Editorial Reviews

Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis topped his breakaway hit Romancing the Stone with Back to the Future, a joyous comedy with a dazzling hook: what would it be like to meet your parents in their youth? Billed as a special-effects comedy, the imaginative film (the top box-office smash of 1985) has staying power because of the heart behind Zemeckis and Bob Gale's script. High schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, during the height of his TV success) is catapulted back to the '50s where he sees his parents in their teens, and accidentally changes the history of how Mom and Dad met. Filled with the humorous ideology of the '50s, filtered through the knowledge of the '80s (actor Ronald Reagan is president, ha!), the film comes off as a Twilight Zone episode written by Preston Sturges. Filled with memorable effects and two wonderfully off-key, perfectly cast performances: Christopher Lloyd as the crazy scientist who builds the time machine (a DeLorean luxury car) and Crispin Glover as Marty's geeky dad. --Doug Thomas

Critics and audiences didn't seem too happy with Back to the Future, Part II, the inventive, perhaps too clever sequel. Director Zemeckis and cast bent over backwards to add layers of time-travel complication, and while it surely exercises the brain it isn't necessarily funny in the same way that its predecessor was. It's well worth a visit, though, just to appreciate the imagination that went into it, particularly in a finale that has Marty watching his own actions from the first film.

Shot back-to-back with the second chapter in the trilogy, Back to the Future, Part III is less hectic than that film and has the same sweet spirit of the first, albeit in a whole new setting. This time, Marty ends up in the Old West of 1885, trying to prevent the death of mad scientist Christopher Lloyd at the hands of gunman Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson, who had a recurring role as the bully Biff). Director Zemeckis successfully blends exciting special effects with the traditions of a Western and comes up with something original and fun.

Boxset Contents

Back to the Future (Collector's Edition) (1985)

• Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Theatrical Release Date: July 3, 1985
• Rating: Rated PG
• Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
• Synopsis: The year is 1985 and Marty McFly (Fox) is your everyday teenager, except for one problem. He is stuck in 1955. After his good friend Doc Emmett Brown (Lloyd) is gunned down, Marty ends up sending the DeLorean back twenty years into the past. Now, he must find the Doc and convince him that he is from the future, in order for the Doc to send him back to the future, but this is the least of Marty's problem. After accidentally getting in the way of the important meeting between his future mother (Thompson) and father (Glover), Marty must get them back together before he changes time forever, and destroys his own existence.

Back to the Future Part II (Collector's Edition) (1989)

• Stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson, Elisabeth Shue
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Theatrical Release Date: November 22, 1989
• Rating: Rated PG
• Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
• Synopsis: The second part of the trilogy begins as Doc, Marty and Jennifer take the time-traveling DeLorean into the year 2015 to straighten out the future of the McFly family. But Biff Tannen steals the time machine and gives his younger self a book containing 50 years of sports statistics, which the young Biff uses to amass an enormous gambling fortune and transform idyllic Hill Valley into a living hell. To restore the present, Doc and Marty must return to the events of their previous adventure in 1955 and retrieve the book.

Back to the Future Part III (Collector's Edition) (1990)

• Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson, Lea Thompson
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Theatrical Release Date: May 25, 1990
• Rating: Rated PG
• Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
• Synopsis: The conclusion of the trilogy sends Marty McFly on a rescue mission to the year 1885, where he must save Doc Brown from death at the hands of yet another member of the Tannen clan. However, there are a number of complications preventing a quick return to the future: a lack of gasoline for the time-traveling DeLorean, a band of gunslinging outlaws and a schoolmarm with affections for the smitten Doc.

Product Details

• Actors: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson, Elisabeth Shue
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 3 (3 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: January 25, 2005
• Run Time: 342 minutes

Editorial Reviews

It's no fun being Superman. Your life is a lie, there's nobody you can confide in, you're in love but can't express it, and you're on call 24 hours a day. But it can be fun being in a Superman movie. The original "Superman" (1978) was an exuberance of action and humor, because Christopher Reeve could play the character straight and let us know he was kidding.

"Superman II" (1980) was just about as good, but "Superman III" (1983) was a disappointment. "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace," with Reeve, bombed in 1987, and then the series was quiet for 19 years. Now the Man of Steel is back in Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns," which, like its hero, spends a lot of time dead in the water.

This is a glum, lackluster movie in which even the big effects sequences seem dutiful instead of exhilarating. The newsroom of the Daily Planet, filled with eccentricity and life in the earlier movies, now seems populated by corporate drones. Jimmy Olsen, the copy boy, such a brash kid, seems tamed and clueless. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has lost her dash and pizzazz, and her fiance, Richard White (James Marsden), regards her like a deer caught in the headlights. Even the editor, Perry White (Frank Langella), comes across less like a curmudgeon, more like an efficient manager.

One problem is with the casting. Brandon Routh lacks charisma as Superman, and I suppose as Clark Kent, he isn't supposed to have any. Routh may have been cast because he looks a little like Reeve, but there are times when he looks more like an action figure; were effects used to make him seem built from synthetics? We remember the chemistry between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder (Lois Lane) in the original "Superman" movie, and then observe how their counterparts are tongue-tied in this one. If they had a real romance (and they did), has it left them with nothing more than wistful looks and awkward small talk?

It's strange how little dialogue the title character has in the movie. Clark Kent is monosyllabic, and Superman is microsyllabic. We learn Superman was away for five years on a mission to the remains of his home planet, Krypton. In the meantime, Lois got herself a boyfriend and a little son, played by Tristan Lake Leabu, who mostly stares at people like a beta version of Damien, the kid from "The Omen." Now Superman and (coincidentally) Clark have returned, Clark gets his old job, and Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is out of prison and plotting to rule the earth.

Lex's plan: use crystals from kryptonite to raise up a new continent in the mid-Atlantic and flood most of the surface of the populated world. Then he'll own all the real estate. Location, location, location. Alas, the craggy landscape he produces couldn't be loved by a mountain goat and won't be habitable for a million years, but never mind. Spacey plays Luthor as sour and sadistic; he has no fun with the role, nor do we.

As for Superman, he's a one-trick pony. To paraphrase Archimedes: "Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the universe." Superman doesn't need the lever or the place to stand, but as he positions himself in flight, straining to lift an airplane or a vast chunk or rock, we reflect that these activities aren't nearly as cinematic as what Batman and Spider-Man get up to. Watching Superman straining to hold a giant airliner, I'm wondering: Why does he strain? Does he have his limits? Would that new Airbus be too much for him? What about if he could stand somewhere?

Superman is vulnerable to one, and only one, substance: kryptonite. He knows this. We know this. Lex Luthor knows this. Yet he has been disabled by kryptonite in every one of the movies. Does he think Lex Luthor would pull another stunt without a supply on hand? Why doesn't he take the most elementary precautions? How can a middle-aged bald man stab the Man of Steel with kryptonite?

Now about Lois' kid. We know who his father is, and Lois knows, and I guess the kid knows, although he calls Richard his daddy. But why is nothing done with this character? He sends a piano flying across a room, but otherwise he just stares with big, solemn eyes, like one of those self-sufficient little brats you can't get to talk. It would have been fun to give Superman a bright, sassy child, like one of the Spy Kids, and make him a part of the plot.

There is I suppose a certain bottom line of competence in "Superman Returns," and superhero fans will want to see the movie just for its effects, its plot outrages and its moments of humor. But when the hero, his alter ego, his girlfriend and the villain all seem to lack any joy in being themselves, why should we feel joy at watching them?

Plot Summary

• Plot Outline: After a long visit to the lost remains of the planet Krypton, the Man of Steel returns to earth to become the peoples savior once again and reclaim the love of Lois Lane.
• Plot Synopsis: After eliminating General Zod & the other Kryptonian arch-villains, Ursa & Non, Superman leaves Earth to try to find his former home world of Krypton after astronomers have supposedly found it. When he finds nothing but remnants, he returns home to Earth - to find out that Lois Lane is engaged to a relative of his boss, and that Lex Luthor is at it again - after swindling an elderly, terminally ill woman. The psychopathic Luthor, whose plans to destroy California failed because of Superman's heroics, vows vengeance against the Man of Steel and contrives a new sinister plot - using the crystals of Krypton to build a continent that will wipe out most of North America! Embedded in the continent's structure is Kryptonite - the lethal substance that is Superman's only weakness. Upon learning of Luthro's sinister scheme, Superman must again race against time to stop the psychopathic Luthor before millions - possibly billions - are killed.

Product Details

• Actors: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey
• Directors: Bryan Singer
• Format: Anamorphic, AC-3, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating PG-13
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: November 28, 2006
• Run Time: 154 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Okay, I admit it. Days before I went to see X-Men I scoured the web for advance reviews of the film. Most of them started off with some sort of admission. "I've never read one of the comic books, but it's the best selling comic ever," "I only caught the cartoon once or twice, but X-Men has hardcore fans much like Star Trek." And so on. Some of the reviews even included sidebars with a history of the title, each history mentioning the ironic fact that the book was canceled for a while due to poor sales, but now is a sales powerhouse.

All the reviews I've read by people who have read the comics were suspect-they were on sites like countingdown.com and upcomingmovies.com. Both are magical lands where most of the news is usually good. So what's a well-read, casual fan to do?

The reason I read all those reviews is, well, nervousness. For one thing, this is director Bryan Singer's first foray to really-big-budget, and The Usual Suspects was too good a film to see him ruin his career with some kind of "Batman and Robin" or "Lost in Space." What's more, I am an X-Men fan, though I haven't read the books in a while. So I know how good the series can be, and how terribly it can be mutilated. It would be very, very easy to do a crappy X-Men movie, and that would spell doom for a really promising series as well as any other Marvel project like the upcoming Spider-Man movie.

But tonight, I sleep easy. For I have seen the film, my brothers, and it was not bad. Actually, quite good.

The story combines elements of the last 30 years of books to get the audience up to speed and, well, rewrite history in a way more conducive to moviemaking. Erik Magnus Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen) watches his parents torn away to be gassed in a Nazi concentration camp. As he reaches for them, the metal fence begins to bend, as if by sheer will. The guards knock him out, and his parents are gone.

A young girl (Anna Paquin) talks with her boyfriend, leading to a kiss. With a shock, he becomes weak, then comatose. The girl is scared-what did she do? How did this happen? On TV a certain Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) dominates a hearing about genetic mutation in humans-like sending children to school with handguns, he says-the girl, calling herself Rogue, runs away. She ends up in Canada where she watches a bar fighter, "The Wolverine" (Hugh Jackman), take hits and get up like nothing happened. The two are forced to leave the bar, and just as they begin to talk, are ambushed by a creature more beast than man (Tyler Mane).

They're rescued by a couple of mutants in black leather and taken to upstate New York. The mutants, of course, are the X-Men, and the place, of course, is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), the world's most powerful telepath, has built the school to help mutants learn to control their mutations and the strange powers than often come with them. The X-Men are basically grad students, preparing to fight the kind of threats that Erik Lehnsherr now represents. Calling himself Magneto, Lehnsherr-once Xavier's friend-now believes mutants are in store for the same treatment the Jews received at the hands of the Nazi's. Though Xavier believes it can be worked out, Magneto is not going to wait and see. He is plotting something big, and it includes Wolverine and Rogue.

Wolvie is neither pleased to be there nor impressed by the funky costumes. He stays only when Xavier promises to help him find out about his past-Wolvie has lost his memory of anything past 15 years ago. Mysterious pasts aside, what is Magneto up to?

I must mention that the first act of the film, where Magneto, Rogue, and Wolverine are introduced, is by far the best part of the film. I can't recall another summer action movie that was so enthralling-the characters were defined by each moment. Also, this is the only part of the film where the pace is dead on. Singer supposedly cut as mush as a half-hour from the film to make it more audience-friendly. It's noticeable, though not too terribly, in the rest of the film. The action and dialogue seem to end just as it's about to get really deep. I can't wait for the DVD director's cut.

