Kids & Family

Back to the Future - The Complete Trilogy (Widescreen Edition)

Experience theiComplete Trilogy!Presented by Steven Spielberg directed by Oscar® winner Robert Zemeckis and starring time travelers Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd the phenomenally popular Back To The Future films literally changed the future of the adventure movie genre. Now this unprecedented Back To The Future DVD Trilogy immerses you in all the breathtaking action outrageous comedy and sheer moviemaking magic of one of the most brilliantly inventive wildly entertaining motion picture triumphs in Hollywood history!System Requirements:Starring: Michael J. Fox Christopher Lloyd Crispin Glover Elisabeth Shue and Lea Thompson. Directed By: Robert Zemeckis. Running Time: 344 Min. (Total) Color. These films are presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2002 Universal.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 025192212123 Manufacturer No: 61022121

Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis topped his breakaway hit Romancing the Stone with Back to the Future, a joyous comedy with a dazzling hook: what would it be like to meet your parents in their youth? Billed as a special-effects comedy, the imaginative film (the top box-office smash of 1985) has staying power because of the heart behind Zemeckis and Bob Gale's script. High schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, during the height of his TV success) is catapulted back to the '50s where he sees his parents in their teens, and accidentally changes the history of how Mom and Dad met. Filled with the humorous ideology of the '50s, filtered through the knowledge of the '80s (actor Ronald Reagan is president, ha!), the film comes off as a Twilight Zone episode written by Preston Sturges. Filled with memorable effects and two wonderfully off-key, perfectly cast performances: Christopher Lloyd as the crazy scientist who builds the time machine (a DeLorean luxury car) and Crispin Glover as Marty's geeky dad. --Doug Thomas

Critics and audiences didn't seem too happy with Back to the Future, Part II, the inventive, perhaps too clever sequel. Director Zemeckis and cast bent over backwards to add layers of time-travel complication, and while it surely exercises the brain it isn't necessarily funny in the same way that its predecessor was. It's well worth a visit, though, just to appreciate the imagination that went into it, particularly in a finale that has Marty watching his own actions from the first film. --Tom Keogh

Shot back-to-back with the second chapter in the trilogy, Back to the Future, Part III is less hectic than that film and has the same sweet spirit of the first, albeit in a whole new setting. This time, Marty ends up in the Old West of 1885, trying to prevent the death of mad scientist Christopher Lloyd at the hands of gunman Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson, who had a recurring role as the bully Biff). Director Zemeckis successfully blends exciting special effects with the traditions of a Western and comes up with something original and fun. --Tom Keogh

E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (Widescreen Edition)

Steven Spielberg's 1982 hit about a stranded alien and his loving relationship with a fatherless boy (Henry Thomas) struck a chord with audiences everywhere, and it furthered Spielberg's reputation as a director of equally strong commercial sensibilities and classical leanings. Henry Thomas gives a strong, emotional performance as E.T.'s young friend, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore make a solid impression as his siblings, and Dee Wallace is lively as the kids' mother. The special effects almost look a bit quaint now with all the computer advancements that have occurred since, but they also have more heart behind them than a lot of what we see today. --Tom Keogh

The Last Starfighter

At the time of its original release in 1984, this modestly budgeted sci-fi excursion had the distinction of offering some of the first examples of purely computer-generated animation, an apt (and frugal) special-effects solution for a movie with a plot line rooted in computer games. Both the computer-generated visuals and the arcade game now look quaint, but writer-director Nick Castle's affable, good- hearted adventure holds up nicely, thanks to a clever premise--the title game is actually a test for prospective starship pilots, planted by embattled aliens under siege from an evil invader. When a restless teenager (Lance Guest) racks up an impressive score, he finds himself spirited away to the besieged planet and thrust into the midst of an intergalactic war. Apart from Castle's skill at contrasting his extraterrestrial settings with the mundane details of his hero's earthbound life, the movie gets lift-off from two thorough pros, Robert Preston, who makes the alien recruiter, Centauri, a planet-hopping cousin to The Music Man's Harold Hill, and Dan O'Herlihy, the alien copilot, who suggests a scaly Walter Brennan. Older fans will snicker, but kids and young teens will find this rite of passage absorbing, while their folks will savor Preston's brash charm. --Sam Sutherland

