Superbit Collection

Closer (Superbit Edition)

Four extremely beautiful people do extremely horrible things to one another in Closer, Mike Nichols' pungent adaptation of Patrick Marber's play that easily marks the Oscar-winning director's best work in years. Anna (Julia Roberts) is a photographer who specializes in portraits of strangers; Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer struggling to become a novelist; Alice (Natalie Portman) is an American stripper freshly arrived in London after a bad relationship; and Larry (Clive Owen) is a dermatologist who finds love under the most unlikely of circumstances. When their paths cross it's a dizzying supernova of emotions, as Nichols and Marber adroitly construct various scenes out of their lives that pair them again and again in various permutations of passion, heartbreak, anger, sadness, vengeance, pleading, deception, and most importantly, brutal honesty. It's only until you're more than halfway through the movie that you'll have to ask yourself exactly why you are watching such a beautifully tragic tale, as Closer is basically the ickiest, grossest, most dysfunctional parts of all your past relationships strung together into one movie. Ultimately, it falls to the four actors to draw you deeper into the story; all succeed relatively, but it's Law and Owen whose characters will cut you to the quick. Law proves that yet again he's most adept at playing charming, amoral bastards with manipulative streaks, and Owen is nothing short of brilliant as the character most turned on by the energy inherent in destructive relationships--whether he's on the giving or receiving end. --Mark Englehart

The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.

Adaptation (Superbit Collection)

Director Spike Jonze delivers a stunningly original comedy that seamlessly blends fictional characters and situations with the lives of real people: obsessive orchid hunter John Laroche (Cooper) New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean (Streep) Hollywood screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Cage) and his twin brother Donald (also Cage). As Charlie struggles to adapt Orlean's best-selling book "The Orchid Thief" he writes himself into his own movie. The various stories crash into one another exploding into a wildly imaginative film. ADAPTATION the year's most talked about movie is at once a hilarious drama and a moving comedy.System Requirements:Starring: Nicolas Cage Meryl Streep Tilda Swinton and Chris Cooper. Directed By: Spike Jonze. Running Time: 115 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2003 Columbia Tri-Star.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396076013 Manufacturer No: 07601

Twisty brilliance from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, the team who created Being John Malkovich. Nicolas Cage returns to form with a funny, sad, and sneaky performance as Charlie Kaufman, a self-loathing screenwriter who has been hired to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. Frustrated and infatuated by Orlean's elegant but plotless book (which is largely a rumination on flowers), Kaufman begins to write a screenplay about himself trying to write a screenplay about The Orchid Thief, all the while hounded by his twin brother Donald (Cage again), who's cheerfully writing the kind of formulaic action movie that Kaufman finds repugnant. By its conclusion, Adaptation is the most artistically ambitious, most utterly cynical, and most uncategorizable movie ever to come out of Hollywood. Also starring Meryl Streep (as Susan Orlean), Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, and Brian Cox; superb performances throughout. --Bret Fetzer

Punch-Drunk Love (Two Disc Special Edition) (Superbit Collection)

Winner of the Best Director Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival "this misfit love story of disconnected people trying to find one another in an antagonistic world is a comedy of discomfort and rage that turns unexpectedly sweet and pure." Adam Sandler gives an amazing and unusual performance as Barry Egan a socially impaired owner of a small novelty business who is dominated by seven sisters and is unlikely to find love unless it finds him. When a mysterious woman comes into his life his emotions go haywire fluctuating between uncontrollable rage lust and self-doubt. "Punch-Drunk Love leaves you addled a little dizzy and overcome by a pleasing unplaceable sensation." "A romantic comedy as wonderful as it is strange that expands the genre to its absurdist outer limits and makes us believe." From the writer/director of Boogie Nights and Magnolia Punch-Drunk Love is a dark lovely and unique film experience.System Requirements:Running Time 95 MinsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 043396013339 Manufacturer No: 01333

Adam Sandler takes a shot at critical respectability with Punch-Drunk Love, a movie by director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Sandler plays Barry Egan, a lonely small businessman who calls a phone sex line one night, only to find himself the victim of an extortion scheme the next day--the very same day on which he goes out on a date with the woman who may be the love of his life (the utterly delightful Emily Watson). Barry is a lot like Sandler's popular comic characters--socially maladept, prone to violence, always on the brink of embarrassment--but here Sandler plays it real; the result is both off-putting and sympathetic. Anderson's writing skills, unfortunately, are not as strong as his visual sense. Punch-Drunk Love has many strengths (including great supporting actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzmán), but ultimately fizzles out. --Bret Fetzer

