeless quality that transcends its historically dated subject matter (racism in the Depression-era South) and remains powerfully resonant in present-day America with its advocacy of tolerance, justice, integrity, and loving, responsible parenthood. It's tempting to call this an important "message" movie that should be required viewing for children and adults alike, but this riveting courtroom drama is anything but stodgy or pedantic. As Atticus Finch, the small-town Alabama lawyer and widower father of two, Gregory Peck gives one of his finest performances with his impassioned defense of a black man (Brock Peters) wrongfully accused of the rape and assault of a young white woman. While his children, Scout (Mary Badham) and Jem (Philip Alford), learn the realities of racial prejudice and irrational hatred, they also learn to overcome their fear of the unknown as personified by their mysterious, mostly unseen neighbor Boo Radley (Robert Duvall, in his brilliant, almost completely nonverbal screen debut). What emerges from this evocative, exquisitely filmed drama is a pure distillation of the themes of Harper Lee's enduring novel, a showcase for some of the finest American acting ever assembled in one film, and a rare quality of humanitarian artistry (including Horton Foote's splendid screenplay and Elmer Bernstein's outstanding score) that seems all but lost in the chaotic morass of modern cinema. Universal's Collector's Edition DVD gives this classic all the respect it deserves, offering the film in its original widescreen aspect ratio, a full-length commentary by director Robert Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula, informative production notes, and an exclusive documentary about the making of this all-time great American film. Consider this a must for any respectable DVD library. --Jeff Shannon

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (Widescreen Edition)

In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a breezy take on writer-director Shane Black's trademark buddy action/comedy oeuvre a petty thief (Robert Downey Jr.) is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl (Michelle Monaghan) and a detective (Val Kilmer) who has been training him for his upcoming role.Running Time: 103 min.System Requirements:Run Time: 103 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 012569586710 Manufacturer No: 58671

As a screenwriter, Shane Black made millions of dollars from screenplays for the big-budget action movies Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout, among others. With his directing debut Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Black mocks and undercuts every cliche he once helped to invent. While fleeing from the cops, small time hood Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr., Wonder Boys) stumbles into an acting audition--and does so well he gets taken to Hollywood, where--pursuing a girl he loved in high school (foxy Michelle Monaghan, North Country)--he gets caught up in twisty murder mystery. His only chance of getting out alive is a private detective named Gay Perry (Val Kilmer, Wonderland, The Doors), who sidelights as a consultant for movies. No plot turn goes untweaked by Black's clever, witty script, and Downey, Kilmer, and Monaghan clearly have a ball playing their screwball variations on action movie stereotypes. There's nothing profound about Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, but it brings back wicked mischief to a genre that all often takes itself too seriously. --Bret Fetzer

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet (The Verdict Dog Day Afternoon Serpico) scores big with this absorbing suspense thriller. Oscar®-winner* Philip Seymour Hoffman is Andy an overextended payroll executive who lures his younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) into a larcenous scheme: the pair will rob a suburban mom-and-pop jewelry store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The problem is the store owners are Andy and Hank's real mom and pop and when the seemingly perfect crime goes awry the damage sends them hurtling toward a shattering climax. System Requirements:LENGTH: 117 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 014381487527 Manufacturer No: CAP4875DVD

Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents' jewelry store, and more explicitly affects the anxious aftermath of their villainy when their mother (Rosemary Harris) ends up shot. Hoffman's steely, emotionally locked-up Andy, despite pulling down six figures as a corporate executive, is supporting an expensive drug habit while trying to leave the country with his depressed wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hank (Hawke), a whipped dog of low intelligence, owes back alimony and child support to his ex-spouse. Both men need money and agree to rip off their parents' business, a decision that goes awry and puts both men in various kinds of jeopardy while their mother remains comatose and their father (Albert Finney) lurches along trying to make sense of anything. Writer Kelly Masterson's screenplay employs a perhaps now-overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the story's events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the film's drama in a way that shows how such terrible events are directly linked to family dysfunction, old wounds between parent and child, between siblings, that fester into full-blown tragedy. Eighty-three-year-old director Lumet (Serpico) employs bleached colors and scenes of blunt sexuality and violence, adding to the moral rudderlessness and banality of this airless world. If Devil feels a little reductive and insistently grim, it is also a generally persuasive work by an old master. --Tom Keogh

A Clockwork Orange (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Stanley Kubrick's striking visual interpretation of Anthony Burgess's famous novel is a masterpiece. Malcolm McDowell delivers a clever, tongue-in-cheek performance as Alex, the leader of a quartet of droogs, a vicious group of young hoodlums who spend their nights stealing cars, fighting rival gangs, breaking into people's homes, and raping women. While other directors would simply exploit the violent elements of such a film without subtext, Kubrick maintains Burgess's dark, satirical social commentary. We watch Alex transform from a free-roaming miscreant into a convict used in a government experiment that attempts to reform criminals through an unorthodox new medical treatment. The catch, of course, is that this therapy may be nothing better than a quick cure-all for a society plagued by rampant crime. A Clockwork Orange works on many levels--visual, social, political, and sexual--and is one of the few films that hold up under repeated viewings. Kubrick not only presents colorfully arresting images, he also stylizes the film by utilizing classical music (and Wendy Carlos's electronic classical work) to underscore the violent scenes, which even today are disturbing in their display of sheer nihilism. Ironically, many fans of the film have missed that point, sadly being entertained by its brutality rather than being repulsed by it. --Bryan Reesman

Stanley Kubrick's striking visual interpretation of Anthony Burgess's famous novel is a masterpiece. Malcolm McDowell delivers a clever, tongue-in-cheek performance as Alex, the leader of a quartet of droogs, a vicious group of young hoodlums who spend their nights stealing cars, fighting rival gangs, breaking into people's homes, and raping women. While other directors would simply exploit the violent elements of such a film without subtext, Kubrick maintains Burgess's dark, satirical social commentary. We watch Alex transform from a free-roaming miscreant into a convict used in a government experiment that attempts to reform criminals through an unorthodox new medical treatment. The catch, of course, is that this therapy may be nothing better than a quick cure-all for a society plagued by rampant crime. A Clockwork Orange works on many levels--visual, social, political, and sexual--and is one of the few films that hold up under repeated viewings. Kubrick not only presents colorfully arresting images, he also stylizes the film by utilizing classical music (and Wendy Carlos's electronic classical work) to underscore the violent scenes, which even today are disturbing in their display of sheer nihilism. Ironically, many fans of the film have missed that point, sadly being entertained by its brutality rather than being repulsed by it. --Bryan Reesman

A jolting tale of crime and punishment stars Malcolm McDowell as a young neo-punk who becomes the guinea pig for a state-sanctioned cure of his tendency toward ?the old ultraviolence.