Stewart and McKellen really are impressive as the opposite sides of the same coin. Both are really incredible actors, though Stewart probably feels a bit pigeonholed by his portrayal of Captain Picard on Star Trek. He seemed the only choice for the roll, though-about 8 years ago some friends and I came up with a list of who we'd like to see in an X-Men movie, and he was the only one we all agreed on. More than a few fans were worried about McKellen, but he understood Magneto better than Stan Lee did when he created him back in the 60's.

Jackman's Wolverine is a good take on the character. He's sarcastic, gruff, and able to fall into a berserker rage right out of the comic book. Blended in, though, is a desire to care for Rogue and protect those who can't defend themselves. Jackman looks the part, too, even if he's a bit young (we had picked Clint Eastwood for the role).

Part of the difficulty with making a movie like this is giving everyone in the cast enough time to develop. Cyclops (James Marsden), the team's leader, perhaps suffered most from this. While we saw a bit of his relationship with Xavier, he did little else than rub Wolvie the wrong way and lose his glasses. Halle Berry, as Storm, may have had even less screen time than Marsden, but she didn't seem very into the character anyway. She also has the only really corny line in the whole film.

Anna Paquin and Famke Janssen shined as Rogue and Dr. Jean Grey, respectively. Paquin blended a touch of teenage angst with some real self-fear, and hopefully we'll see more of her in the sequels. Janssen nailed Jean Grey-she seemed comfortable handing DNA models and medical equipment while struggling to control her still-developing powers. She's never been the kind of character you could nail down with one sentence, and Janssen has responded to that by making her the most down-to earth character in the bunch.

Magneto's Brotherhood (read henchmen), at least on paper, seem no match for the X-Men. Optic blasts, unbreakable bones and claws, lightning and telekinesis versus a shape shifter, a manimal and a guy called "the Toad?" But both Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) and Toad (Ray Park) attack with such savage martial arts and Magneto plans so well ahead that the X-Men find themselves outmatched at each turn. Mystique, in particular, is going to sell a lot of movie tickets. Decked out in blue scales and body paint, she's managed to beat out Berry, Janssen and Paquin as guy fantasy material. She has almost no real lines, but Romijn-Stamos exudes a calculating confidence throughout the whole film. Park makes the Toad much more of a threat than I could have possibly imagined, though his tongue attacks were a tiny bit cheesy. Why not just give the guy super-strong legs and let him kick the crap out of everybody?

The film's overarching impression is that of a prequel. So much time is spent on introduction that is seems assured we will have at least two more films coming up. You don't build up characters like that just to have them play around a bit, destroy a few cop cars, and disappear. The action, too, seems just a little bit sedate; they do justice to the comics and the fighting is pretty spectacular, but every attack seems to be winking and saying, just wait till you see what we do next. I left the theater wanting to see more. I think Singer could have left in his half-hour without losing the audience. It was probably mostly dialogue, which would have added to both the characterization and the tension. There's nothing like a good ideological debate while lives hang in the balance.

I can only hope the general public is suitably taken by X-Men. It's not like any other summer action movie-it's darker and more philosophical than most, and much more character driven without relying on stereotypes. It really is a good movie, and barring some kind of Joel Schumacher-esque disaster, the best is yet to come.

Plot Summary

• Tagline: Don't just relive the spectacular action...take it to the extreme with this all-new 2-Disc Collector's Edition release of X-Men, packed with hours of never-before-seen bonus features! Go beyond the movie with the Enhanced Viewing Mode, incorporating more than 60 extra minutes of deleted scenes and behind-the-scene footage as yoi watch the film. Listen to in-depth audio commentary from director Bryan Singer. Learn all the most revealing secrets, from casting and costumes to Scenery and Special Effects, through brand-new featurettes. And get an exclusive sneak peak at the making of X2. This is X-Men like you've never experienced it before!

Product Details

• Actors: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden
• Directors: Bryan Singer
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Multi Angle, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Live, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: November 25, 2003
• Run Time: 104 minutes

Editorial Reviews

"X2: X-Men United" is the kind of movie you enjoy for its moments, even though they never add up. Made for (and possibly by) those with short attention spans, it lives in the present, providing one amazing spectacle after another, and not even trying to develop a story arc. Having trained on the original "X-Men" (2000), i tried to experience the film entirely in the present, and the fact is, i had a good time. Dumb, but good.

Like the comic books that inspired it, "X2" begins with the premise that mutant heroes with specialized superpowers exist among us. Name the heroes, assign the powers, and you're ready for perfunctory dialogue leading up to a big two-page spread in which sleek and muscular beings hurtle through dramatic showdowns.

Like all the characters in the Marvel Comics stable, the X-Men have psychological or political problems; in the first movie they were faced with genocide, and in this one their right to privacy is violated with the Mutant Registration Act. Of course there will be audience members who believe mutants should have no rights, and so "X2" provides a valuable civics lesson. (How you register a mutant who can teleport or shape-shift is not explained.) Perhaps not coincidentally, the movie has a president who looks remarkably like George W. Bush. The film opens with one of its best scenes, as a creature with a forked tail attacks the White House and whooshes down corridors and careens off walls while the Secret Service fires blindly. The creature's purpose is apparently to give mutants a bad name, inspiring still more laws undermining their rights.

Despite all of the havoc and carnage of the first film, just about everybody is back for the sequel. Amazing, that they weren't all killed. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) still runs his private school for young mutants, Magneto (Ian McKellen) still plots against him, and there is a new villain named Gen. William Stryker (Brian Cox) who is assigned by the government to deal with the mutant threat and uses the turncoat mutant Yuriko (Kelly Hu) on his team.

The principal mutants are, in credits order, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who has blades that extend from his knuckles; Storm (Halle Berry), who can control the weather; Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), whose power of telekinesis is growing stronger; Cyclops (James Marsden), whose eyes shoot laser beams; Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), a shape-shifter whose shapes are mostly delightful; Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), the teleporter who attacked the White House; Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), who can cool your drink and lots of other things; Pyro (Aaron Stanford), who can hurl flames but needs a pilot light, and Rogue (Anna Paquin), who can take on aspects of the personalities around her.

These superpowers are so oddly assorted that an X-Men adventure is like a game of chess where every piece has a different move. Some of the powers are awesome; Storm stops an aerial pursuit by generating tornadoes with her mental powers, and Dr. Jean Grey is able to restart an airplane in mid-air.

Odd, then, that Wolverine is one of the dominant characters even though his X-Acto knuckles seem pretty insignificant compared to the powers of Pyro or Cyclops. In a convention borrowed from martial arts movies, "X2" pairs characters with matching powers, so that when Wolverine has his titanic battle, it's with an enemy also equipped with blades. What would happen if Pyro and Iceman went head to head? I visualize the two of them in a pool of hot water.

One might reasonably ask what threat could possibly be meaningful to mutants with such remarkable powers, but Magneto, who has serious personal issues with mutants, has devised an invention which I will not describe, except to say that it provides some of the movie's best visuals. I also admired the scene where Dr. Jean Grey saves the X-Men's airplane, and the way Janssen brings drama to the exercise of Grey's power instead of just switching it on and off.

Since the earliest days of "Spider-Man," Marvel heroes have had personal problems to deal with, and there's a classic Stan Lee moment here in the scene where Iceman breaks the news to his parents that he is a mutant. The movie treats the dialogue as a coming out scene, half-seriously, as if providing inspiration for real-life parents and their children with secrets.

Other possibilities are left for future installments. There's a romance in the movie between Rogue and Iceman, but it doesn't exploit the possibilities of love between mutants with incompatible powers. How inconvenient if during sex your partner was accidentally teleported, frozen, slashed, etc. Does Cyclops wear his dark glasses to bed? "X2: X-Men United" lacks a beginning, a middle and an end, and exists more as a self-renewing loop. In that it is faithful to comic books themselves, which month after month and year after year seem frozen in the same fictional universe. Yes, there are comics in which the characters age and their worlds change, but the X-Men seem likely to continue forever, demonstrating their superpowers in one showcase scene after another. Perhaps in the next generation a mutant will appear named Scribbler, who can write a better screenplay for them.

Plot Summary

• Tagline: The time has come for those who are different to stand united
• Plot Outline The X-Men band together to find a mutant assassin who has made an attempt on the President's life, while the Mutant Academy is attacked by military forces.
• Plot Synopsis: Several months had passed since The X-Men defeated Magneto and imprisoned him in a plastic chamber. One day, a mutant going by the name of "Nightcrawler" infiltrates The White House and attempts to assassinate The President. Meanwhile, Logan is trying to discover his past, and wonder why he became a mutant. However, the friction between the humans and mutants is grinding much harder. As a scientist named William Stryker is assigned to discover about Professor X's secret school and his chamber called "Cerebro". Meanwhile, Magneto's partner, Mystique, is planning to break her leader out of prison. Then, Professor X's school is attacked by Stryker's forces. Logan, Rougue, Iceman and others escaped. The rest of The X-Men meet in Boston along with Magneto, who escaped from prison. They must work together to stop Stryker and rescue Professor X.

Product Details

• Actors: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen
• Directors: Bryan Singer
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (DTS 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: November 25, 2003
• Run Time: 132 minutes

Editorial Reviews

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

“The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.

The key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he become the first posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch? His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). His clown's makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds, he seeks revenge, he claims, for the horrible punishment his father exacted on him when he was a child. In one diabolical scheme near the end of the film, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are blown up themselves. Throughout the film, he devises ingenious situations that force Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.

Because these actors and others are so powerful, and because the movie does not allow its spectacular special effects to upstage the humans, we’re surprised how deeply the drama affects us. Eckhart does an especially good job as Harvey Dent, whose character is transformed by a horrible fate into a bitter monster. It is customary in a comic book movie to maintain a certain knowing distance from the action, to view everything through a sophisticated screen. “The Dark Knight” slips around those defenses and engages us.

Yes, the special effects are extraordinary. They focus on the expected explosions and catastrophes, and have some superb, elaborate chase scenes. The movie was shot on location in Chicago, but it avoids such familiar landmarks as Marina City, the Wrigley Building or the skyline. Chicagoans will recognize many places, notably La Salle Street and Lower Wacker Drive, but director Nolan is not making a travelogue. He presents the city as a wilderness of skyscrapers, and a key sequence is set in the still-uncompleted Trump Tower. Through these heights, the Batman moves at the end of strong wires, or sometimes actually flies, using his cape as a parasail.

The plot involves nothing more or less than the Joker’s attempts to humiliate the forces for good and expose Batman’ secret identity, showing him to be a poser and a fraud. He includes Gordon and Dent on his target list, and contrives cruel tricks to play with the fact that Bruce Wayne once loved, and Harvey Dent now loves, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The tricks are more cruel than he realizes, because the Joker doesn’t know Batman’s identity. Heath Ledger has a good deal of dialogue in the movie, and a lot of it isn’t the usual jabs and jests we’re familiar with: It’s psychologically more complex, outlining the dilemmas he has constructed, and explaining his reasons for them. The screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who first worked together on “Memento”) has more depth and poetry than we might have expected.

Two of the supporting characters are crucial to the action, and are played effortlessly by the great actors Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Freeman, as the scientific genius Lucius Fox, is in charge of Bruce Wayne’s underground headquarters, and makes an ethical objection to a method of eavesdropping on all of the citizens of Gotham City. His stand has current political implictions. Caine is the faithful butler Alfred, who understands Wayne better than anybody, and makes a decision about a crucial letter.

Nolan also directed the previous, and excellent, “Batman Begins” (2005), which went into greater detail than ever before about Bruce Wayne’s origins and the reasons for his compulsions. Now it is the Joker’s turn, although his past is handled entirely with dialogue, not flashbacks. There are no references to Batman’s childhood, but we certainly remember it, and we realize that this conflict is between two adults who were twisted by childhood cruelty — one compensating by trying to do good, the other by trying to do evil. Perhaps they instinctively understand that themselves.

Something fundamental seems to be happening in the upper realms of the comic-book movie. “Spider-Man II” (2004) may have defined the high point of the traditional film based on comic-book heroes. A movie like the new “Hellboy II” allows its director free rein for his fantastical visions. But now “Iron Man” and even more so “The Dark Knight” move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman legend, with its origins in film noir, is the most fruitful one for exploration.