Harvey

It's always a small surprise to revisit this movie and realize what a subtly dark performance James Stewart gives as an alcoholic who claims he keeps company with a six-foot-tall, invisible rabbit. As Elwood P. Dowd, the actor emits a faint whiff of decay and spirits, yet Stewart also embraces Dowd's romanticism and grace with splendid ease. Based on a hit play and directed by Henry Koster, the film is terribly funny at times, especially whenever Elwood decides it's only polite to introduce Harvey to complete strangers. The supporting cast can't be beat. --Tom Keogh

James Stewart stars as Elwood P. Dowd, a wealthy alcoholic whose sunny disposition and drunken antics are tolerated by most of the citizens of his community. That is, until Elwood begins to claim that he has a friend named Harvey who is an invisisble six foot rabbit. Elwood's snooty socialite sister, Veta, determined to marry off her daughter Myrtle to a respectable man, begins to plot to keep Elwood's lunacy from interfering.

Heart and Souls

Robert Downey Jr. has never been more charming than in this comedy about a yuppie who is revisited in adulthood by the spirits of four people who had been his friends as a child. The ghosts (Kyra Sedgwick, Charles Grodin, Alfre Woodard, Tom Sizemore) all have unfinished business in this world before they can move on to the next, and Downey's character agrees to let them inhabit his body while they sort it all out. The appealing cast alone strongly recommends this movie, but Downey's remarkable facility for physical comedy--manifesting the personalities of his supernatural pals as they possess him--is a riot. Elisabeth Shue makes the best of her part as the hero's girlfriend; Leaving Las Vegas was still ahead of her, but one can see her talent straining to get out here. The DVD release has a widescreen presentation, production notes, theatrical trailer, biographies of the cast, closed captioning, an optional French soundtrack and Spanish subtitles, and Dolby sound. --Tom Keogh

Midnight (Universal Cinema Classics)

Academy Award® winners* Claudette Colbert Don Ameche and John Barrymore light up the screen in Midnight - one of the best romantic comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The fun begins when a penniless showgirl (Colbert) impersonates a Hungarian countess and with the help of an aristocrat (Barrymore) quickly adapts to her new lifestyle. But can she stop herself from falling in love with yet another poor man (Ameche)? Written by Academy Award® winners** Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett Midnight has been hailed as "just about the best light comedy ever caught by the camera!" (Motion Picture Daily)System Requirements:Running Time: 95 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/SCREWBALL COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 025193312921 Manufacturer No: 61033129

Although Hollywood's golden year of 1939 is best remembered for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, it was also a banner year for sophisticated screen comedy, and Mitchell Leisen's Midnight is a deliciously prime example. Screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were in peak form when they concocted this smooth confection about Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert), an American showgirl in Paris who is out of work, money, and luck when a handsome cabbie (Don Ameche) offers to drive her around the City of Light to search for employment as a nightclub chanteuse. Nobody's hiring, but Eve has a better plan: posing as a Hungarian countess, she smuggles her way into Parisian high society and suddenly finds herself in the lap of luxury, commissioned by a wealthy aristocrat (John Barrymore) to seduce a French playboy (Francis Lederer) away from Barrymore's not-so-loyal wife (Mary Astor). While Eve is living it up at the Ritz Hotel and enjoying trips to Versailles, Ameche's on a mission to find her and declare his true love.