Panic Room (Superbit Collection)

PURE PERFORMANCE The Superbit™ Collection will set a new benchmark in high resolution DVD picture and sound creating the ultimate in home entertainment. Superbit™ DVDs utilize a high bit rate digital transfer process that optimizes video quality and offers both DTS and 5.1 Dolby Digital audio. Use your existing home theater equipment to its optimal performance.Trapped in their New York brownstone s panic room a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders--Burnham (Forest Whitaker) Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto) -- during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.System Requirements:Running Time: 112 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: R UPC: 043396064577 Manufacturer No: 06457

An effective exercise in "confined cinema," Panic Room is a finely crafted thriller that ultimately transcends the thinness of its premise. David Koepp's screenplay is basically Wait Until Dark on steroids, so director David Fincher (Seven, The Game) compensates with elaborate CGI-assisted camera moves, jazzing up his visuals while a relocated New York divorcée (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) fight for their lives against a trio of tenacious burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam) in their new Manhattan townhouse. They're safe in a customized, impenetrable "panic room," but the burglars want what's in the room's safe, so mother and daughter (and Koepp and Fincher) must find clever ways to turn the tables and persevere. Suspense and intelligence are admirably maintained, with Foster (who replaced the then-injured Nicole Kidman) riffing on her Silence of the Lambs resourcefulness. It's not as viscerally satisfying as Fincher's previous thrillers, but Panic Room definitely holds your attention. --Jeff Shannon

Charlie's Angels (Superbit Two-Disc Deluxe Edition)

PURE PERFORMANCE The Superbit™ Collection will set a new benchmark in high resolution DVD picture and sound creating the ultimate in home entertainment. Superbit™ DVDs utilize a high bit rate digital transfer process that optimizes video quality and offers both DTS and 5.1 Dolby Digital audio. Use your existing home theater equipment to its optimal performance.They're beautiful they're brillant and they work for Charlie. In a smart sexy update of the 70's TV show from celebrated music video director McG. CHARLIE'S ANGELS revolves around three female detectives - Natalie (Cameron Diaz Golden Globe nominee for THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY) the bookworm Dylan (NEVER BEEN KISSED's Drew Barrymore) the tough girl and Alex ("Ally McBeal's" Lucy Liu) the class-act - as intelligent and multi-talented as they are ravishingly gorgeous and utterly disarming. What can be done when Eric Knox a soon-to-be billionaire is kidnapped from his dollars? Under the sure hand of their suave playboy boss notorious for his clever ways of avoiding face-to-face meetings with his employees the Angels use feminine charm high-tech gadgets and hand-to-hand combat to save themselves Charlie and thousands of innocent people.System Requirements:Running Time: 99 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG-13 UPC: 043396100169 Manufacturer No: 10016

For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programmer (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daffy Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow. A happy, cornball popcorn flick, Charlie's Angels is played for laughs with plenty of ribbing references to the old TV show as well as modern caper films like Mission: Impossible. McG, a music video director making his feature film debut (usually a death warrant for a movie's integrity), infuses the film with plenty of Matrix-style combat pyrotechnics, and the result is the first successful all-American Hong Kong-style action flick. Plenty of movies boast a New Age feminism that has their stars touting their sexuality while being their own women, but unlike something as obnoxious as Coyote Ugly, Angels succeeds with a positive spin on Girl Power for the new millennium (Diaz especially sizzles in her role of crack super agent/airhead blonde). From the send-up of the TV show's credit sequence to the outtakes over the end credits, Charlie's Angels is a delight. --Doug Thomas

Gattaca (Superbit Collection)

Confidently conceived and brilliantly executed, Gattaca had a somewhat low profile release in 1997, but audiences and critics hailed the film's originality. It's since been recognized as one of the most intelligent science fiction films of the 1990s. Writer-director Andrew Niccol, the talented New Zealander who also wrote the acclaimed Jim Carrey vehicle The Truman Show, depicts a near-future society in which one's personal and professional destiny is determined by one's genes. In this society, "Valids" (genetically engineered) qualify for positions at prestigious corporations, such as Gattaca, which grooms its most qualified employees for space exploration. "In-Valids" (naturally born), such as the film's protagonist, Vincent (Ethan Hawke), are deemed genetically flawed and subsequently fated to low-level occupations in a genetically caste society. With the help of a disabled "Valid" (Jude Law), Vincent subverts his society's social and biological barriers to pursue his dream of space travel; any random mistake--and an ongoing murder investigation at Gattaca--could reveal his plot. Part thriller, part futuristic drama and cautionary tale, Gattaca establishes its social structure so convincingly that the entire scenario is chillingly believable. With Uma Thurman as the woman who loves Vincent and identifies with his struggle, Gattaca is both stylish and smart, while Jude Law's performance lends the film a note of tragic and heartfelt humanity. --Jeff Shannon

The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.