In his two Batman movies, Nolan has freed the character to be a canvas for a broader scope of human emotion. For Bruce Wayne is a deeply troubled man, let there be no doubt, and if ever in exile from his heroic role, it would not surprise me what he finds himself capable of doing.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: The follow-up to Batman Begins, The Dark Night reunites director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale, who reprises the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in his continuing war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to destroy organized crime in Gotham for good. The triumvirate proves effective. But soon the three find themselves prey to a rising criminal master The Joker who thrusts Gotham into anarchy and forces Batman closer to crossing the fine line between hero and vigilante. Heath Ledger stars as arch villain The Joker and Aaron Eckhart plays Dent. Maggie Gyllenhaal joins the cast as Rachel Dawes. Returning from Batman Begins are Gary Oldman as Gordon, Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.

Product Details

• Actors: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Directors: Christopher Nolan
• Format: Anamorphic, AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: December 9, 2008
• Run Time: 152 minutes

Editorial Reviews

High-tech slapstick, wicked banter and a somber "war on terror" subtext set the stage for Robert Downey Jr.'s super-watchable superhero debut in Iron Man.

Downey wears the 90-pound suit of booster-rocket armor well, as he dramatizes the awkward transition of inventor Tony Stark from self-obsessed playboy to scientist on a mission. More importantly, the 43-year-old actor makes the man inside the heavy-metal jacket compelling in his own right.

Unlike blockbuster characters X-Men, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, Iron Man never dominated Marvel Comics' pantheon of heroes. In locking down the first weekend in May for the film's launch, Paramount Pictures is betting big that Downey's charm and a steady stream of online teasers will galvanize a broad audience and match the box-office numbers of last summer's Middle East-themed Transformers. The plan could spawn a lucrative new superhero franchise: Some box-office experts predict Iron Man will be one of the top five hits of the season.

About those adrenaline-charged Iron Man trailers, which made the rounds online in the run-up to the film's Friday release: Have all the movie's cool bits been shown already?

Nope. You'll have to pay to get an eyeful of Iron Man's foe, the massive Iron Monger. Also missing from trailer action is a wishful-thinking revenge fantasy that plays out on the big screen: Iron Man shoots down yammering, hostage-holding terrorists with repulsor beams to save the lives of innocent women and children.

Iron Man's big set pieces lack Michael Bay's epic Transformers scope but feel more real than Spider-Man's movie escapades. And Iron Man has plenty going on between the special effects. First and foremost, Iron Man displays a sense of humor. Compared to the brooding Batman of recent vintage, Superman's plain-vanilla virtue and Peter Parker's borderline-cornball sincerity, Downey's wise-cracking superhero keeps the onscreen action snappy.

Director Jon Favreau (Elf, Swingers) plays to Downey's hyperkinetic, improvisational strengths from the outset, kicking off this origins story with a pre-trauma portrait of brilliant inventor Stark, a Scotch-swigging, fast-talking womanizer who's made a fortune selling weapons. Hours after sleeping with a reporter (Leslie Bibb) in his Malibu smart house, Stark checks in with steadfast executive assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and jets to Afghanistan in a private plane with Air Force liaison James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Terrence Howard). There, Stark demonstrates his latest exercise in mass destruction, the Jericho Missile, for U.S. military brass.

A roadside bomb changes everything. Glib no more, Stark wakes up in a cave with an electro-magneto disc carved into his chest that prevents shrapnel from piercing his heart. Eventually, he escapes warlord Raza (Faran Tahir) after forging the first crude Iron Man suit. The politics here are vague, and though Tahir glowers menacingly, the southwest Asian captors are a weak link in the movie. Stripped of the memorable one-liners, seductive charm or lopsided logic that a juicy villain brings to the table, Iron Man's enemies are a predictable, two-dimensional lot.

Back in California, the conscience-stricken Stark announces that his company is quitting the munitions business, which is bad news for stockholders and Tony's longtime partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

Toiling with robots in his 3-D modeling workshop to build a bigger, better Iron Man suit, gearhead Stark submerges himself in don't-bother-me-I'm-saving-the-world mode, which is good for some broad laughs when his out-of-control beta suit flings him against the wall.

After Iron Man rockets himself overseas in an upgraded, repulsor-powered suit to get payback from his former tormentors, corporate skulduggery leads to an earth-shuddering smackdown in the night skies over Los Angeles between Iron Man and his new nemesis, the bloated Iron Monger.

The fight and flight scenes blend live-action stunt work with CGI effects from Industrial Light and Magic with reasonably convincing results, but it's the actors who bring out the soul in Iron Man. Oscar-winner Paltrow endears as Pepper, the shy-yet-feisty sidekick who's not so secretly in love with her boss. Playing the wily Obadiah -- in shaved head and beard -- Bridges radiates smarmy gravitas and challenges Stark's newfound idealism at every turn.

But Downey's the driving force here. Sincere yet never sappy, he retains a rascal's charm to the end, and Iron Man finds a heart without losing his brainy edge.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: Lift off with high speed, high-flying action in this Ultimate 2-disc Edition that takes you inside the suit of Marvel's invincible superhero for the ultimate Iron Man experience!
  After surviving an unexpected attack in enemy territory, jet-setting industrialist Tony Shark builds a high-tech suit of armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man. Straight from the pages of the legendary cpmic book, Iron Man is a hero who is built - not born - to be unlike any other!

Product Details

• Actors: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb
• Directors: Jon Favreau
• Format: Anamorphic, AC-3, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Paramount
• DVD Release Date: September 30, 2008
• Run Time: 125 minutes

Editorial Reviews

"The Punisher" is a long, dark slog through grim revenge. Unlike most movies based on comic book heroes, it doesn't contain the glimmer of a smile, and its hero is a depressed alcoholic -- well he might be, since his entire family, including wife, child, father and even distant cousins -- has been massacred before his eyes. As he seeks vengeance, he makes the Charles Bronson character in the movie "Death Wish" look relatively cheerful and well-adjusted.

I wonder if the filmmakers understand quite how downbeat and dark their movie is? It opens with an FBI sting that leads to the death of a mobster's son. The operation, we learn, was the last assignment before retirement for agent Frank Castle (Thomas Jane). The criminal, a wealthy, high-profile money launderer named Mr. Saint (John Travolta), orders Castle's death, and then his wife Livia (Laura Harring) adds, "His family. His whole family."

This sets up a sequence from which the movie hardly recovers. Castle has a romantic walk on the beach with his wife Maria (Samantha Mathis), a hug with his child, and sentimental moments as his father (Roy Scheider) speaks at a family reunion. Then Castle's gunmen mow down the entire family in a series of gruesome vignettes, not neglecting to linger on the death of wife and child after their pitiful attempt to flee.

Castle kills a few of the attackers, but is cornered on a pier, shot repeatedly, dowsed with gasoline, blown up and lands in the water. This establishes a pattern for the movie: No one is killed only once. (Later in the film, a target is shot, chained to the back of a car and dragged into a car lot where all of the cars explode.) Miraculously, Castle survives, and is nursed back to health by one of those useful cliches, the black loner who lives by himself on an island and possesses the wisdom of the ages.

The rest of the movie involves his recovery, his preparations, and his methodical revenge against Mr. Saint and all of his people. Several colorful supporting characters are introduced, especially the three oddballs who live in the shabby rooming house Castle occupies. They are Joan (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), a sexy but frightened woman with an abusive boyfriend; Mr. Bumpo (John Pinette), a tubby sissy, and Spacker Dave (Ben Foster), who is pierced in ways you don't even want to think about. We have all been indoctrinated in the notion that "we are family!" and these three attempt to include Castle in their circle, despite his need to isolate, drink, kill and brood. There is something a little odd when he's invited over for ice cream and cake.

The movie is relentless in its violence. There is a scene where Spacker Dave is tortured by having his piercings removed with pliers; the scene breaks the fabric of the film and moves into a different and macabre arena. "The Punisher" opens on the same weekend as another movie about a gruesome massacre and an elaborate revenge, "Kill Bill, Vol. 2," but they are as different as night and day; "Kill Bill" vibrates with humor, irony, over-the-top exaggeration, and the joy of filmmaking. "The Punisher" is so grim and cheerless, you wonder if even its hero gets any satisfaction from his accomplishments.

That said, I have to note that the film, directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, is consistently well-acted, and has some scenes of real power. That the Punisher is a dreary and charmless character does not mean that Thomas Jane doesn't play him well: He goes all the way with the film's dark vision, and is effective in the action scenes. Travolta, as Mr. Saint, finds a truth you would not think was available in melodrama of this sort; his grief over his son and possessive jealousy over his wife are compelling.

The film doesn't simply set up Saint as a bad guy and a target, but devotes attention to the character, and develops an intriguing relationship between Saint and his right-hand man Quentin Glass (the always effective Will Patton). The Punisher is able to use Saint's jealousy to drive a wedge between the two men, but here's the strange thing: What happens between Saint and Glass is convincing, but what the Punisher does to sabotage their relationship is baffling and ludicrous, involving false fire-hydrants and the improbable detail that Saint would allow his wife to go to the movies alone after he knows the Punisher is alive and at war.

Right down the line, the performances are strong: Even the three misfits in the run-down rooming house are given the dimension and screen time to become interesting. The screenplay, by Michael France and Jonathan Hensleigh, based on the Marvel comic, doesn't simply foreground the Punisher and make everyone else into one-dimensional cartoons. There's so much that's well-done here that you sense a good movie slipping away. That movie would either be lighter than this one, or commit to its seriousness, like "Scarface." This one loses control of its mood and doesn't know what level of credibility it exists on. At the end, we feel battered down and depressed, emotions we probably don't seek from comic book heroes.

Plot Summary

• Tagline: This Is Not Revenge. It's Punishment!
• Plot Outline: After his wife and family are killed, G-Man Frank Castle takes it upon himself to distribute punishment to those responsible for the vendetta.
• Plot Synopsis: Frank Castle is a man who has seen too much death. On his final assignment, Castle plays his undercover role perfectly, but the operation spins out of control and a young man, Bobby Saint, is inadvertently killed. Inflamed by the death of their son, the Saints are willing to risk their newfound legitimacy on a wholesale mission of blood-vengeance. Castle's worst nightmare is about to come true, as Howard Saint and his lieutenants unleash hell at the Castle family reunion. But Castle, to his everlasting torment, survives. Until this moment, he has spent his entire life adhering strictly to the law. However, experience has taught him that the law cannot adequately penalize the people who murdered his family. Drawing upon all he has learned in twenty years, Castle sets in motion a plan to punish the murderers.

Product Details

• Actors: A. Russell Andrews, Omar Avila, James Carpinello, Roy Scheider, John Travolta
• Directors: Jonathan Hensleigh
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby Digital EX, DTS ES, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital EX 6.1), English (DTS-ES 6.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: R
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: November 21, 2006
• Run Time: 140 minutes

Disc 3 adalah Digital Copy Disc dan jika anda hanya ingin 2 disc saja silahkan anda pilih opsi Tanpa Digital Copy Disc dalam kotak Pilihan Yang Tersedia dibawah dan nilai produk akan secara automatis dikurangkan.

Editorial Reviews

The new Incredible Hulk movie couldn’t be more different to its 2003 predecessor . . .

Few movies had as drastic a change in box office fortunes as Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie. In its first weekend in the USA, Hulk earned a promising $62 million. The weekend after that it fell sharply to $18 million, and then to $8 million the weekend following that! Bad word-of-mouth sunk the film: it simply wasn’t what audiences expected. Walking out of cinemas screening it, the sheer disappointment amongst ten-year-old boys was palpable. Nothing had prepared them for the rather oddball art house flick meets superhero comic book that was 2003’s Hulk. All they wanted was to see Hulk smash puny humans . . .

But if you don’t succeed at first, then try again. And it is with this philosophy in mind that Marvel decided to give their potentially lucrative Hulk comic book franchise another shot. The new movie is simply titled The Incredible Hulk, hinting that this time around the movie has more in common with the popular late-1970s TV series than with the comic books – or heavens forbid! - the first movie. And that, dang it, this time round the Hulk will be truly incredible!

Incredible Hulk thus boasts an entirely brand-new cast and creative team.

