on DVD
New Releases
Go home with The Brave One, American Gangster or The Jane Austen Book Club
By Marni Weisz
SPOTLIGHT
GONE BABY GONE
February 12
Well, he showed them.
Gone Baby Gone director Ben Affleck has already been tapped as
2007’s most promising new director by the National Board of Review,
Chicago Film Critics and Boston Film Critics.
Ben can thank his little brother Casey
Affleck (pictured above) for contributing to those accolades via his understated
performance as private investigator Patrick Kenzie, who’s struggling to
keep his head above water after being given the toughest case of his
career.
When a four-year-old girl is seemingly
snatched from her bed in a down-and-out suburb of Boston, the girl’s
aunt (Amy Madigan) hires Kenzie and his partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle
Monaghan) to coax information out of the neighbourhood’s cop-shy
toughs. The little girl’s mother (Amy Ryan) is a drug runner and an
addict with a long list of acquaintances capable of harming her
daughter. Morgan Freeman plays the police detective in charge of the
investigation, while Ed Harris is a cop assigned to liaise with Kenzie.
The script is based on a Dennis Lehane
novel, and the movie has much in common with that other movie based on
a Lehane story, director Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River.
They’re both tense, grimy, twisty crime pics that take place in
Boston’s underbelly, but Affleck’s pic has an intimacy and authenticity
that even Eastwood’s can’t match — probably because Affleck is from
Boston.
In fact, the DVD’s bonus material
kicks off with “Going Home: Behind the Scenes with Ben Affleck,” a
featurette that includes a conversation with both of the Affleck
brothers. Plus, there are the requisite deleted scenes and Ben Affleck
teams with screenwriter Aaron Stockard to provide an audio commentary.
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February 5
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Stars: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess
Director: Julie Taymor (
Frida)
Story: Taymor fought hard to preserve her vision of this modern musical in which the lead actors sing Beatles tunes. The story follows British dockworker Jude (Sturgess) who travels to the States to find his dad and falls in love with lovely Lucy (Wood) along the way.
DVD Extras: two-disc Special Edition DVD features eight extended musical performances, five featurettes, director commentary
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
Stars: Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker
Director: Robin Swicord (debut)
Story: Five women and one man form a book club to discuss Jane Austen’s works and are surprised how much the 200-year-old stories reflect their own complicated love lives.
DVD Extras: seven deleted scenes, commentary track, “Character Deconstruction,” “The Life of Jane Austen”
THE BRAVE ONE
Stars: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard
Director: Neil Jordan (
Breakfast on Pluto)
Story: A radio-show host (Foster) turns vigilante after being attacked in the park and watching as her fiancé is beaten to death by thugs. After learning to use a gun she seeks out dangerous situations and lets her trigger finger mete out justice.
February 12
BECOMING JANE
Stars: Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy
Director: Julian Jarrold (
Kinky Boots)
Story: Jane Austen fans will have fun trying to spot the events that influenced her books in this biography of the early 19th-century writer. Hathaway plays the title role with McAvoy stepping in as her dangerous but devoted suitor Tom Lefroy, whose countenance bears a striking resemblance to a certain Mr. Darcy.
DVD Extras: “Discovering the Real Jane Austen,” pop-up facts and footnotes, deleted scenes, director commentary
WE OWN THE NIGHT
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg
Director: James Gray (
The Yards)
Story: In 1980s New York, a nightclub manager (Phoenix) has to choose between the drug-dealing gangsters who frequent his business and his brother and father, both cops, who want him to help bring the criminals down.
DVD Extras: “Police Action: Filming Cops, Cars and Chaos,” “A Moment in Crime: Creating Late ’80s Brooklyn”
NO RESERVATIONS
Stars: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart
Director: Scott Hicks (
Hearts in Atlantis)
Story: Kate (Zeta-Jones) is a top chef at a trendy Manhattan restaurant. She’s also a perfectionist who likes things done a certain way. Then two things happen to shake up her well-controlled life. Her sister dies in a car accident and leaves her daughter (Abigail Breslin) in Kate’s care, and a rival chef with a completey different attitude (Eckhart) comes to work for her.
February 19
IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron
Director: Paul Haggis (
Crash)
Story: When a soldier just back from Iraq disappears from his New Mexico army base, his father, a Vietnam vet (Jones), takes it upon himself to investigate.
RENDITION
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon
Director: Gavin Hood (
Tsotsi)
Story: After her Egyptian-born husband (Omar Metwally) goes missing on a flight home from South Africa, a heavily pregnant woman (Witherspoon) frantically searches for answers, discovering that the CIA believes he has terrorist links.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Stars: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe
Director: Ridley Scott (
A Good Year)
Story: Inspired by an article in
New York Magazine, this bio-pic traces the rise and fall of Frank Lucas, an African-American drug dealer who’s best known for smuggling heroin into the States in the coffins of Vietnam soldiers. Russell plays detective Richie Roberts, trying to make a case against Lucas.
February 26
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
Stars: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody
Director: Wes Anderson (
The Royal Tenenbaums)
Story: After their father dies, three brothers (Wilson, Brody, Jason Schwartzman) bond on a train trip through India. Along the way they nearly kill each other and have a life-changing experience in a small village.
DVD Extras: featurettes, “Hotel Chevalier” short film
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
Stars: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck
Director: Andrew Dominik (
Chopper)
Story: The newest member of Jesse James’ (Pitt) band of outlaws is Robert Ford (Affleck), a young crook who idolizes the legendary hold-up man, perhaps even wants to be him. Eventually, and inevitably, their story rolls toward the fulfillment of the film’s title as Ford seeks to have James-type fame the only way he knows how.
30 DAYS OF NIGHT
Stars: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George
Director: David Slade (
Hard Candy)
Story: If you were a vampire, where would you go? To deepest, darkest Alaska, of course, where for 30 straight days in winter there is absolutely no daylight. Hartnett plays the sheriff of Barrow, Alaska, charged with saving his town from the descending bloodsuckers. George plays his ex-wife, who has to help him with the fight.
DVD Extras: “The Vampire,” “Building Barrow,”
“The Look,” “Night Shoots”