Beavis and Butt-head are hard-up for cash so they try their hand at several entrepreneurial ventures. Includes 8 episodes: Hard Sell, Temporary Insanity, Beaverly Butt-Billies, Green Thumbs, Whiplash, Inventors, Yard Sale, Baby Sitting.
After the tight plotting and quirky intensity of Fargo, this casually amusing follow-up from the prolifically inventive Coen (Ethan and Joel) brothers seems like a bit of a lark, and the result was a box-office disappointment. The good news is, The Big Lebowski is every bit a Coen movie, and its lazy plot is part of its laidback charm. After all, how many movies can claim as their hero a pot-bellied, pot-smoking loser named Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) who spends most of his time bowling and getting stoned? And where else could you find a hairnetted Latino bowler named Jesus (John Turturro) who sports dazzling purple footgear, or an erotic artist (Julianne Moore) whose creativity consists of covering her naked body in paint, flying through the air in a leather harness, and splatting herself against a giant canvas? Who else but the Coens would think of showing you a camera view from inside the holes of a bowling ball, or an elaborate Busby Berkely-styled musical dream sequence involving a Viking goddess and giant bowling pins? The plotwhich finds Lebowski involved in a kidnapping scheme after he's mistaken for a rich guy with the same nameis almost beside the point. What counts here is a steady cascade of hilarious dialogue, great work from Coen regulars John Goodman and Steve Buscemi, and the kind of cinematic ingenuity that puts the Coens in a class all their own. Be sure to watch with snacks in hand, because The Big Lebowski might give you a giddy case of the munchies. Jeff Shannon
A tyrant from the future creates evil android doubles of bill and ted and sends them back to eliminate the originals. Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 05/22/2007 Starring: Keanu Reeves George Carlin Run time: 94 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Peter Hewitt
Like, radical, dudebut not nearly as funny as it should be, even though it was a box-office hit. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are a pair of dim Valley boys, whose life is made heinous by a school history project. Enter George Carlin as a futuristic dude with a time-traveling phone booth. So Bill and Ted go back in time to round up a gang of historical figures (Socrates, Joan of Arc) to bring back for their presentation. Abe Lincoln at the mall? That's about as witty as it gets, rendering this the kind of comedy that gives teenaged audiences a bad name. Marshall Fine
One of the most popular cult classics in film history, Bloodsucking Freaks is the gore-chocked masterpiece from director Joel M. Reed. Bloodsucking Freaks is a grand guignol tale of horror set in a New York theatre of the macabre, where the audience gets sex, violence, and cannibalism! No one can remain unmoved by the intense scenes of carnagefrom the human dartboard to the infamous brain sucking scene. Bloodsucking Freaks is guaranteed to turn stomachs! This movie has made every top ten disturbing film list, so be sure to see what people protested against back in 1975.
David Lynch peeks behind the picket fences of small-town America to reveal a corrupt shadow world of malevolence, sadism, and madness. From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard images of middle class homes and tree-lined lanes into a dreamy vision on the edge of nightmare. After his father collapses in a preternaturally eerie sequence, college boy Kyle MacLachlan returns home and stumbles across a severed human ear in a vacant lot. With the help of sweetly innocent high school girl (Laura Dern), he turns junior detective and uncovers a frightening yet darkly compelling world of voyeurism and sex. Drawn deeper into the brutal world of drug dealer and blackmailer Frank, played with raving mania by an obscenity-shouting Dennis Hopper in a career-reviving performance, he loses his innocence and his moral bearings when confronted with pure, unexplainable evil. Isabella Rossellini is terrifyingly desperate as Hopper's sexual slave who becomes MacLachlan's illicit lover, and Dean Stockwell purrs through his role as Hopper's oh-so-suave buddy. Lynch strips his surreally mundane sets to a ghostly austerity, which composer Angelo Badalamenti encourages with the smooth, spooky strains of a lush score. Blue Velvet is a disturbing film that delves into the darkest reaches of psycho-sexual brutality and simply isn't for everyone. But for a viewer who wants to see the cinematic world rocked off its foundations, David Lynch delivers a nightmarish masterpiece. Sean Axmaker |