An excellent Edward Norton replaces Eric Bana as Hulk / Bruce Banner and Liv Tyler replaces Jennifer Connelly (not a good move actually – Tyler is rather bland) as Banner’s ex-girlfriend, Betty Ross. A stoic William Hurt replaces the gruff-voiced Sam Elliott as Betty’s father, General Ross. Transporter 2 director Louis Leterrier takes over at the director’s chair from Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee, bringing his action movie sensibilities with him in the process. The screenplay is by X-Men: The Last Stand and Fantastic Four scribe Zak Penn along with actor Edward Norton (writing under a nom de plume). Penn is a busy guy by the way: he has already been signed to script 2011’s upcoming Avengers and Captain America movies for Marvel . . .

"Much more action-packed and entertaining than the previous Hulk movie. . ."

Judging from the credentials involved you may think that The Incredible Hulk has dumbed down – and you’d be right. But it in actual fact suits the material at hand much better. After all, this is a movie about a big green giant dude in purple pants who smashes stuff when he gets angry – which is about all the time! The Hulk has never exactly been Marvel’s deepest superhero and is pretty, well, one-dimensional when one thinks about it. But here the Hulk is portrayed as a more “human” character instead of the single-brain-celled creature he is usually portrayed as in the comics.

Straight-forward where the first movie was convoluted, action-packed where Hulk dithered, The Incredible Hulk dispenses with whatever back-story and exposition there is over the film’s opening credit sequence. No tortured unresolved oedipal conflicts here!

The Incredible Hulk assumes that audiences already know the character and his back-story: following an accident involving gamma rays, scientist Bruce Banner becomes the raging super-powered, green-skinned monster The Hulk whenever he gets angry. Of course the U.S. military in the guise of the corrupt General Ross (William Hurt) - who also happens to be the father of Banner’s girlfriend, Betty - is interested in getting their hands on the Hulk and using his blood to manufacture a new breed of super-powered soldiers. Banner becomes a fugitive, hoping to find a cure for his condition before Ross and the U.S. military industrial complex can get their hands on him. In that sense it is more of a sequel than a remake than some of the “let’s give it another shot” talk may have let on.

The story kicks off in Brazil where Banner works as a manual laborer at a bottling plant, trying to find a cure and learn Portuguese in his spare time. (One of the film’s funnier lines involves his broken Portuguese.) Soon however crack U.S. commandos led by Tim Roth with a permanent five o’clock shadow (do they allow this sort of thing in the U.S. military?) are on Banner’s case. He escapes – narrowly – in an exciting foot chase on top of rooftops in a densely populated Brazilian slum, an interesting and exotic choice that makes a change from your standard Hollywood action movie locales.

Things must come to a head however. Banner must find a cure and he soon finds himself back in the States where the Hulk faces off against the U.S. military in a thrilling show-off on a university campus that may lack the scope of a similar fight in the first movie, but which is emotionally more involving.

This time Roth’s character has however been injected by super-soldier juice and is well on his way to becoming The Abomination, an over-sized monster against which the Hulk faces off in a no-holds barred epic battle at the movie’s climax. This final battle in New York streets replete with flying cars, lots of stuff exploding and fleeing bystanders actually outclasses the final show-off in the recent Iron Man by the way.

Except for one or two quiet moments shared by Banner and his girlfriend while on the lam, Incredible Hulk doesn’t waste a single frame on dull talky exposition. It is all plot-driven and action-filled. In fact, unlike the much-hyped Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Incredible Hulk never runs out of steam. Put simply: this is the movie which audiences wanted to see back in 2003. No dull existential angst and weird split screen film techniques. No mutant poodles either. Instead we get some nice comic asides, including another cameo by Stan Lee and a riff on those mega-stretchy purple pants Banner always seems to wear.

With The Incredible Hulk Marvel has done it again. Like the recent Iron Man, Incredible Hulk is a definite Saturday matinee crowd-pleaser. Kids – and their parents – will love it. Unfortunately the only thing standing in the way of Incredible Hulk becoming the summer hit it deserves to be will be audiences’ negative memories of the 2003 original. Well, forget about all that: The Incredible Hulk may ultimately be as brainless as its main character, but it really is “incredible” this time around. And Hulk smashes stuff too . . .

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: Academy Award nominee Edward Norton stars as scientist Bruce Banner, a man who has been living in shadows, scouring the planet for an antidote to the unbridled force of rage within him: the Hulk. But when the military masterminds who dreams of exploiting his powers force him back into civilization, he finds himself coming face to face with his most formidable foe: the Abomination - a nightmarish beast of pure aggression whose powers match the Hulk's own!

Product Details

• Actors: Edward Norton, Tim Roth, Liv Tyler, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson
• Directors: Louis Leterrier
• Format: Anamorphic, AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 3 (2 x DVD9 + 1 x DVD5)
• Rating PG-13
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: October 21, 2008
• Run Time: 113 minutes

Editorial Reviews

The R-rated director's cut of SPAWN is basically the PG-13 version with more violence and naughty words. Casual viewers won't find much of interest here, but die-hard SPAWN fans who want the 100-proof version will also find a lot to like in the special features that accompany the film.

The premise of SPAWN will be familiar to many, but I'll summarize it briefly. Covert operative Alex Simmons (Michael Jai White: TOXIC AVENGER II, TOXIC AVENGER III) is an assassin for a shadowy government organization, a man who does bad things for what he believes are good reasons. When he decides he wants out, his corrupt boss Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen: THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE, THE DEAD ZONE, THE BELIEVERS, HEAR NO EVIL) and the amoral Agent Priest (Mindy Clarke: THE KILLER TONGUE, ANIMATRIX) murder him. Simmons goes to hell, where the Satanesque demon Malebolgia offers him a bargain: if Simmons will agree to lead the armies of hell against Heaven, Malebolgia will return him to Earth so he can see his beloved fiance, Wanda (Theresa Randle: NEAR DARK), again.

Simmons accepts the bargain and quickly finds out why the odds favor the house in the Hades Hotel & Casino: the devil doesn't play fair. Yes, Alex is back on earth, but his face is horribly scarred from his death by fire. And it's five years later - Wanda is married to his best friend, Terry Fitzgerald, and they have a daughter, Cyan, who may or may not be Simmons'. Alex gets to see his wife from a distance, but that's all he can do.

Both Heaven and Hell are interested in what Simmons does next. The hideous, demonic Clown (John Leguizamo: WHISPERS IN THE DARK, LAND OF THE DEAD) pushes him to kill Wynn, who has a device attached to his heart ensuring that, if it stops beating, it will unleash a biological doomsday weapon on the population of earth and start the battle of Armageddon. The 500-year-old Cagliostro tries to appeal to the good buried somewhere inside Alex. Meanwhile, Simmons is dealing with his transformation into the supremely powerful being known as Spawn.

Actually, he's too powerful, and that's my biggest problem with Spawn as a character. As seen in this movie, he can do just about anything: fly, heal, create armor, use eye-beams to remove things from peoples' bodies: there's no rhyme or reason to it; whatever he needs to do, he is able to do in some way that's visually cool but not necessarily logical.

But seeking logic in this film is a fool's errand. If you're looking for a coherent story, you're wasting your time. Director Mark Dippe comes out of the world of special effects, and that's where his interests lie. And given the modest $40 million budget (modest compared to the JURASSIC PARKS of the world) the effects are fantastic, especially the ones involving Spawn's cape, which swirls and writhes like the living thing it's supposed to be. The final battle takes place in Hell itself, a surreal, fiery place that isn't 100% successfully realized, but comes damn close, especially considering that the original budget didn't allow for the sequence.

As for the performances, the actors do the best they can with what they have, which is a muddled plot and cheesy, expository dialogue. Martin Sheen as the villain, Wynn, is running on automatic, but still adds a note of class to the proceedings, and it's kind of fun to watch him play what is essentially the parallel-world-evil-twin version of President Bartlett on The West Wing. Michael Jai White gives a fine performance considering he's in a prosthetic suit for most of the film, infusing Spawn with a tortured dignity that makes the character work on a basic emotional level. John Leguizamo tries his best to make The Clown work, but he just can't. He's not scary looking, he's saddled with way too much expository dialogue, and seeing Leguizamo squeezed into the short, fat Clown suit made me wince each time I saw the poor guy. Some things don't translate from comics to film, and the Clown is one of them. In contrast, however, the transformation of the silly looking Clown into the hideous creature known as the Violator is eye-popping, and the CGI Violator is succeeds totally.

The 220 new picture changes and remixed sound in this R-rated version mostly bring back things that were cut out of the theatrical version to ensure a PG-13 rating, so that Spawn's many young fans could see the film. Often the new additions involve restoring scenes of violence that had to be cut, like the shot of Alex Simmons going up in flames before he dies. Or they have to do with the Clown's off-color humor, like when he tells Spawn there was evil inside him when he was still "soup in your Mama's crotch".

This is not exactly APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX, folks.

There's a lot more interesting stuff to be found in the Special Features (to access some of them, you have to turn the disc over, like an old vinyl LP, which gave me a weird feeling of not-quite-deja vu). There are three early concept sketches of SPAWN by Todd McFarlane, including his earliest. They're fun, but I wish they'd been bigger: perhaps they could have given viewers the option of seeing both a regular-sized version and a larger one where you can scroll up and down to see the details. I should point out that I collect original comic art, so I know how large the pages normally are; the size might not bother most people. I also would have liked to see more than three drawings.

There's no shortage of movie concept sketches, though; there are over 200 of them. Although not by McFarlane, they're cool to see (but "Malebolgia" is misidentified as "Melabolgia" which sounds like a skin disease). Once again, I wish they were bigger, but maybe I just need a bigger TV.

Most interesting to fans who want info on the character's genesis is an interview with Todd McFarlane about his career and creation of Spawn. I'd never heard McFarlane speak before; he has a camera-friendly look and a great Jersey accent that made me want to cast him in any Mafia-themed movie I ever make.

The audio commentary track features a virtual army: director Dippe, producer Clint Goldman, visual effects supervisor "Spaz"Williams, and McFarlane. Typically, the screenwriter is nowhere to be found. That's less of a crime in this case because he was essentially adapting McFarlane's story, but it still pisses off this card-carrying member of the Writer's Guild of America West. McFarlane was recorded separately from the others, and perhaps due to the interview with him that appears elsewhere, is not heard from as much in the commentary, but does provide timely comments about his thinking when developing the character. As for the other three speakers, well, I wasn't thrilled. There's a few reasons for this. One, these guys have all known each other a long time, and they like to bullshit with each other and tell stories about their hijinks when they worked at Industrial Light and Magic. They sound like a bunch of frat guys talking over a few beers, which is fine, but not when it prevents you from getting information about making the film.

I like for these audio tracks to give me insight into what led the filmmakers to make the choices they made and/or how they accomplished things. For instance, the revelation that the sexy, villainous Agent Priest, who is killed early in the film, was to return from hell as a female Spawn until budget restrictions made it impossible explains what seems like the most wasteful death of a cool bad guy since Boba Fett. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of that kind of behind the scenes info, except in the area of special effects (of course, that reflects the focus of the movie). There are some very detailed descriptions of certain effects, which would interest SFX junkies, but I'm not one. Dippe spends a lot of time explaining what's in this version that was cut from the first and why it was cut, but I could have figured most of that out for myself, and his complaining about the ratings board (though warranted) gets tiresome. If you're into FX, give the commentary a listen, but if not, save it for when you're hung over and have nothing else to do.

If you're a fan of the SPAWN comic, you'll probably like what is a pretty faithful adaptation. But guess what: even if you're not a fan of Spawn or McFarlane, but are interested in translating comics to film, you should rent this and check out what McFarlane has to say about the whole process. Hearing him talk, you get a real sense of the guy. He's not a Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore, crafting multilayered stories with literary allusions. What he is is a guy who loves what he does and is fiercely determined to protect his creations. Hearing the story of how there was interest in SPAWN from several big studios, including Sony, but McFarlane held out until he found one that would give him the creative control he wanted, should serve as a lesson to other creators: if you want it done your way, get it in writing, and be prepared to take your ball and go home if they won't give it to you. Hearing the childlike excitement in his voice as he comments on the final battle sequence between Spawn and the Violator makes it clear that this is not just a business for McFarlane: he truly loves this stuff. And that, my friends, is the most crucial lesson any creator can learn: love what you do, because if you don't, no one else will.

