 | |
 | |
 | |
 | | 4. Milk | | | Starring: Josh Brolin Emile Hirsch Director: Gus Van Sant | | Format: DVD Release Date: 8/11/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 |  | Milk - DVD Review By: Sean O'Connell - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 2/27/2009 5:25 PM | |
Thirty years before Sen. Barack Obama broke through a significant political color barrier, Harvey Milk tore down a similar wall that was obstructing America's gay community from holding political office. Milk finds experimental auteur Gus Van Sant taking cautious steps back toward the mainstream to celebrate Harvey's accomplishments. Van Sant's tender human-interest story, which showcases Sean Penn's considerable talents, is a closer relative to earlier efforts such as Finding Forrester or Good Will Hunting than to recent, abstruse features like Elephant, the spare Gerry, or the haunting Last Days. read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | | 9. Freedom Writers (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Hilary Swank Imelda Staunton | | Format: DVD Release Date: 1/27/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Freedom Writers - DVD Review By: Rafe Telsch - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 4/11/2007 11:20 AM | | There's no arguing that Freedom Writers is an inspirational story. The film gives teachers yet another role model to look up to and strive to be. It also shows the downside of being the devoted teacher Gruwell was: divorce, administrative battles, etc. Perhaps by centering the movie around the teacher instead of the students, Freedom Writers dodges the bullet of portraying teaching as a completely idyllic occupation. Yes, teachers can make a difference, but the costs can be equally high read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
 | | 12. Defiance | | | Starring: Daniel Craig Liev Schreiber Director: Edward Zwick | | Format: DVD Release Date: 6/2/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Defiance - DVD Review By: Sean O'Connell - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 5/22/2009 5:40 PM | |
Decades after the last shot was fired, filmmakers continue to find intriguing narrative passages into WWII. The latest, Edward Zwick's Defiance, tells the true story of the Bielskis, three Jewish brothers who, in 1941, avoided capture by the Germans and fled to Poland's Lipicanzia Forest. Willing to help as many fellow exiles as possible, Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), and Asael (Jamie Bell) formed what eventually came to be known as the Otriad, a mobile community that grew to encompass 1,200 Jewish refugees. The Otriad provided food, shelter, safety, and a moderate sense of stability. There were rules and guidelines, which bred harmony and conflict. read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | | 17. Miracle At St Anna | | | Starring: Derek Luke Michael Ealy Director: Spike Lee | | Format: DVD Release Date: 2/10/2009 | | Miracle at St. Anna - DVD Review By: Ed Perkis - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 2/9/2009 6:56 PM | | Lee's attempt to tell a story about black soldiers in World War II is a meandering, overlong mess. Using a script from James McBride, who adapted his own novel, the director can't seem to figure out what the story should focus on to make an entertaining and powerful film. Instead he focuses on anything and everything, often in such a heavy handed way that any power the story might have contained is diluted. read the full review | |
|
|
 | | 18. Changeling | | | Starring: Angelina Jolie John Malkovich Director: Clint Eastwood | | Format: DVD Release Date: 8/11/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Changeling - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 2/6/2009 5:25 PM | |
Fit snug into the mother superior of self-reflexive roles, Angelina Jolie once again finds herself the eye of the storm in Clint Eastwood's epic melodrama Changeling. Armed with her thick, crimson lips, period duds, and that ever-present cloche, Jolie goes all gooey as Christine Collins, a single mother who finds herself a media fulcrum when she denies that a boy returned to her by the LAPD is Walter, her son who had been kidnapped five months prior. read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | | 28. Into the Wild (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Emile Hirsch William Hurt Director: Sean Penn | | Format: DVD Release Date: 1/27/2009 | User Rating: 5 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Into the Wild - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 12/5/2008 4:33 PM | |
One day, you just pack up your essentials in a backpack, do away with all forms of identification, and set off on the road to find that piece of blue sky thats been missing from your puzzle. Such is the task taken on by young Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) when he set out in the summer of 1990 hoping to reach the blustery ether of Alaska. Abandoning a life of charm, money, and an equally rebellious sister (Jena Malone), McCandless walked, hitched, and explored America for two years before he died from starvation and partial poisoning on the outskirts of Denali National Park in Alaska. read the full review | |
|
|
 | | 29. Charlie Wilson's War (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Julia Roberts Philip Seymour Hoffman Director: Mike Nichols | | Format: DVD Release Date: 5/12/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Charlie Wilson's War - DVD Review By: Jay Antani - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 4/21/2008 7:31 PM | |
Director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made two exceedingly smart choices in adapting George Crile's book Charlie Wilson's War. First, they consented to a brisk 95-minute running time, rather than fall prey to the "prestige" mentality that can saddle such projects, and that bloats them out to beyond two hours. The other choice was leavening their material with a snappy, devil-may-care attitude -- a sure-fire strategy to skim over their story's weakest areas of story and character development.
Charlie Wilson's War is entertaining, and that's about the extent of it. read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
 | | 32. Flags of Our Fathers (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Jamie Bell Robert Patrick Director: Clint Eastwood | | Format: DVD Release Date: 8/19/2008 | | User Rating: 5 | | Flags of Our Fathers - DVD By: Alexandra Calamari - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 2/11/2007 9:20 PM | | Flags of our Fathers is a powerful exploration of the creation of heroes and the way the media can manipulate a historical fact to serve a larger purpose. The problem is that Eastwood doesn't trust his audience to decipher these themes alone, and so includes corny voiceover to tell us exactly what to think. The movie becomes as obvious as screenwriter Paul Haggis' last film Crash (really, it was about racism') read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | | 34. M Butterfly | | | Starring: Jeremy Irons John Lone Director: David Cronenberg | | Format: DVD Release Date: 5/26/2009 | | M. Butterfly - DVD Review By: Paul Brenner - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 5/17/2009 8:40 PM | |
In Mel Brooks' The Producers, the characters played by Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel pay a visit to the Park Avenue home of eccentric theatrical director Roger De Bris, who greets them in a flowing peignoir. "Max," Wilder querulously points out to Mostel, "He's wearing a dress." "No kidding?" Mostel remarks dryly. Mostel may just as well be the audience surrogate for M. Butterfly, particularly for an audience with fond memories of David Henry Hwang's operatic romance and theatrical tragedy in its stage incarnation. David Cronenberg's film adaptation (with a script by Hwang) is a failure for many of the reasons that the stage production was a success, but the film is additionally hampered by Cronenberg's '90s lurch towards conventionality. read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | | 44. Into the Wild (Blu Ray) | | | Starring: Emile Hirsch Marcia Gay Harden Director: Sean Penn | | Format: Blu-Ray DVD Release Date: 12/16/2008 | | Into the Wild - Blu-Ray DVD Review By: Dusty Somers - Blogcritics.org Reviews Published on: 1/13/2009 9:34 PM | | I don’t get caught up in a film the way I did with Into the Wild very often. It’s a rapturous experience – Sean Penn’s direction, Emile Hirsch’s intensely captivating performance, Eddie Vedder’s songs, the beautiful American countryside and the simultaneously cathartic and heartbreaking true story of Christopher McCandless make for one of the best American films of the decade. read the full review | |
|
|
 | |
 | |
By Release
Grid
Detailed List
