- GIRL IN THE PARK (DVD MOVIE)
Get ready to lose your heartand your bank accountto a couple of sexy sirens in this "vastly enjoyable comedy" (People)! With a "first-rate cast" (The New York Times) that includesSigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee and OscarÂ(r) winner* Gene Hackman, this hilarious laugh-riot is "smart and funny" (Joel Siegel, "Good Morning America")! When it comes to conning millionaires, Page Conners (Hewitt) and her mother Max (Weaver) are real pros. Max lures them to the altar, then Page leads them into temptation and a hefty divorce settlement! Now they're about to strike gold with the ultimate sting: a wealthy, wheezing tobacco tycoon (Hackman). But before they can seal the deal, Page breaks the cardinal rule of the con and falls in love! Now Max must convince Page to hold on to her heart and the tobacco fortune or lose the best partner in crime sh! e'll ever have! *1992: Supporting Actor, Unforgiven; 1971: Actor, The French Connection
Heartbreakers wants to be a distaff variation of
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, compensating for lack of intelligence with ample cleavage provided by Sigourney Weaver and (especially) Jennifer Love Hewitt. This alone should draw plenty of drooling guys who will enjoy the scenery and affirm the movie's depiction of men as lecherous idiots. And what scenery it is! Gussied up in trampy glamour, Weaver and Hewitt play mom-and-daughter grifters with a devious routine: Max (Weaver) lures wealthy cads into marriage, and then daughter Page (Hewitt) seduces them, so Mom can discover the infidelity and fleece the chump in divorce court. They've just scammed the boss of a hot-car ring (Ray Liotta) and now it's on to Palm Beach, Florida, where they'll dupe a wheezing tobacco baron (Gene Hackman) and retire to the good life. Or so they think...
Armed with the same airheaded humor he brou! ght to Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, director! David M irkin relies on the clichéd notion that sex turns all men into morons--a conceit that would have worked if the dialogue and sitcom antics were more convincing. As Page's would-be paramour, Jason Lee is rendered intellectually inert, and it's hit-or-miss from that point forward. When the humor hits--as it does with Nora Dunn's rendition of a horrible housemaid--Heartbreakers hints at its full potential. Additional plot twists--not to mention Hewitt's microskirts and Wonderbras--may hold your attention, but you may find yourself harkening back to Steve Martin, Michael Caine, and those happier high jinks on the French Riviera. Singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin has a cameo role as the wedding priest. --Jeff Shannon Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Sigourney Weaver stars in this emotional true story about a deeply religious suburban housewife and mother who struggles to accept her son’s homosexuality. Mary Griffith (Weaver) is a devout Christian who ! has raised her children with a conservative religious perspective. When her son, Bobby (Ryan Kelley), reveals that he is gay to his older brother, the entire family dynamic is forever shifted. While Bobby’s father and siblings slowly come to terms with his homosexuality, Mary turns to her steadfast beliefs in an attempt to “cure†her son. Alienated and quickly becoming more detached from the safety of his close-knit family, Bobby’s depression drives him to take drastic â€" and tragic â€" actions. PRAYERS FOR BOBBY is the multiple Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominated true story of a mother torn between her loyalties, challenged by her faith, and moved by a tragedy that would change her life, and the lives of others, forever. Based on the book Prayers for Bobby by Leroy Aarons. In this affecting cable movie about the consequences of intolerance, Sigourney Weaver plays Mary Griffith, a California woman who paid dearly for her beliefs. In the late 1970s, sh! e and her close-knit Christian family, including husband Bob (! Henry Cz erny), live in comfortable Walnut Creek. Her son Bobby (Ryan Kelley), a high-school student, has a secret he hides well until it becomes too hard to bear, so he tells his older brother. Out of concern for his welfare, Ed (Austin Nichols) tells Mary, who considers homosexuality "an abomination." She believes Bobby can change if he sets his mind to it, so she fixes him up on dates and sends him to a therapist. Wanting to please his mother, he goes along with her plans. When they fail, he drops out of school to live with a sympathetic cousin in Portland, where he works and dates another young man, but years of guilt and shame drive him to seek a permanent solution to his problem. At this point, the story shifts to Mary, who meets Reverend Whitsell (Frasier's Dan Butler). With his help, she learns to reconcile her religious faith with her son's orientation. There are a few missteps in this Lifetime production, as when Bobby contemplates suicide while watching Spartacus! , but Queer as Folk director Russell Mulcahy adapts Leroy Aarons's 1996 book with sensitivity, and Weaver makes a potentially off-putting character sympathetic--good luck keeping those tears at bay. Extra features include interviews with the producers, the cast, and the subject. --Kathleen C. FennessyDisc 1: Pole to Pole, Mountains, Deep Ocean Disc 2: Deserts, Ice Worlds, Shallow Seas Disc 3: Great Plains, Jungles, Fresh Water Disc 4: Seasonal Forests, Caves Disc 5 (Bonus Disc): Planet Earth: The FutureProfessor by day. Prostitute by night. Two-time Golden GlobeÂ(r) winner* Sigourney Weaver "shows her best stuff [in this] provocative" (Los Angeles Times) and stunning sexual thriller.Co-starring two-time OscarÂ(r) winner** Michael Caine, Half Moon Street is a smoldering, suspenseful tale of passion, politics and murder that's elegant, erotic and electrifying! When the brilliant and beautiful Dr. Lauren Slaughter (Weaver) discovers she's unable to live onher meager academic salary, she decides to moonlight as a high-priced London call girl. But when she unexpectedly falls for one of her clientsa top-ranking politician (Caine)Lauren soon finds herself enmeshed in a dark world of deviance, danger and deadly intriguewhere sex will make her rich and love could get her killed. *1988: Actress (Drama), Gorillas in the Mist; 1988: Supporting Actress, Working Girl **1999: Supporting Actor: The Cider House Rules; 1986: Hannah and Her ! SistersA homicide detective and a criminal psychologist search for an elusive copycat mass murderer.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-JUN-2002
