Saturday, November 12, 2011
Sicko (Special Edition)
- Following on the heels of his Palm d'Or winning Fahrenheit 9/11 and his Oscar winning film Bowling for Columbine, acclaimed filmmaker Michael Moore's new documentary sets out to investigate the American healthcare system. Sticking to his tried-and-true one-man approach, Moore sheds light on the complicated medical affairs of individuals and local communities. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:
A brazen mixture of stand-up comedy, political commentary, CEO confrontations, and shenanigans with Random House tour escorts, The Big One (1997) follows Moore's book tour to promote Downsize This. In cities l! ike Des Moines, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Portland, Moore's ! lighthea rted-sounding but deeply biting humor speaking before bookstore patrons is juxtaposed with painful-to-watch confrontations with security personnel at companies such as Procter & Gamble and PayDay. Moore speaks clandestinely with Borders employees organizing a union; a woman laid off from Ford attends Moore's Rockford, Illinois, bookstore visit the same day. Though slow in spots, frustrating if not depressing in others, it's intensely funny the rest of the time. The Big One is fundamental viewing.
On the bonus disc is a 13-minute featurette, "39 Cities in 23 Days." On the tour for his book Dude, Where's My Country?, Moore enthralls and amuses enthusiastic college crowds with points about the Bush-Saudi connections, voting machines, and "weapons of mass balloonery."Michael Moore's superb documentary (following in the footsteps of Roger & Me and The Big One) tackles a meaty subject: gun control. Moore skillfully lays out arguments surrounding the! issue and short-circuits them all, leaving one impossible question: why do Americans kill each other more often than people in any other democratic nation? Moore focuses his quest around the shootings at Columbine High School and the shooting of one 6-year-old by another near his own hometown of Flint, Michigan. By approaching the headquarters of K-Mart (where the Columbine shooters bought their ammo) and going to Charlton Heston's own home, Moore demands accountability from the forces that support unrestricted gun sales in the U.S. His arguments are conducted with the humor and empathy that have made Moore more than just a gadfly; he's become a genuine voice of reason in a world driven by fear and greed. --Bret FetzerFollowing on the heels of his Palm d'Or winning Fahrenheit 9/11 and his Oscar winning film Bowling for Columbine, acclaimed filmmaker Michael Moore's new documentary sets out to investigate the American healthcare system. Sticking to his tried-and-true! one-man approach, Moore sheds light on the complicated medica! l affair s of individuals and local communities.SiCKO is more like a controlled howl of protest than a documentary. Toning down the rhetoric of past efforts--no CEOs, congressmen, or celebrities were accosted in the making of this film--Michael Moore's latest provocation is just as heartfelt, if not more heartbreaking. As he clarifies from the outset, his subject isn't the 45 million Americans without insurance, but those whose coverage has failed to meet their needs. He starts by speaking with patients who've been denied life-saving procedures, like chemotherapy, for the most spurious of reasons. Then he travels to Canada, England, and France to see if socialized medicine is as inefficient as U.S. politicians like to claim--especially those who receive funding from pharmaceutical companies. Moore finds quality care available to all, regardless as to income. He concludes with a stunt that made headlines when he assembles a group of 9/11 rescue workers suffering from a variety ! of afflictions. When Moore is informed that detainees at Guantánamo Bay--technically American soil--qualify for universal coverage, he and his companions travel to Cuba to get in on that action. It's a typically grandstanding move on Moore's part. And it proves remarkably effective when these altruistic individuals, who've either been denied treatment or forced to pay outrageous costs for their medication, experience a dramatically different system. Nine years in the making, SiCKO makes a persuasive case that it's time for America to catch up with the rest of the world. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
EDtv : Widescreen Edition
- Widescreen
Ed Pekurny (McConaughey) is just a regular guy who feels he has nothing to lose by agreeing to be a star of a new reality-based TV sho! w. Almost overnight, the program becomes a hit, and suddenly t! his goof y but engaging video clerk is a national celebrity! Everything's fabulous...until Ed falls head-over-heels for Shari (Elfman), the girlfriend of his brother Ray (Woody Harrelson). Suddenly their most private moments become public entertainment - and the ratings go through the roof - as millions of fans tune in to watch a real soap opera filled with comedy and romance.
