Artisan DVDs Under $15

Chaplin

Sir Richard Attenborough's biographical film of the life and times of Charles Chaplin is a little thin as a narrative, but it is so charmingly creative and ultimately moving, it's hard to care about any deficits. Robert Downey Jr. does an excellent job re-creating Chaplin's graceful slapstick and getting inside the silent-film superstar's head over many years of triumph, defeat, scandal, official persecution, exile, and inner peace. A huge cast portray the allies, friends, lovers, and enemies in Chaplin's life, including Moira Kelly as his final, longtime wife, Oona, Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbanks, Geraldine Chaplin as Charlie's mother, and James Woods as a prosecutor working hard to nail Chaplin for anti-American sentiments. Attenborough declines to tell the story in a flat, linear way, employing such clever techniques as detailing one chapter in Chaplin's life as a silent comedy. The climactic scene set at an Oscar tribute for Chaplin will get the tears flowing. --Tom Keogh

Buena Vista Social Club

In 1996, composer, producer, and guitar legend Ry Cooder entered Egrem Studios in Havana with the forgotten greats of Cuban music, many of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them long since retired. The resulting album, Buena Vista Social Club, became a Grammy-winning international bestseller. When Cooder returned to Havana in 1998 to record a solo album by 72-year-old vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer, filmmaker Wim Wenders was on hand to document the occasion. Wenders splits the film between portraits of the performers, who tell their stories directly to the camera as they wander the streets and neighborhoods of Havana, and a celebration of the music heard in performance scenes in the studio, in their first concert in Amsterdam, and in their second and final concert at Carnegie Hall. The songs are too often cut short in this fashion, but Buena Vista Social Club is not a concert film. Wenders weaves the artist biographies with a glimpse of modern Cuba remembering its past, capturing a lost culture in music that is suddenly, unexpectedly revived for audiences in Havana and around the world. Wenders makes his presence practically invisible, as if his directorial flourishes or off-screen narration might deflect attention from the artists, who do a fine job of telling their own stories through interviews and music. It's a loving portrait of a master class in Cuban music, with a vital cast of aging performers whose energy and passion belie their years. --Sean Axmaker

"The Buena Vista Social Club" guitarist Ry Cooder s celebrated album featuring the recently re-discovered talents of Cuba s foremost folk musicians sold millions of copies and earned a Grammy Award. Now Cooder teams up with acclaimed director Wim Wenders (Paris Texas) to reveal the astonishing life stories vibrant personalities and unforgettable music of the brilliantly talented but long-overlooked performers who collaborated on this now-legendary recording. Form the crumbling barrios of their native Havana to their triumphant sold-out concerts in Amsterdam and New York s Carnegie Hall it s an unforgettable deeply emotional journey into the passion pride and humanity of the artists whose music sparked a worldwide musical phenomenon!System Requirements:Starring: Ry Cooder Ibrahim Ferrer Rueben Gonzalez Eliades Ochoa Omara Portuondo and Compay Segundo. Directed By: Wim Wenders. Running Time: 105 mins color. This film is presented in "Standard" format. Copyright: 1999 Artisan Live Entertainment.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating:  UPC: 012236101765 Manufacturer No: 10176

Narrow Margin

Back in 1952, during the waning days of film noir, director Richard Fleischer made The Narrow Margin, a cheaply produced, tightly structured B movie thriller about a cop forced to protect a gangster's widow while on a train. While it's no work of art, Fleischer's noir features a shocking climax of mistaken identity, an ominous, claustrophobic atmosphere, and tough, nearly unlikable protagonists screwed by fate, who spout sharp-witted dialogue and feel little more than contempt for each other. When Hollywood remakes itself, all the understatement and charm is usually lost when the filmmakers try to "modernize" the subject matter. This is one of many problems with writer-director Peter Hyams's remake (given the slightly shorter title Narrow Margin). He's dumped the surprising plot twist (it's now an action set piece atop a moving train) and softened the characters (now played with sleepwalking intensity by Gene Hackman and Anne Archer) with preposterous motivations. All that seems to be intact is the train premise, but Hyams is more interested in its action potential than any kind of menacing atmosphere. He's dropped the ambiguous relationships and smart dialogue in favor of pumping up the action sequences and daredevil stunts to ridiculous levels. Instead of adding excitement, all Hyams's expensive tricks do is drain Narrow Margin of any tension it might've retained from the original. --Dave McCoy

Gene Hackman stars as a LA District Attorney attempting to take an unwilling murder witness (Archer) back to the Unites States to testify against a top-level mob boss. Frantically Attempting to escape two deadly hit men sent to silence her they board a Vancouver-bound train only to discover that the killers are onboard with them. For the next 20 hours as the train hurls through the beautiful but isolated Canadian wilderness a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues in which their ability to tell friend from foe is a matter of life and death.System Requirements:Starring: Gene Hackman Anne Archer James Sikking JT Walsh and M. Emmet Walsh. Director: Peter Hyams Running Time: 99 minutes; Closed Captioned. Copyright: 1990 Artisan Entertainment Inc. Video Format: Widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio Enhanced for 16x9 TVs.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 012236048404 Manufacturer No: 60484