Bottom line, if you want a treatise on brilliant filmmaking, buy the Citizen Kane special edition. SPAWN is an SFX spectacular, and if that's what you want, you'll be very happy. If you want more, look elsewhere.

Plot Summary

• Tagline: Born in darkness. Sworn to justice.
• Plot Outline: A mercenary is killed, but comes back from Hell as a reluctant soldier of the Devil.
• Plot Synopsis: An assassin named Al Simmons is double-crossed and murdered by his evil boss Jason Wynn. Al makes a deal with the devil and returns to earth as Spawn to see his wife. He is ordered by the devil's minion, The Clown, to kill Wynn. Wynn has made a deal with the clown too and is suppose to destroy the world with a deadly virus that will help start Armageddon and allow Hell to attack Heaven. Spawn must choose between Good & Evil.

Product Details

• Actors: Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen, Theresa Randle, Nicol Williamson
• Directors: Mark A.Z. Dippé
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, Live, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD5)
• Rating: R
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• DVD Release Date: January 6, 1998
• Run Time: 94 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Now I have fans who say, "We are so sorry, Michael Bay, you still suck but we love you." That's what the director of "Transformers" told Simon Ang during an interview in Seoul. He could have been speaking for me. I think Michael Bay sometimes sucks ("Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon," "Bad Boys II") but I find it possible to love him for a movie like "Transformers." It's goofy fun with a lot of stuff that blows up real good, and it has the grace not only to realize how preposterous it is, but to make that into an asset.

The movie is inspired by the Transformer toys that twist and fold and double in upon themselves, like a Rubik's Cube crossed with a contortionist. A yellow Camaro unfolds into a hulking robot, helicopters become walking death monsters, and an enemy named Megatron rumbles onto the screen and, in a voice that resembles the sound effects in "Earthquake," introduces himself: "I--AM--MEGATRON!!!"

I think that's the first time I've used three exclamation points. But Megatron is a three-exclamation-point kinda robot. He is the most fearsome warrior of the evil Decepticons, enemies of the benevolent Transformers. Both races (or maybe they're brands) of robots fled the doomed planet Cybertron and have been drawn to Earth because Megatron crash-landed near the North Pole a century ago and possesses the Allspark, which is the key to something, I'm not sure what, but since it's basically an alien MacGuffin it doesn't much matter. (Note to fanboys about to send me an e-mail explaining the Allspark: Look up "MacGuffin" in Wikipedia.)

The movie opens like one of those teen comedies where the likable hero is picked on by bullies at school, partly because he didn't make the football team, and mostly because he doesn't have a keen car. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) talks his dad into buying him one, and he ends up with an old beater, a yellow Camaro that is actually the Transformer named Bumblebee and gets so mad when his paint job is insulted that it transforms itself into a shiny new Camaro.

This is more than a hot car. It plays the soundtrack to Sam's life. It helps Sam become visible to his sexy classmate Mikaela (Megan Fox), who says, "Do I know you?" Sam mentions casually that they take four classes together and have been in the same school since first grade. The high school stuff, which could be a teenage comedy on its own, segues into the battling robot stuff, and there is some low-key political satire in which the secretary of defense (Jon Voight) runs the country, while the president (not even credited) limits himself to a request for a Ding-Dong.

Voight sends the armed services into action, and we see a lot of Sgt. Lennox (John Duhamel) and Tech Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson). They and their men labor during much of the movie under the optimistic impression that a metal robot the size of a 10-story building can be defeated by, or even brought to notice, automatic weapons fire. Sam and Bumblebee are crucial to the struggle, although a secret ops guy (John Turturro) asks the defense secretary, "You gonna lay the fate of the world on a kid's Camaro?"

Everything comes down to an epic battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons, and that's when my attention began to wander, and the movie lost a potential fourth star. First let me say that the robots, created by Industrial Light and Magic, are indeed delightful creatures; you can look hard and see the truck windshields, hubcaps and junkyard stuff they're made of. And their movements are ingenious, especially a scorpionlike robot in the desert. (Little spider robots owe something to the similar creatures in Spielberg's "Minority Report," and we note he is a producer of this movie.) How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible.

All the same, the mechanical battle goes on and on and on and on, with robots banging into each other and crashing into buildings, and buildings falling into the street, and the military firing, and jets sweeping overhead, and Megatron and the good hero, Optimus Prime, duking it out, and the soundtrack sawing away at thrilling music, and enough is enough. Just because CGI makes such endless sequences possible doesn't make them necessary. They should be choreographed to reflect a strategy and not simply reflect shapeless, random violence. Here the robots are like TV wrestlers who are down but usually not out.

I saw the movie on the largest screen in our nearest multiplex. It was standing room only, and hundreds were turned away. Even the name of Hasbro, maker of the Transformers toys, was cheered during the titles, and the audience laughed and applauded and loved all the human parts and the opening comedy. But when the battle of the titans began, a curious thing happened. The theater fell dead silent. No cheers. No reaction whether Optimus Prime or Megatron was on top. No nothing. I looked around and saw only passive faces looking at the screen.

My guess is we're getting to the point where CGI should be used as a topping and not the whole pizza. The movie runs 144 minutes. You could bring it in at two hours by cutting CGI shots, and have a better movie.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: High-school student Sam Witwicky buys his first car, who is actually the Autobot Bumblebee. Bumblebee defends Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela Banes from the Decepticon Barricade, before the other Autobots arrive on Earth. They are searching for the Allspark, and the war on Earth heats up as the Decepticons attack a United States military base in Qatar. Sam and Mikaela are taken by the top-secret agency Sector 7 to help stop the Decepticons, but when they learn the agency also intends to destroy the Autobots, they formulate their own plan to save the world.

Product Details

• Actors: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Rachael Taylor
• Directors: Michael Bay
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby, Color, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1 ), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Dreamworks Video
• DVD Release Date: October 16, 2007
• Run Time: 143 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Not since "Infra-Man" has a movie opened with a development more ominous than the crisis facing Earth at the beginning of "Flash Gordon." But Earth scientists are playing it cool: A NASA spokesman denies that there's anything unusual about an unexpected total eclipse of the sun. Unusual? That the moon is out of its orbit? Ha! It takes a mad scientist like Dr. Hans Zarkov to realize that the Earth is under attack, and speed to the rescue in his private space ship-with Flash Gordon and Dale Arden aboard as unwilling passengers.

If memory serves, this is more or less the same beginning as in the original movie serialization of "Flash Gordon," back in 1936. Even if it's not, this new Dino De Laurentiis production is true to the tacky pop origins of the Flash Gordon comic strip and the serials starring Buster Crabbe. At a time when "Star Wars" and its spin-offs have inspired special effects men to bust a gut making their interplanetary adventures look real, "Flash Gordon" is cheerfully willing to look as phony as it is.

I DON'T mean that as a criticism. You can make a city float in the clouds and look marginally realistic (as in "The Empire Strikes Back"), but there's something sort of fun about the "Flash Gordon" city that floats in the clouds and looks like a large miniature model floating in fake clouds. And as the spaceships lumber past on the screen, I really wouldn't have minded if they'd left a tube of model airplane glue lying in the lower left-hand corner.

"Flash Gordon" is played for laughs, and wisely so. It is no more sophisticated than the comic strip it's based on, and that takes the curse off of material that was old before it was born. This is space opera, a genre invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Hugo Gernsback and other men of unlimited imagination harnessed to definitely limited skills. It's fun to see it done with energy and love and without the pseudo-meaningful apparatus of the Force and Trekkie Power.

The plot is simple: The Emperor Ming (Max von Sydow), bored with life in the universe, decides to pick on Earth. After warming up with a few hurricanes and earthquakes, he sends the moon spinning down toward the planet. Meanwhile, Zarkov, Flash (Sam J. Jones, last seen as Bo Derek's husband in "10") and Dale (Melody Anderson) crash-land in Ming's imperial space city. There are intrigues afoot, but meanwhile Dale catches Ming's eye, he determines to marry her, and Flash finds himself fighting for his life with a gladiator.

MIKE HODGES, the British director hired by De Laurentiis to orchestrate this comic space opera, is true to the visual tradition Of the, original serials: Everyone is dressed in capes and ridiculous boots and headdresses, and stand, around on the command decks of ornate space ships. There's an imperial court to applaud and boo at the appropriate times.

And there's a cliff-hanging showdown when the Hawk Men, looking amazingly like the winged angels in De Laurentiis' production as "Barbarella" (1968), engage the crew of a space ship in hand-to-hand battle (you know there's something lacking with the Ming technology when the commander of the rocket ship shouts "Stand by to the repel invaders!"). Is all of this ridiculous? Of course. Is it fun? Yeah, sort of, it is.

Plot Summary

• Plot Outline: Flash Gordon is an American football player who along with Dale Arden are returning to New York City after a long vacation, until the plane they are passengers on crashes into the laboratory of Russian scientist Dr. Hans Zarkov. Both Flash and Dale become unwilling passengers on-board Zarkov's rocket-ship as Zarkov sets a course for the planet Mongo. Arriving on Mongo, Flash and his companions find the planet is under the ruler-ship of the evil Emperor Ming the Merciless and Ming is attacking Earth with natural disasters as he bids to destroy Earth. Realising that Earth and the human race is in mortal danger, Flash decides to unite the kingdoms of Mongo and combine the forces of rivals Prince Baron and Prince Vultan to rescue Dale, who is to become Ming's wife and defeat Ming and save Earth from annihilation.

Product Details

• Actors: Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Topol, Ornella Muti
• Directors: Mike Hodges
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: August 7, 2007
• Run Time: 112 minutes

Editorial Reviews

The Wraith is a new spin on the tried and true ghost/spirit revenge tale. I’m sure we’ve all seen movies where someone is wrongfully murdered, and then a spectral version of them self comes back in order to exact vengeance on those who did him or her wrong. What you probably haven’t seen is, what if that victim came back with a Dodge Turbo Interceptor, and used his car to kill those who “Road Pirates” who killed him and continue terrorize the small Arizona town they live in? Sounds kind of badass right? It totally is, and here’s why.

The first rule of making a car-centric (or Car Porn, for those of you gear-heads out there) movie, besides having some sexy looking cars to film, is that you film the cars well while they are moving. In recent years, computer graphics, models and copious other cop out special effects have replaced elaborate pyrotechnics and stunt drivers, but The Wraith spares us that sub-video game graphic quality and non-sense for some no-bullshit car chases, races, and massive, multiple angle explosions. Director Mike Marvin shows a lot of competence and confidence while he makes sweet cinematic love to the fleet of vehicles he has at his disposal, and every race and chase is filmed very well, even if they are a bit on the short side. Even with short actions sequences, the movie is built around the set pieces, meaning to say that you never go more than 15 minutes or so before something is getting blown up or shot at. Marvin still manages to let the characters be fleshed out enough to care about by meshing the action with character development, with special attention given towards Keri Johnson (the damsel in distress), Packard Walsh (played brilliantly by actor-turned-director Nick Cassavetes, director of such steaming piles of shit like John Q, The Notebook, and Alpha Dog), and Jake Kesey (played by a stunt driver in an awesome black leather suit mostly, and when he is out of the suit, it’s Charlie Sheen.) Mike Marvin seemed hellbent on turning Nick Cassavetes into a legitimate action bad guy movie star, as he shines throughout as just a miserable bastard of a villain, but one who is pretty smart and intimidating in an unconventionally stylish and almost classy way. The scene that pushes him over the edge, and shows Mike Marvin at his actor-driven-scene best is when Packard forces his girlfriend/”property”, Keri Johnson, to cut his hand to show that they are “Blood Lovers.” When Marvin isn’t giving little peeks into the everyday world of the road pirates or Keri, he is making the best of the picturesque south-western scenery and really knocking the race and chase scenes out of the park with simple but highly effective camera angles that are usually filming slightly upward at the cars, in order to give that a “bigger than life” quality and a greater sense of speed and pure muscle.