Snatch (Superbit Deluxe Collection)

Usually it might seem a tad unfair to begin a review by referring to the director's missis. But then the missis in question wouldn't usually be Madonna--a woman whose ability to reinvent herself several times before breakfast seems in marked contrast to that of hubby Guy Ritchie. Certainly, this follow-up to the filmmaker's breakthrough film--the high-energy, expletive-strewn cockney-gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels--hardly breaks new ground being, well, another high-energy, expletive-strewn cockney-gangster movie. OK, so there are some differences. This time around our low-rent hoodlums are battling over dodgy fights and stolen diamonds rather than dodgy card games and stolen drugs. There has been some minor reshuffling of the cast too, with Sting and Dexter Fletcher making way for the more bankable Benicio Del Toro and Brad Pitt, the latter pretty much stealing the whole shebang as an incomprehensible Irish gypsy. And, sure, people who really, really liked Lock, Stock--or have the memory of a goldfish--will really, really like this. The suspicion lingers, however, that if the director doesn't do something very different next time around then his career may prove to be considerably shorter than that of his missis. --Clark Collis

The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.

The Fifth Element (Superbit Collection)

Ancient curses, all-powerful monsters, shape-changing assassins, scantily-clad stewardesses, laser battles, huge explosions, a perfect woman, a malcontent hero--what more can you ask of a big-budget science fiction movie? Luc Besson's high-octane film incorporates presidents, rock stars, and cab drivers into its peculiar plot, traversing worlds and encountering some pretty wild aliens. Bruce Willis stars as a down-and-out cabbie who must win the love of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to save Earth from destruction by Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) and a dark, unearthly force that makes Darth Vader look like an Ewok. --Geoff Riley

Ancient curses, all-powerful monsters, shape-changing assassins, scantily-clad stewardesses, laser battles, huge explosions, a perfect woman, a malcontent hero--what more can you ask of a big-budget science fiction movie? Luc Besson's high-octane film incorporates presidents, rock stars, and cab drivers into its peculiar plot, traversing worlds and encountering some pretty wild aliens. Bruce Willis stars as a down-and-out cabbie who must win the love of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to save Earth from destruction by Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) and a dark, unearthly force that makes Darth Vader look like an Ewok. --Geoff Riley

New York cab driver Korben Dallas didn't mean to be a hero. But he just picked up the kind of fare that only comes along every five thousand years a perfect beauty a perfect being a perfect weapon. Now together they must save the world. Bruce Willis Milla Jovovich and Gary Oldman star in acclaimed director Luc Besson's outrageous sci-fi adventure an extravagantly styled tale of good against evil set in an unbelievable twenty-third century world.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 043396075740 Manufacturer No: 07574

Charlie's Angels (Superbit Deluxe) / Charlie's Angels Full Throttle (Unrated Widescreen Special Edition)

Panic Room (Repackaged Superbit Collection)

Trapped in their New York brownstone's panic room a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart)play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders--Burnham (Forest Whitaker) Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto) -- during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.System Requirements:Running Time: 112 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS Rating: R UPC: 043396171183 Manufacturer No: 17118

An effective exercise in "confined cinema," Panic Room is a finely crafted thriller that ultimately transcends the thinness of its premise. David Koepp's screenplay is basically Wait Until Dark on steroids, so director David Fincher (Seven, The Game) compensates with elaborate CGI-assisted camera moves, jazzing up his visuals while a relocated New York divorcée (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) fight for their lives against a trio of tenacious burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam) in their new Manhattan townhouse. They're safe in a customized, impenetrable "panic room," but the burglars want what's in the room's safe, so mother and daughter (and Koepp and Fincher) must find clever ways to turn the tables and persevere. Suspense and intelligence are admirably maintained, with Foster (who replaced the then-injured Nicole Kidman) riffing on her Silence of the Lambs resourcefulness. It's not as viscerally satisfying as Fincher's previous thrillers, but Panic Room definitely holds your attention. --Jeff Shannon