Media Type: DVDTaking its lead from Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning pulse-raiser The Silence of the Lambs, Copycat strives for intelligence over gristle and carnage. It's a terse, involving thriller that swings away from the usual cinematic notion of violence as a means to an end by forgoing brawn for brains. Young San Francisco police inspector Ruben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney) is teamed with brilliant force vet, M.J. Monahan (Holly Hunter), a diplomatic, no-nonsense cop who must buck the system in order to find a killer who is copycatting the crimes of history's most notorious serial killers. Ruben would rather shoot to kill than merely wound a suspect; Monahan labors to help him think more diplomatically. Everything changes when crank calls arrive at the station f! rom serial-killer pin-up girl psychiatrist Helen Hudson (Sigou! rney Wea ver). She's been housebound for 13 months, ever since murderer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr.) nearly made her his next victim because she testified against him in court. Though he's in prison, he's still mentor and muse to every loose cannon walking the streets--one of whom is killing people with a vengeance and hoping to finish the job Cullum began. Cop and doc team up to solve the case in this stylish, plot-driven movie. Though Copycat loses steam in the end, it still makes a point. And it serves as a cautionary tale for people everywhere, tossing in street smart warnings against victimization. The teaming of Hunter and Weaver works well, the short and the tall forging a terrific and frictioned relationship that leads to grudging respect. Establishing an ominous atmosphere reminiscent of his classic British TV miniseries The Singing Detective, director Jon Amiel has an eye for the dark and the unusual and it gives this film an edge that eludes most oth! er mainstream filmmakers. --Paula NechakGALAXY QUEST (DELUXE EDITION) - DVD MovieYou don't have to be a Star Trek fan to enjoy Galaxy Quest, but it certainly helps. A knowingly affectionate tribute to Trek and any other science fiction TV series of the 1960s and beyond, this crowd-pleasing comedy offers in-jokes at warp speed, hitting the bull's-eye for anyone who knows that (1)Â the starship captain always removes his shirt to display his manly physique; (2)Â any crew member not in the regular cast is dead meat; and (3)Â the heroes always stop the doomsday clock with one second to spare. So it is with Commander Taggart (Tim Allen) and the stalwart crew of the NSEA Protector, whose intergalactic exploits on TV have now been reduced to a dreary cycle of fan conventions and promotional appearances. That's when the Thermians arrive, begging to be saved from Sarris, the reptilian villain who threatens to destroy their home planet.
Can act! ors rise to the challenge and play their roles for real? The T! hermians are counting on it, having studied the "historical documents" of the Galaxy Quest TV show, and their hero worship (not to mention their taste for Monte Cristo sandwiches) is ultimately proven worthy, with the help of some Galaxy geeks on planet Earth. And while Galaxy Quest serves up great special effects and impressive Stan Winston creatures, director Dean Parisot (Home Fries) is never condescending, lending warm acceptance to this gentle send-up of sci-fi TV and the phenomenon of fandom. Best of all is the splendid cast, including Sigourney Weaver as buxom blonde Gwen DeMarco; Alan Rickman as frustrated thespian Alexander Dane; Tony Shalhoub as dimwit Fred Kwan; Daryl Mitchell as former child-star Tommy Webber; and Enrico Colantoni as Thermian leader Mathesar, whose sing-song voice is a comedic coup de grâce. --Jeff ShannonGORILLAS IN THE MIST - DVD MovieSigourney Weaver more than earned her Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Gor! illas in the Mist, dominating every frame of Michael Apted's biopic about primatologist Dian Fossey. Tenderly mothering an orphaned gorilla infant or terrorizing an African poacher with a staged lynching, the statuesque star is never less than fiercely focused, a glamorous warrior for animal rights. As the amateur scientist who researched and spotlighted Rwanda's endangered mountain gorillas in National Geographic, Weaver is the passionate heart that keeps an otherwise flaccid film alive--whether bracing anthropologist Louis Leakey to forcibly offer her services as census-taker of the mountain gorillas; or hanging out with the noble animals until she becomes the first person on record to make friendly physical contact with them; or waging sometimes-physical war on natives and Europeans who decimate the gorillas for trophies or zoo fodder. Unfortunately, the film's stodgy script and direction simply document Fossey's magnificent obsession, offering no insight into! what lonely impulse of the soul led this extraordinary woman ! to climb up an African mountain to bond so strongly with gorillas. Cardboard characters include an eternally smiling, sexless African soulmate (John Omirah Miluwi), a perfect boyfriend (Bryan Brown) who has to be dumped in favor of gorilla-love, and stereotypical villains. Still, the African scenery is spectacular, and who can resist the cross-species thrill when the huge dark hand of Digit, Fossey's favorite, first rests in her outstretched palm? Gorillas in the Mist will please those who savor Sigourney Weaver's Amazonian fervor and the pure fire of her physical and spiritual passion--and harbor a slightly misanthropic fondness for liaisons between beauties and beasts. --Kathleen MurphyGIRL IN THE PARK - DVD Movie