Since I already bled into a critique of what you can expect from the acting, I will cheat a bit here and sum it up by saying that if you know how to take 80’s acting on the chin, and laugh a bit WITH it, instead of at it, you won’t have any problems sitting through The Wraith. On a whole, the acting is above par from what I remembered it being the first time I saw this (which was when I was like 12, and I saw it on a Sunday afternoon on WB 11 New York or something like that) and again, the true standout is Nick Cassavetes as the absolutely insufferable and demented Packard Walsh. Oh, and Clint Howard lends his…big hair, crazy glasses, and general geekdom to this flick as well, and Clint is always worth mentioning. Randy Quaid has something between a cameo and a bit part as one Detective Loomis (a nod to Halloween?) and does what Randy Quaid normally does; be kinda weird and off putting and not play much of a factor in the likability of any movie in particular.

The real stars of the show, as you probably guessed by the story synopsis, are the special effects and the cars. Now, before somebody jumps down my throat, I am not a guy car. I know one car in the film is a Turbo Interceptor, because that’s what people called it in the movie. There was also a Cuda. That’s about what I know. What I do know, is the cars we all very distinguishable, looked very cool and seemed to go really fast, and that was really all I cared about. The races, as I mentioned earlier, are somewhat on the short sort and somewhat samey, but the fact that they usually end in explosions or some massive crash makes them much more entertaining. The explosions are ridiculously big, the warehouse explosion and the final crash explosion in particular, but it adds to the quality of the revenge that is so deservedly being dealt out by our black clad, Spas-12 shotgun wielding, Turbo Interceptor driving hero. The natural lighting that prevails through much of the film gives the movie a much more realistic and gritty look, like you can almost feel the sand and dirt kicking up around these four-wheeled mayhem machines. The south west is the perfect place to film a movie based around cars and crashes, and the locale certainly glimmers here. When we aren’t seeing the small Arizon town in the daytime, heavy blues and purples help to give the nighttime a other worldly feel, especially when The Wraith shows up. As far as the auido department goes, the sound is spot on, and the soundtrack has some Billy Idol, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Palmer, and Motley Crue in it when the synthy score isn’t just moseying around.

The Wraith must be taken in by someone who can enjoy a fair amount of very minor flaws that come with any film that is dated beyond 20 years. That being said, it is a highly enjoyable, very watchable (visually, it still has some impressive moments), and an impressively unique take on an age old film formula that sees the victim getting one last go at those who did him in. The “Road Pirates” give it a bit of a modern day Mad Max feel, but The Wraith taps into more of a spacey vibe that anything. The universe itself has rejected the death of the young, innocent, and unjustly murdered man and have sent him back to Earth with a bitchin’ all black leather racing suit, racing helmet with tinted visor, and a sweet fucking car with one mission. Kick. Major. Ass.

Plot Summary

• Tagline: He's not from around here.
• Plot Outline Jake is killed by neighbourhood thugs, and returns as a mystical figure (The Wraith) to gain revenge.
• Plot Synopsis: Packard Walsh and his motorized gang control and terrorize an Arizona desert town where they force drivers to drag-race so they can 'win' their vehicles. After Walsh beats the decent teenager Jamie Hankins to death after finding him with his girlfriend, a mysterious power creates Jake Kesey, an extremely cool motor-biker who has a car which is invincible. Jake befriends Jamie's girlfriend Keri Johnson, takes Jamie's sweet brother Bill under his wing and manages what Sheriff Loomis couldn't; eliminate Packard's criminal gang the hard way...

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Product Details

• Actors: Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes, Sherilyn Fenn, Randy Quaid, Matthew Barry
• Directors: Mike Marvin
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Subtitles: -
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Full Screen)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Platinum Disc
• DVD Release Date: November 26, 2002
• Run Time: 92 minutes

Editorial Reviews

There is a moment early in "RoboCop" when a robot runs amok. It has been programmed to warn a criminal to drop his gun, and then to shoot him if he does not comply. The robot, an ugly and ungainly machine, is wheeled into a board meeting of the company that hopes to make millions by retailing it. A junior executive is chosen to pull a gun on the machine. The warning is issued. The exec drops his gun. The robot repeats the warning, counts to five, and shoots the guy dead.

This is a very funny scene. (Whether it was even funnier before the MPAA Code and Ratings Administration requested trims in it is, I suppose, a moot point.) It is funny in the same way that the assembly line in Chaplin's "Modern Times" is funny - because there is something hilarious about logic applied to a situation where it is not relevant.

Because the scene surprises us in a movie that seemed to be developing into a serious thriller, it puts us off guard. We're no longer quite sure where "RoboCop" is going, and that's one of the movie's best qualities.

The film takes place at an unspecified time in the future in Detroit, a city where gang terror rules. There has been a series of brutal cop killings. A big corporation wants to market the robot cops to stamp out crime, but the demonstrator model obviously is not up to the job.

A junior scientist thinks he knows a better way to make a policeman, by combining robotics with a human brain. And he gets his chance when a hero cop (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty. Well, not quite killed. Something remains, and around that human core the first "Robocop" is constructed - a half-man, half-machine that operates with perfect logic except for the shreds of human spontaneity and intuition that may be lurking somewhere in the background of its memory.

Nancy Allen co-stars in the movie as a woman cop who was Weller's partner before he was shot. She recognizes something familiar about the robocop, and eventually realizes what it is: Inside that suit of steel, it's her old partner, Weller. It actually shouldn't have taken her long to figure that out, since Weller's original nose, mouth, chin and jaw are visible. His inventor apparently agrees with Batman and Robin that if you can't see the eyes of someone you know, you'll never recognize them.

The broad outline of the plot develops along more or less standard thriller lines. But this is not a standard thriller. The director is Paul Verhoeven, the gifted Dutch filmmaker whose earlier credits include "Soldier of Orange" and "The Fourth Man." His movies are not easily categorized. There is comedy in this movie, even slapstick comedy. There is romance. There is a certain amount of philosophy, centering on the question, What is a man? And there is pointed social satire, too, as the robocop takes on some of the attributes and some of the popular following of a Bernhard Goetz.

Oddly enough, a lot of the robocop's personality is expressed by his voice, which is a mechanical monotone. Machines and robots have spoken like this for years in the movies, and now life is beginning to copy them; I was in the Atlanta airport a few weeks ago, boarding the shuttle train to the terminal, and the train started talking just like robocop, in an uninflected monotone. ("Your-attention-please-the-doors-are-about-to-close.")

I laughed. No one else did. Since the recorded message obviously could have been recorded in a normal human voice, the purpose of the robotic audio style was clear: to make the commands seem to emanate from a pre-programmed authority that could not be appealed to. In "RoboCop," Verhoeven and Weller get a lot of mileage out of the conflict between that utterly assured voice and the increasingly confused being behind it.

Considering that he spends much of the movie hidden behind one kind of makeup device or another, Weller does an impressive job of creating sympathy for his character. He is more "human," indeed, when he is a robocop than earlier in the movie, when he's an ordinary human being. His plight is appealing, and Nancy Allen is effective as the determined partner who wants to find out what really happened to him.

Most thriller and special-effects movies come right off the assembly line. You can call out every development in advance, and usually be right. "RoboCop" is a thriller with a difference.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: After Omni Consumer Products (OCP) announced that it bought out the Detroit police department, the department decides to go on strike. Alex Murphy, gets transferred from Metro South to the West. He and his partner, Anne Lewis, track down a group of criminals led by Clarence Boddicker. Unfortunately, Murphy was killed by Clarence's gang. Bob Morton, one of OCP's employees, transforms Murphy's corpse into Robocop, to compete with another employee Dick Jones' ED-209. Robocop's tests are successful. Unfortunately, Robocop rediscovers his memories (when he was Alex Murphy), and now knows he has to find and arrest Clarence Boddicker. He realizes that Clarence is working for Bob Morton's competition Dick Jones. Now, Robocop must stop both Clarence and Dick Jones.

Product Details

• Actors: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith
• Directors: Paul Verhoeven
• Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby Digital, Criterion, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.1 Surround)
• Subtitles: -
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: UNRATED
• Studio: Criterion
• DVD Release Date: October 6, 1998
• Run Time: 103 minutes

Editorial Reviews

"Superman II" begins in midstream, and never looks back (aside from a brief recap of the first movie). In many ways, it's a repeat of the last ninety minutes of the first film. It has the same key characters, including archvillain Lex Luthor. It continues the love story of Lois Lane and Superman, not to mention the strange relationship of Lois and Clark Kent. It features the return of three villains from Krypton, who when last seen were trapped in a one-dimensional plane of light and cast adrift in space. And it continues those remarkable special effects.

From his earliest days in a comic book, Superman always has been an urban hero. He lived in a universe that was defined by screaming banner headlines and vast symbolic acts, and Superman II catches that flavor perfectly with its use of famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, and the Coca-Cola sign in Times Square. He was a pop hero in a pop world, and like Mickey Mouse and the original Coke trademark, he became an instantly recognizable trademark.

That's why the special effects in both Superman movies are so crucial. It is a great deal simpler to show a rocket ship against the backdrop of outer space than to show Kryptonian villains hurling a city bus through the air in midtown Manhattan. But the feeling of actuality makes Superman's exploits more fun. It brings the fantastic into our everyday lives; it delights in showing us the reaction of the man on the street to Superman's latest stunt. In the movie, as in the comic book, ordinary citizens seem to spend their days glued to the sidewalk, gazing skyward, and shouting things like "Superman is dead!" or "Superman has saved the world!"

In "Superman II" he saves large portions of the world, all right, but what he preserves most of all is the element of humanity within him. The Superman movies made a basic decision to give Superman and his alter ego, Clark Kent, more human feelings than the character originally possessed. So "Superman II" has a lot of fun developing his odd dual relationship with Lois Lane. At long, long last, Lois and Superman make love in this movie (after champagne, but discreetly offscreen in Superman's ice palace). But Lois and Clark Kent also spend the night together in highly compromised circumstances, in a Niagara Falls honeymoon haven.

And the movie has fun with another one of those ultimate tests that Lois was always throwing at Clark to make him admit he was really Superman. Lois bets her life on it this time, hurling herself into the rapids below Niagara Falls. Either Clark can turn into Superman and save her -- or she'll drown. And what then? All I can say is, Clark does not turn into Superman.

This scene has a lot of humor in it, and the whole film has more smiles and laughs than the first one. Maybe that's because of a change in directors. Richard Donner, who made the first "Superman" film and did a brilliant job of establishing a basic look for the series, was followed this time by Richard Lester ("A Hard Day's Night," "The Three Musketeers"), and this is some of Lester's best work. He permits satire to make its way into the film more easily. He has a lot of fun with Gene Hackman, as the still-scheming, thin-skinned, egomaniacal Lex Luthor. And he draws out Christopher Reeve, whose performance in the title role is sly, knowing, and yet still appropriately square.

This movie's most intriguing insight is that Superman's disguise as Clark Kent isn't a matter of looks as much as of mental attitude: Clark is disguised not by his glasses but by his ordinariness. Beneath his meek exterior, of course, is concealed a superhero. And, the movie subtly hints, isn't that the case with us all?

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: The meta-human heritage of the Last Son Of Krypton is tested as never before when a series of misadventures unlocks in Superman a very human emotion - love. Superman's love for journalist Lois Lane reaches a seemingly impossible peak, but requires the ultimate sacrifice - as the incompatible molecular structure of Kal-El and Lois would gravely complicate the inevitable bearing of children, Kal-El must be purged of his superpower, to live as a mortal. Kal-El, despite the pleas of the spirit of his long-lost mother, willingly agrees, and now a normal human being, consummates his love for Lois - a decision that dooms the Earth as three criminals from Krypton, freed from their extra-dimensional prison, lay waste to the planet in a path of conquest aided by the planet's most arrogant criminal, Lex Luthor, who intends to smoke out Superman for his destruction - unaware as he is of The Man Of Steel's helplessness, a condition that only one last hope can rectify.