The Hire: A Series of 8 Films The 8 films included are: Hostage: Stars: Clive Owen. Director: John Woo Ticker: Stars: Clive Owen, Don Cheadle, F. Murray Abraham. Director: Joe Carnahan The driver rescues a mysterious messenger carrying an even more mysterious briefcase after an ambush on a rural highway. As a helicopter gunman relentlessly pursues them, a game of political intrigue plays out, with an unforeseen ending. Beat the Devil: Stars: Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, James Brown. Director: Tony Scott Decades ago, the legendary James Brown sold his soul to the devil for fame and fortune. Now he wishes to renegotiate. Hired to take Mr. Brown to a rendezvous with the devil (Gary Oldman), the driver soon finds himself entangled in fiendish plans. Ambush: Stars: Clive Owen, Tomas Milian. Director: John Frankenheimer Chosen: Stars: Clive Owen, Mason Lee. Director: Ang Lee The driver meets a ship carrying an eight-year-old Tibetan boy at a dark, deserted New York shipyard. But he's not the only one waiting. The Follow: Stars: Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Forest Whitaker. Director: Wong Kar-wai The cunning and tactics of trailing another car quickly evolve into a mystery rife with deceit, as The Driver is hired to follow a woman accused of cheating on her famous husband. Star: Stars: Clive Owen, Madonna. Director: Guy Ritchie The driver faces perhaps his most perplexing challenge: Coming face-to-face with a hugely talented and successful rock star. But beneath her beauty lies a problem she always gets what she wants. Powder Keg: Stars: Clive Owen, Stellan Skarsgard. Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Universal The Bourne Identity - HD-DVD
A man is washed up on the shores of the mediterranean seabarely alive suffering from multiple gun shot wounds. His amnesia has left with virtually no clues to his past or his identity. Little by little he tries to put his life back together while trying to avoid people who are trying to kill him Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 02/14/2006 Starring: Matt Damon Brian Cox Run time: 119 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Doug Liman
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film directoroh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circusthis is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as a miscreant.
Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) looks like your typical perky high-schooler, and like most, she has her secret fears and anxieties. However, while most teens are worrying about their next date, their next zit, or their next term paper, Buffy's angsting over the next vampire she has to slay. See, Buffy, a young woman with superhuman strength, is the "chosen one," and she must help rid the world of evil, namely by staking demons. The exceptional first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer introduces us to the treacherous world of Sunnydale High School (where Buffy moved after torching her previous high school's gym). The characters there include "watcher" Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) and the original "Scooby Gang" membersfriendly geek Xander (Nicholas Brendon), computer whiz Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and snobbish popular girl Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter)who aid Buffy in her quest. Those used to the darker tone that Buffy took in its later seasons will be surprised by the lighter feeling these first 12 episodes haveitit's kind of like Buffy 90210 as the cast grapples with regular teen problems in addition to saving the world from demonic darkness. Fans of the show will enjoy the crisp writing, the phenomenal chemistry of the cast (already well-established within the first few episodes), and the introduction to characters that would stay for many seasons, including moody vampire Angel (David Boreanaz). Through it all, Gellar carries the series with amazing confidence, whether conveying the despair of high school or dispatching various demonssheshe's one of TV's most distinctive and strongest heroines. Mark Englehart
The sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed the logic of plot and character development into some gloomy places. The year begins with Buffy being raised from the dead by the friends who miss her, but who fail to understand that a sacrifice taken back is a sacrifice negated. Dragged out of what she believes to have been heavenly bliss, she finds herself "going through the motions" and entering into a relationship with the evil, besotted vampire Spike just to force her emotions. Willow becomes ever more caught up in the temptations of magic; Xander and Anya move towards marriage without ever discussing their reservations; Giles feels he is standing in the way of Buffy's adult independence; Dawn feels neglected. What none of them need is a menace that is, at this point, simply annoyingthree high school contemporaries who have turned their hand to magical and high-tech villainy. Added to this is a hungry ghost, an invisibility ray, an amnesia spell and a song-and-dance demon (who acts as rationale for the incomparable musical episode "Once More, with Feeling"). |
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