Superbly directed by Ron Howard and featuring a stellar supporting cast including Elizabeth Hurley, Sally Kirkland, Martin Landau, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Reiner and Dennis Hopper, EDtv is an outrageous look at instant fame, overnight success, and sharing your life with a few million of your closest fans.The third entry of 1998-99's cinematic TV trilogy kind of got lost in the shuffle following The Truman Show, an art film masquerading as a blockbuster, and Pleasantville, a heartfelt feel-good movie masquerading as a special-effects extravaganza. EDtv is nothing more than it appears: a ! scruffy comedy about fame and its discontents. Matthew McConaughey stars as Ed, a white-trash rube who gets his own dawn-to-midnight TV series in which every aspect of his life, no matter how sordid or dull or embarrassing, becomes mass entertainment (it inverts Truman by having the protagonist invite the pervasive cameras). Predictably, fame makes him miserable and, unsurprisingly, he finds a way out of his predicament. Albert Brooks covered this same territory in the funnier Real Life, and it's probably not the best idea for a load of comfy celebs to preach to us about how difficult fame is. But the film is cannily cast, including a number of performers who themselves have fallen victim to stupid media tricks (McConaughey, Ellen DeGeneres as the network executive, Elizabeth Hurley as a vamp hitching her star to Ed's, and Woody Harrelson as Ed's even dumber brother). Structurally, the movie is a mess. It looks as if the filmmakers had the choice between makin! g a fully realized, two-and-a-half-hour-long movie that no one! would s it through or one that clocks in under two hours but has a lot of plot holes; they opted for the latter (Hurley's character disappears, practically without comment). Still, there are enough laughs to keep things moving, and as a shaggy dog tale it's decent fun. --David Kronkedvd
The Order - From Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle 3
- ORDER, THE - FROM MATTHEW BARNEY'S CREMA (DVD MOVIE)
Gran Torino
- GRAN TORINO (DVD MOVIE)
The latest Dirty Harry is actually a grumpy Walt: Walt Kowalski (Eastwood playing his own age), widower, Korean War veteran, retired auto worker, and the last white resident of his Detroit side street. It's hard to say who irks him more--his blood kin (a pretty lame bunch) or the Hmong families who are his new neighbors. Kowalski's a racist, because it has never occurred to him he shouldn't be. Besides, that's the flipside of the mutual ethnic baiting that serves as coin of affection for him and his working-class buddies. Circumstances--and two young people next door, the feisty Sue (Ahney Her) and her conflicted brother Thao (Bee Vang)--contrive to involve Walt with a new community, and anoint him as its hero after he turns his big guns on some ruffi! ans. The trajectory of this may surprise you--several times ov! er. East wood opted to film in economically blighted Detroit--a shrewd decision, but it's his mapping of Walt's world in that classical style of his that really counts. Every incidental corner of lawn, porch, and basement comes to matter--and by all means the workshop/garage that houses the mint-condition Gran Torino which Walt helped build in a more prosperous era. This is a remarkable movie. --Richard T. Jameson
Dear Wendy
- Directed by Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) and written by Lars von Trier (Dogville), Dear Wendy is an audacious and stylish exploration of guns and violence in America. When a young loner named Dick (Jamie Bell) discovers a vintage handgun, he finds himself strangely drawn to it in spite of his pacifist views. Soon he forms a secret club with other misfits in his town who collect and revere a
Cold Creek Manor
- Finally putting an end to their days as slaves to the hustle-and-bustle of city life, Gothamites Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quaid) and his wife, Leah (Sharon Stone), pack up their kids and all their possessions and move into a recently repossessed mansion in the sticks of New York State. Once grand and elegant, the Cold Creek Manor is now a shambles, but Cooper and Leah have plenty of time to renovate.
Dorian Blues
- Witty, knowing and immensely entertaining, Dorian Blues is a delightfully off-kilter coming-of-age tale from debut writer-director Tennyson Bardwell. Adolescence is proving a pain for Dorian (Michael McMillian). He s an outcast and the butt ofmates jokes at high school, and his football hero brother (Lea Coco) is constantly rescuing him. But everything finally begins to make sense when he realizes
All About My Mother
- Widescreen
- Exclusive Interview with director Pedro Almodovar
- Subtitles in English and French
- Director's production notes
- Talent files

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