Product Details

• Actors: Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper, Sarah Douglas
• Directors: Richard Donner, Richard Lester
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby, Color, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo), French (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Warner Bros.
• DVD Release Date: May 1, 2001
• Run Time: 127 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Superman is a pure delight, a wondrous combination of all the old-fashioned things we never really get tired of: adventure and romance, heroes and villains, earthshaking special effects, and -- you know what else? Wit. That surprised me more than anything: That this big-budget epic, which was half a decade making its way to the screen, would turn out to have an intelligent sense of humor about itself.

The wit, to be sure, is a little slow in revealing itself. The film's opening scenes combine great intergalactic special effects with ponderous acting and dialogue -- most of it from Marlon Brando, who, as Superman's father, sends the kid to Earth in a spaceship that barely survives the destruction of the planet Krypton. Brando was allegedly paid $3 million for his role, or, judging by his dialogue, $500,000 a cliche. After Superbaby survives his space flight and lands in a Midwestern wheat field, however, the movie gets down to earth, too. And it has the surprising ability to have fun with its special effects. That's surprising because special effects on this vast scale (falling airliners, derailing passenger trains, subterranean dungeons, cracks in the earth, volcanic eruptions, dams bursting) are so expensive and difficult that it takes a special kind of courage to kid them a little -- instead of regarding them with awe, as in the witless Earthquake.

The audience finds itself pleasantly surprised, and taken a little off guard; the movie's tremendously exciting in a comic book sort of way (kids will go ape for it), but at the same time it has a sly sophistication, a kidding insight into the material, that makes it, amazingly, a refreshingly offbeat comedy.

Most of the humor centers, of course, around one of the central icons of American popular culture, Superman (who, and I quote from our common memory of hundreds of comic books and radio and TV shows, in his dual identity as Clark Kent isa mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet). The producers held a worldwide talent search for an actor to play Superman, and although "talent searches" are usually 100 percent horsefeathers, this time, for once, they actually found the right guy.

He is Christopher Reeve. He looks like the Superman in the comic books (a fate I would not wish on anybody), but he's also an engaging actor, open and funny in his big love scene with Lois Lane, and then correctly awesome in his showdown with the archvillain Lex Luthor. Reeve sells the role; wrong casting here would have sunk everything.

And there would have been a lot to sink. Superman may have been expensive, all right, but the money's there on the screen. The screenplay was obviously written without the slightest concern for how much it might cost. After Clark Kent goes to work for the Daily Planet (and we meet old favorites Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen), there's a nonstop series of disasters just for openers: Poor Lois finds herself dangling from one seatbelt after her helicopter crashes high atop the Daily Planet Building; Air Force One is struck by lightning and loses an engine; a thief climbs up a building using suction cups, and so on. Superman resolves his emergencies with, well, tact and good manners. He's modest about his abilities. Snaps a salute to the president. Says he's for "truth, justice, and the American Way." And, of course, falls in love with Lois Lane.

She's played by Margot Kidder, and their relationship is subtly, funnily wicked. She lives in a typical girl reporter's apartment (you know, a penthouse high atop a Metropolis skyscraper), and Superman zooms down to offer an exclusive interview and a free flight over Metropolis. Supposing you're a girl reporter, and Superman turns up. What would you ask him? So does she.

Meanwhile, the evil Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is planning an apocalyptic scheme to destroy the entire West Coast, plus Hackensack, New Jersey. He knows Superman's weak point: the deadly substance Kryptonite. He also knows that Superman cannot see through lead (Lois Lane, alas, forgets). Luthor lives in a subterranean pad that's a comic inspiration: A half-flooded, subterranean train station. Superman drills through the earth for a visit.

But enough of the plot. The movie works so well because of its wit and its special effects. A word more about each. The movie begins with the tremendous advantage that almost everyone in the audience knows the Superman saga from youth. There aren't a lot of explanations needed; that's brilliantly demonstrated in the first scene where Superman tries to change in a phone booth. Christopher Reeve can be allowed to smile, to permit himself a double entendre, to kid himself.

And then the special effects. They're as good in their way as any you've seen, and they come thick and fast. When the screenplay calls for Luthor to create an earthquake and for Superman to try to stop it, the movie doesn't give us a falling bridge or two, it gives us the San Andreas Fault cracking open. No half measures for Superman. The movie is, in fact, a triumph of imagination over both the difficulties of technology and the inhibitions of money. Superman wasn't easy to bring to the screen, but the filmmakers kept at it until they had it right.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: The infant Kal-El, of the planet Krypton, makes his journey to Earth in a ship constructed by his father, Jor-El, just as the planet explodes. Crashing down in the midwest United States, the boy is adopted by farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent. After Jonathan's death several years later, Kal-El - now known as Clark Kent - learns of his true identity from the ghost of Jor-El. He has great powers - he can fly, outrun a train, and lift up a 1-ton truck. But it isn't until he gains a job at Metropolis' Daily Planet newspaper that things begin to come together. One night, after leaving work, he sees a helicopter crash on the building's roof. From this night on, he will be known by a new name...SUPERMAN! His mission: "To fight for truth, justice and the American Way". Lex Luthor, however, has other ideas - to sabotage a pair of nuclear missiles and use them to create an earthquake that will wipe out the California coastline. Superman must race against time and stop a sinister plan by Luthor to eliminate him before millions of innocent people are killed.

Product Details

• Actors: Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper
• Directors: Richard Donner
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby, Color, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Warner Bros.
• DVD Release Date: May 1, 2001
• Run Time: 154 minutes

Editorial Reviews

"Superman III" is the kind of movie I feared the original "Superman" would be. It's a cinematic comic book, shallow, silly, filled with stunts and action, without much human interest. What's amazing is that the first two Superman movies avoided that description, creating a fantasy with a certain charm. They could have been manipulative special-effects movies, but they were a great deal more. With this third one, maybe they've finally run out of inspiration.

The big news about "Superman III" is, of course, the presence of Richard Pryor in the cast. But Pryor isn't used very well here. He never really emerges as a person we care about. His character and the whole movie seem assembled out of pre-fabricated pieces. The first two films were too, in a way, but real care was taken with the dialogue, and we could occasionally halfway believe that real people had gotten themselves into this world of fantasy.

Not this time. "Superman III" drops most of the threads of the first two movies -- including Lois Lane's increasingly complex love affair with Clark Kent and Superman -- and goes for the action. There's no real sense of what Superman, or Clark, ever really feels. The running gag about the hero's double identity isn't really exploited this time. The sheer amazingness of Superman isn't explored; the movie and the people in it take this incredible creature for granted. After the bird and the plane, it's "Superman" when it should be SUPERMAN!

The plot involves the usual scheme to control the Earth. The villain this time is Robert Vaughn, as a mad billionaire who wants to use satellites to control the Earth's crops and become even richer. He directs his satellites and weapons systems by computer, and that's how he hooks up with Pryor, as a brilliant but befuddled computer programmer.

Superman, meanwhile, has a couple of things on his mind. After Lois Lane leaves to go on vacation at the beginning of the movie (in a particularly awkward scene), Clark goes home to his Smallville High School reunion, and has a love affair with Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole). It's sweet, but it's not half as interesting as the Ice Castle footage with Lois Lane in the last movie. Then Superman gets zapped with some ersatz Kryptonite and turns into a meanie, which is good for some laughs (as a practical joke, he straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa).

All of this is sort of fun, and the special effects are sometimes very good, but there's no real sense of wonder in this film -- no moments like the scene in the first "Superman" where California threatened to fall into the sea and Superman turned back time to save humanity. After that, who cares about Robert Vaughn's satellites? Or Richard Pryor's dilemma? Pryor can be a wicked, anarchic comic actor, and that presence would have been welcome here. Instead, like the rest of "Superman III," he's kind of innocuous.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: In mortal enemies, the Man of Steel has no match. Even faced with a trio of sinister super-powered villains from his home planet, Superman saved the day. But can super-strength stand up to the diabolical circuitry of a criminally insane computer? Enter Gus Gorman, a genial half-wit who just happens to be a natural-born genius at computer programming. In his hands, a computer keyboard turns into a deadly weapon . . . and soon, Superman faces the microelectronic menace of his career. Clark Kent meets his old flame Lana Lang at a Smallville High School reunion and Superman turns into his own worst enemy after exposure to a chunk of red kryptonite.

Product Details

• Actors: Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure, Annette O'Toole
• Directors: Richard Lester
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby, Color, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo), French (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Warner Bros.
• DVD Release Date: May 1, 2001
• Run Time: 125 minutes

Editorial Reviews

One of the things all teenagers believe is that their parents were never teenagers. Their parents were, perhaps, children once. They are undeniably adults now. but how could they have ever been teenagers, and yet not understand their own children? This vi [missing text] teenagers by being one. But "Back to the Future" is even more hopeful: It argues that you can travel back in time to the years when your parents were teenagers, and straighten them out right at the moment when they needed help the most.

The movie begins in the present, with a teenager named Marty (Michael J. Fox, from TV's "Family Ties"). His parents (let's face it) are hopeless nerds. Dad tells corny jokes and Mom guzzles vodka in the kitchen and the evening meal is like feeding time at the fun house. All that keeps Marty sane is his friendship with the nutty Dr. Brown (Christopher Lloyd), an inventor with glowing eyes and hair like a fright wig. Brown believes he has discovered the secret of time travel, and one night in the deserted parking lot of the local shopping mall, he demonstrates his invention. In the long history of time travel movies, there has never been a time machine quite like Brown's, which resembles nothing so much as a customized De Lorean.

The gadget works, and then, after a series of surprises, Marty finds himself transported back 30 years in time, to the days when the shopping mall was a farmer's field (there's a nice gag when the farmer thinks the De Lorean, with its gull-wing doors, is a flying saucer). Marty wanders into town, still wearing his 1985 clothing, and the townsfolk look at his goose down jacket and ask him why he's wearing a life preserver.

One of the running gags in "Back to the Future" is the way the town has changed in 30 years (for example, the porno house of 1985 was playing a Ronald Reagan movie in 1955). But a lot of the differences run more deeply than that, as Marty discovers when he sits down at a lunch counter next to his Dad - who is, of course, a teenager himself. Because the movie has so much fun with the paradoxes and predicaments of a kid meeting his own parents, I won't discuss the plot in any detail. I won't even get into the horrifying moment when Marty discovers his mother "has the hots" for him. The movie's surprises are one of its great pleasures.

"Back to the Future" was directed by Robert ("Romancing the Stone") Zemeckis, who shows not only a fine comic touch but also some of the lighthearted humanism of a Frank Capra. The movie, in fact, resembles Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" more than other, conventional time-travel movies. It's about a character who begins with one view of his life and reality, and is allowed, through magical intervention, to discover another. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer, and this is the second of the summer's three Spielberg productions (it follows "Goonies" and precedes "Explorers"), and maybe it's time to wonder if Spielberg is emulating the great studio chiefs of the past, who specialized in matching the right director with the right project. This time, the match works with charm, brains and a lot of laughter.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: The year is 1985 and Marty McFly (Fox) is your everyday teenager, except for one problem. He is stuck in 1955. After his good friend Doc Emmett Brown (Lloyd) is gunned down, Marty ends up sending the DeLorean back twenty years into the past. Now, he must find the Doc and convince him that he is from the future, in order for the Doc to send him back to the future, but this is the least of Marty's problem. After accidentally getting in the way of the important meeting between his future mother (Thompson) and father (Glover), Marty must get them back together before he changes time forever, and destroys his own existence.

Product Details

• Actors: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: January 25, 2005
• Run Time: 117 minutes

Editorial Reviews

"Back to the Future Part II" is an exercise in goofiness, an excursion into various versions of the past and future that is so baffling that even the characters are constantly trying to explain it to each other. I should have brought a big yellow legal pad to the screening, so I could take detailed notes just to keep the time-lines straight. And yet the movie is fun, mostly because it's so screwy.

Any story involving travel through time involves the possibility of paradoxes, which have provided science-fiction writers with plots for years. What happens to you, for example, if you kill your grandfather? What do you say if you meet yourself? In one famous s-f story, a time traveler to the distant past steps on a single bug and wipes out all the life forms of the future.