Class distinction, infidelity, false identity... these were daring ingredients for a 1939 comedy, and Midnight (a casebook display of Paramount's shimmering studio style of the '30s) is as fresh today as it was when first released. The silky perfection of the Wilder-Brackett screenplay is expertly served by Leisen (a director who deserves ranking with Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges), and Colbert is merely the brightest star in a flawless cast of screwball veterans. Poking fun at the elite was a Wilder-Brackett specialty, and Barrymore is particularly savvy to the material, giving a performance that's simultaneously sly, desperate, and hilariously inspired. The plot is so elegantly executed that Midnight makes most comedies of later decades look pale in comparison. Gone are the days, it seems, when sophistication, wit, and good taste were an integral part of Hollywood comedy. Midnight offers all of those qualities in abundance, making it a perfect antidote to the crudeness that dominates mainstream comedy at the turn of the millennium. --Jeff Shannon

E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (Full Screen Edition)

Steven Spielberg's 1982 hit about a stranded alien and his loving relationship with a fatherless boy (Henry Thomas) struck a chord with audiences everywhere, and it furthered Spielberg's reputation as a director of equally strong commercial sensibilities and classical leanings. Henry Thomas gives a strong, emotional performance as E.T.'s young friend, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore make a solid impression as his siblings, and Dee Wallace is lively as the kids' mother. The special effects almost look a bit quaint now with all the computer advancements that have occurred since, but they also have more heart behind them than a lot of what we see today. --Tom Keogh

*Batteries Not Included

Quite possibly the nadir of Steven Spielberg's career as a producer, this piece of sentimental junk from 1987 concerns five little spacecraft which arrive on Earth just in time to help out some New Yorkers getting kicked out of a tenement. The script's goo just sticks to the viewer, and the cast looks silly by trying not to be silly. You get the feeling that Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment was pretty much throwing stuff at the wall to see what would hang there, and they came up with this ridiculous thing. --Tom Keogh

Legend (Ultimate Edition)

This strange, 1985 experiment by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) starred the up-and-coming Tom Cruise in a fairy-tale world of dwarfs and unicorns and demons. After the horn of a unicorn is broken, darkness and winter descend upon the world. Cruise's character, helped along by a magic sprite played by David Bennent (The Tin Drum), descends into hell to save paradise. This movie is almost a classic case of art direction gone amok. The somewhat amorphous Cruise doesn't lend much dramatic focus or artistic definition, but the drama between Tim Curry's satanic majesty and Mia Sara's character, who becomes a sort of princess of the netherworld, is pretty captivating. A mixed experience all around that makes one wish it had been more successful. --Tom Keogh

Barbie Mariposa and Her Butterfly Friends

Join Barbie in an all-new world of Butterfly Fairies! Mariposa is a beautiful butterfly fairy who loves to read and dream about the world outside her home in the land of Flutterfield.Flutterfield is protected by the Queen's glimmering magical flower lights but when the Queen is poisoned by the evil fairy Henna the special lights begin to go out one by one. It's up to the brave Mariposa and her friends to journey beyond the safe borders of the city in search of a hidden antidote that will save the Queen. Join the butterfly fairy friends on an exciting adventure that will transform them forever!System Requirements:Running Time: 75 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: NR UPC: 025195015646 Manufacturer No: 63101960

Elina knows that it's difficult feeling like you don't belong, so when Bibble decides not to visit a friend for fear of not fitting in, Elina relates the story of a butterfly fairy named Mariposa who loves to read and dream about the stars and the worlds beyond her land, but never quite feels like she fits in with her fellow fairies. Flutterfield was once a land of frightened fairies forced to hide in darkness from the monster-like Skeezites who devour butterfly fairies, but is now ruled by kind Queen Marabella who protects her land with glowing flowers. When a power-hungry fairy named Henna poisons the Queen in hopes of stealing the throne, it falls to Mariposa to venture outside Flutterfield to find the antidote to the poison and save the Queen. With some unlikely help from her attitude-laden employers Rayna and Rayla as well as her friend Willa and a little bunny fairy named Zinzie, Mariposa must bravely confront her own self-doubt as well as the Skeezites and other dangers in order to save Flutterfield and its Queen. Along the way, Mariposa learns that the best thing a fairy can be is oneself. This fourth Barbie Fairytopia adventure has all the visual appeal and wonder of the previous Fairytopia DVDs with a nice message about liking oneself. (Ages 3 to 9) --Tami Horiuchi

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Stills from Barbie Mariposa (click for larger image)