Madonna - Truth or Dare

Norman Mailer may have come up with the title Advertisements for Myself, but in this case, Madonna is the one who really wrote the book. Truth or Dare, an engaging behind-the-scenes look at the pop star's Blonde Ambition tour, is a feature-film advertisement for herself that Roger Ebert cleverly dubbed "an authorized invasion of privacy." How much of it is calculated and how much of it is genuine, what Madonna chooses to reveal about herself and what she actually reveals in the process, are up to the viewer to decide. Patterned in part after the classic D.A. Pennebaker documentary of Bob Dylan Don't Look Back, the black-and-white sections of Truth or Dare offer glimpses into her offstage life, while excerpts from the show are seen in color. Madonna's relationship with her father and brother, the maternal control she wields over her dancers, her giggly friendship with Sandra Bernhard, her crush on Antonio Banderas (later to become her costar in the movie version of Evita), the waning days of her relationship with Warren Beatty (who accuses her of wanting to exist only for the camera)--all of it becomes self-conscious fodder for a fascinating examination of modern pop stardom. --Jim Emerson

StrangeLand

The Langoliers

Something bizarre has happened abourd flight #29...a nightmare so chilling, so frightening, so unrelenting it could only come from the mind of Stephen King. Now the master storyteller of our time gives terror a new name in THE LANGOLIERS. A jet leaves on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston. But early in the flight, ten passengers awaken to a startling realization: All of the other passengers have vanished - and the ground below is only...ground. But once they manage to land the plane, the situation doesn't improve. No one is there...the air is still...the clocks have stopped...and a dread, evil presence bent on their destruction is headed straight for them. Based on the novella from the best-selling anthology Four Past Midnight, Patricia Wettig (City Slickers II), Bronson Pincho (Beverly Hills Cop), Dean Stockwell (The Player), and David Morse (The Getaway) stare into the jaws of oblivion in this nightmare from the mind of Stephen King.

The Breaks

The Breaks is a hip-hop hilarious comedy in the tradition of Friday and Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood. Mitch Mullany plays Derrick -- an Irish white boy who thinks he's black facing a day in the hood when everything goes wrong. The luck of the Irish doesn't quite seem to work in the hood. With special appearances by basketball great Gary Payton and funk legend George Clinton. Features: 2.0 Digital StereoTrailer Digitally MasteredScene AccessCast and Crew InformationInteractive MenusProduction NotesSystem Requirements:Approx. Feature Running Time 86 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 012236607403 Manufacturer No: 60740

Candyman 3: Day of the Dead

Based on a story by Clive Barker and skillfully written and directed by Bernard Rose, Candyman rises above most horror films by eerily suggesting that some urban legends--in this case a particularly frightening one--have a spooky basis in reality. The legend of the Candyman is a potent one around the high-rise tenements of Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing complex, where the residents speak of a dark, ominous figure who appears when his victims say his name five times in front of a mirror, then mercilessly slashes them to death. Upon learning that the Candyman is rumored to live in one of the vacant tenements, a University of Illinois researcher (Virginia Madsen) investigates a recent murder at Cabrini-Green. She learns that the Candyman (played by Tony Todd) is both unreal and chillingly real--a supernatural force of evil empowered by those who believe in his legend. He is a killer made flesh by the belief of others, and the young researcher's investigation is a threat to his existence. What happens next? We wouldn't dare spoil the chills, but rest assured that writer-director Rose has tapped into a wellspring of urban angst and fear, and Candyman serves up its gruesome frights with a refreshing dose of intelligence. --Jeff Shannon

Permanent Midnight

Like the book it is named after and based on, Permanent Midnight is a chronicle of downfall. Jerry Stahl, the story goes, showed promise when doing shifts as a porn writer for Hustler and Penthouse, and his promise landed him in the exact center of television's hottest shows of the 1980s. Alas, Stahl also brought with him a gargantuan appetite for drugs, most damagingly heroin. The film begins with Stahl, played by Ben Stiller, working in a fast-food chain on his way back to society from the drug-addled skids and recovery. He's lured away from work, where in a hotel room with Maria Bello (as Kitty) he begins detailing his fall from TV's top (where he wrote for shows like Alf and Moonlighting, among others). Director David Veloz does great work in leading viewers through the episodes in addiction and excess, making the action seem naturally odd. There are priceless shots of Stahl and his coke-smoking buddy on an upper floor of a high-rise smoking and leaping into the windows--which don't break, of course. Stiller does a classy job of staying monochromatically zoomed in on scoring and shooting dope. He's sweaty and freaked out at the right times and grimy and desperate, too. The movie's a sad one, with Stahl's journey taking him through an arranged marriage (which benefited him enormously) to the couple's having a baby to getting busted on a rare occasion alone with the infant. It's a visceral script, replete with lots of intravenous drug use and Stahl/Stiller creating a recurring motif out of shooting the bloody drawback from the syringe onto the ceiling, making a mad little scribble. --Andrew Bartlett

Noah's Ark

Another in Robert Salmi's march of modern TV classics, Noah's Ark brings the ultimate disaster story to the small screen with impressive effects and handsome production design. "Liberties were taken for dramatic purposes," warns the opening credits and, to be sure, this shouldn't be taken as gospel (pardon the pun). Noah (Jon Voight), the last good man on Earth, is spared from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and chosen to build an ark to save his family and the creatures of the Earth from a cleansing flood. Like a bad penny, his best friend, Lot (F. Murray Abraham), a decadent hedonist turned brigand, keeps turning up in the most unlikely places, including a postapocalyptic sea battle that owes more to Waterworld than the Old Testament. It's an entertaining if episodic story led by an appropriately humble Voight, with Mary Steenburgen as his whiny wife (she musters a surprising amount of dignity for the part) and James Coburn as a jolly peddler. Jim Henson's Creature Shop fills up the floating zoo with a charming array of animals. It never compels as Salmi's previous telefilm epics, notably The Odyssey and Merlin, but liberal amounts of deadpan anachronistic humor (Lot and his wife, played by Carol Kane, come across as nothing less than comic-strip couple the Bickersons come to life) and spectacular scenes of destruction keep the film aloft through its lengthy running time. --Sean Axmaker