"Back to the Future Part II" is the story of how the heroes of the first movie, Marty McFly and Doc Brown, try to manipulate time without creating paradoxes, and how they accidentally create an entirely different future - one in which Marty's beloved mother is actually married to his reprehensible enemy, Biff Tannen. McFly and Brown are played again this time by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, the stars of the 1985 box-office hit, and they not only made "Part II" but went ahead and filmed "Part III" at the same time. Indeed, this movie closes with a coming-attractions trailer for the third part, which will open next summer. (Trivia buffs may note that Russ Meyer is the only other filmmaker to end a movie with a trailer.) The script conferences on the set of this movie must have been utterly confusing, as director Bob Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale tried to find their way through the labyrinth they had created. The movie opens in 1985. McFly has just returned from his previous adventure when Doc Brown appears once again in that souped-up De Lorean. He's breathless with urgency and wants McFly to join him on a trip to the year 2015, where absolutely everything has gone wrong and McFly is needed to save his own son from going to jail.

The city of Hill Valley in the year 2015 looks like the cover of an old pulp magazine. The town square we remember from the previous film has been transformed with ramps heading for the skies and jet-powered vehicles cruising through the skies. The kids even have skateboards that operate on the same principle as hovercraft, which leads to one of the movie's best special-effects numbers when McFly tries to evade a gang of rowdies.

He more or less accomplishes his mission in 2015, but makes the mistake of buying a sports almanac that has all of the scores from the years 1950 to 2000 in it. The almanac and the De Lorean are stolen by Biff, who travels back in time to give them to himself, so that he can place lots of winning bets and become a billionaire.

In the process, Hill Valley in the future turns into a hell hole lorded over by the evil billionaire who is produced by this scheme, and so McFly and Doc travel back to 1955 to try to steal the almanac away from Biff, and if you are following all of this, you are a very clever reader. I won't even begin to try to explain the ways in which the various parents and children of the main characters get involved in the story, or what happens when McFly very nearly attends a high school dance on a double date with himself, or how Fox plays three roles, including his own daughter.

What's entertaining about "Back to the Future Part II" is the way Christopher Lloyd, as Doc, breathlessly tries to figure out what's happening as he flies through time trying to patch everything together again. The flaw in Doc's reasoning, of course, is his assumption that he knows which is the correct time-line that should be restored. How does he know that the "real world" of the first movie was not itself an alternate time-line? It's a job for God.

"Part II," for all of its craziness, lacks the genuine power of the original. The story of the '85 film has real heart to it: If McFly didn't travel from 1985 to 1955 and arrange for his parents to have their first date, he might not even exist. The time travel in that film involved his own emotional confrontation with his parents as teenagers. "Part II," on the other hand, is mostly just zaniness and screwball jokes. But on that level, it's fun.

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: The second part of the trilogy begins as Doc, Marty and Jennifer take the time-traveling DeLorean into the year 2015 to straighten out the future of the McFly family. But Biff Tannen steals the time machine and gives his younger self a book containing 50 years of sports statistics, which the young Biff uses to amass an enormous gambling fortune and transform idyllic Hill Valley into a living hell. To restore the present, Doc and Marty must return to the events of their previous adventure in 1955 and retrieve the book.

Product Details

• Actors: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson, Elisabeth Shue
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: January 25, 2005
• Run Time: 108 minutes

Editorial Reviews

One of the delights of the first two "Back to the Future" movies was the way the story moved dizzyingly through time. Paradoxes piled on top of paradoxes, until we had to abandon any attempt to follow the plot on a rational level, and go with the temporal flow.

That looking-glass quality is missing, alas, from "Back to the Future Part III," which makes a few bows in the direction of time-travel complexities, and then settles down to be a routine Western comedy.

The movie was shot back-to-back with "Back to the Future II," which, you will recall, took Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) forward to a thoroughly depressing future that he had created by meddling around in the immediate future. He had to travel back in time in order to undo his damage, so that the eventual future would be a nicer place to live.

Now comes "Back to the Future Part III," in which Marty receives a letter from the past - a letter written by his old friend, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), from a century ago, explaining that he has traveled back to the Old West and generally is happy there, and asking Marty to simply leave him alone. This letter, of course, has taken 100 years to arrive.

Doc Brown does, however, reveal where he hid the DeLorean time-travel machine, in an abandoned mine near town. McFly does some historical research and discovers to his horror that Doc Brown was killed only a week after writing the letter, so he determines to venture back in time, whatever the risk, to rescue his friend. He goes looking for the machine in the old mine and finds it still there, and it even starts after a century, which is more than you can say for most cars after a month in the garage. McFly travels back into time, and, unfortunately, once he gets there he mostly stays there.

The Old West of "Back to the Future Part III" might have been interesting if it had been an approximation of the real Old West - the one we saw in "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," say. But this movie's West is unfortunately a sitcom version that looks exactly as if it were built on a back lot somewhere. The movie is so filled with old Western cliches that the regulars in the bar even include Pat Buttram. Now don't get me wrong: I was delighted to see Buttram again (he was Gene Autry's sidekick in the old days) and even happier to hear that his voice still is in need of oiling. But the town in "Future III" is made up of lots of pieces from old movies, including even a shootout on Main Street and the usual troubles with the local sheriff.

One element of the Old West story is sweet and entertaining: The romance between the eccentric Doc Brown and a local woman named Clara (Mary Steenburgen). They fall in love at first sight, and then Doc gets to thinking about his duty to the future and mankind, and he grows depressed about the mischief he has wrought in the world by inventing time travel, and he decides it is his duty to return to the time he came from, and leave poor Clara behind.

This is easier said than done, since no gasoline exists in the past and McFly has ruptured the fuel line of the DeLorean, a development that leads Doc Brown to an ingenious scheme to get the car up to time travel velocity (88 m.p.h) by having it pushed by a train.

All of this is sort of fun (the movie did not stint on its budget), but it's somehow too linear. It's as if Robert Zemeckis, who directed, and Bob Gale, who wrote, ran out of time travel plot ideas, and settled into a standard Western universe.

The one thing that remains constant in all of the "Back to the Future" movies, and which I especially like, is a sort of bittersweet, elegiac quality involving romance and time. In the first movie, McFly went back in time to be certain his parents had their first date. The second involved his own romance. The third involves Doc Brown and Clara. In all of these stories, there is the realization that love depends entirely on time. Lovers like to think their love is eternal.

But do they ever realize it depends entirely on temporal coincidence, since, if they were not alive at the same time, romance hardly would be feasible?

Plot Summary

• Plot Synopsis: The conclusion of the trilogy sends Marty McFly on a rescue mission to the year 1885, where he must save Doc Brown from death at the hands of yet another member of the Tannen clan. However, there are a number of complications preventing a quick return to the future: a lack of gasoline for the time-traveling DeLorean, a band of gunslinging outlaws and a schoolmarm with affections for the smitten Doc.

Product Details

• Actors: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson, Lea Thompson
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: January 25, 2005
• Run Time: 118 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Imagine "Superman" with a Clark Kent more charismatic than the Man of Steel, and you'll understand how "Spider-Man" goes wrong. Tobey Maguire is pitch-perfect as the socially retarded Peter Parker, but when he becomes Spider-Man, the film turns to action sequences that zip along like perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey's first experimental outings do we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he's as convincing as Mighty Mouse.

The appeal of the best sequences in the Superman and Batman movies is that they lend weight and importance to comic-book images. Within the ground rules set by each movie, they even have plausibility. As a reader of the Spider-Man comics, I admired the vertiginous frames showing Spidey dangling from terrifying heights. He had the powers of a spider and the instincts of a human being, but the movie is split between a plausible Peter Parker and an inconsequential superhero.

Consider a sequence early in the film, after Peter Parker is bitten by a mutant spider and discovers his new powers. His hand is sticky. He doesn't need glasses anymore. He was scrawny yesterday, but today he's got muscles. The movie shows him becoming aware of these facts, but insufficiently amazed (or frightened) by them. He learns how to spin and toss webbing, and finds that he can make enormous leaps. And then there's a scene where he's like a kid with a new toy, jumping from one rooftop to another, making giant leaps, whooping with joy.

Remember the first time you saw the characters defy gravity in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? They transcended gravity, but they didn't dismiss it: They seemed to possess weight, dimension and presence. Spider-Man as he leaps across the rooftops is landing too lightly, rebounding too much like a bouncing ball. He looks like a video game figure, not like a person having an amazing experience.

The other super-being in the movie is the Green Goblin, who surfs the skies in jet-shoes. He, too, looks like a drawing being moved quickly around a frame, instead of like a character who has mastered a daring form of locomotion. He's handicapped, too, by his face, which looks like a high-tech action figure with a mouth that doesn't move. I understand why it's immobile (we're looking at a mask), but I'm not persuaded; the movie could simply ordain that the Green Goblin's exterior shell has a face that's mobile, and the character would become more interesting. (True, Spider-Man has no mouth, and Peter Parker barely opens his--the words slip out through a reluctant slit.) The film tells Spidey's origin story--who Peter Parker is, who Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) are, how Peter's an outcast at school, how he burns with unrequited love for Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), how he peddles photos of Spider-Man to cigar-chomping editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons).

Peter Parker was crucial in the evolution of Marvel comics because he was fallible and had recognizable human traits. He was a nerd, a loner, socially inept, insecure, a poor kid being raised by relatives. Maguire gets all of that just right, and I enjoyed the way Dunst is able to modulate her gradually increasing interest in this loser who begins to seem attractive to her. I also liked the complexity of the villain, who in his Dr. Jekyll manifestation is brilliant tycoon Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) and in his Mr. Hyde persona is a cackling psychopath. Osborn's son Harry (James Franco) is a rich kid, embarrassed by his dad's wealth, who is Peter's best and only friend, and Norman is affectionate toward Peter even while their alter-egos are deadly enemies. That works, and there's an effective scene where Osborn has a conversation with his invisible dark side.

The origin story is well told, and the characters will not disappoint anyone who values the original comic books. It's in the action scenes that things fall apart. Consider the scene where Spider-Man is given a cruel choice between saving Mary Jane or a cable car full of school kids. He tries to save both, so that everyone dangles from webbing that seems about to pull loose. The visuals here could have given an impression of the enormous weights and tensions involved, but instead the scene seems more like a bloodless storyboard of the idea. In other CGI scenes, Spidey swoops from great heights to street level and soars back up among the skyscrapers again with such dizzying speed that it seems less like a stunt than like a fast-forward version of a stunt.

I have one question about the Peter Parker character: Does the movie go too far with his extreme social paralysis? Peter tells Mary Jane he just wants to be friends. "Only a friend?" she repeats. "That's all I have to give," he says. How so? Impotent? Spidey-sense has skewed his sexual instincts? Afraid his hands will get stuck?

Plot Summary

• Tagline: With great power comes great responsibility.
• Plot Outline: When bitten by a genetically modified spider, a nerdy, shy, and awkward high school student gains spider-like abilities that he eventually must use to fight evil as a superhero after tragedy befalls his family.
• Plot Synopsis: A rather odd thing has just occurred in the life of nerdy high school student Peter Parker: after being bitten by a genetically modified spider, his body chemistry is altered mutagenically. He can now scale walls and ceilings, he has superhuman strength and super-fast reflexes, and he develops a precognitive sense that warns him of approaching danger. Adopting the name Spider-Man, Peter first uses his newfound powers to make money, but after his uncle is murdered at the hands of a criminal Peter failed to stop, he swears to use his powers to fight the evil that killed his uncle. At the same time, scientist and businessman Norman Osborn, after exposure to an experimental nerve gas, develops an alternate personality himself: the super-strong, psychotic Green Goblin! Peter Parker must now juggle three things in his life: his new job at a local newspaper under a perpetually on-edge employer, his battle against the evil Green Goblin, and his fight to win the affections of beautiful classmate Mary Jane Watson, against none other than his best friend Harry Osborn, son of Norman Osborn! Is this challenge too much for even the Amazing Spider-Man to handle?

Product Details

• Actors: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson
• Directors: Sam Raimi
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
• Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Columbia Pictures
• DVD Release Date: November 1, 2002
• Run Time: 121 minutes