LATEST ADDITIONS

Swimming Upstream—MGM/UA
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 2
Swimming Upstream tells the true story of Australian swimmer Tony Fingleton, who must overcome poverty and a cruel, alcoholic father in his quest to become the best swimmer in Australia. The story is one we've seen many times in different incarnations. The difference here is that, because Fingleton penned the screenplay and the book on which it's based, events aren't always as tidy and pat as Hollywood would like them to be. We don't get the big ending we're expecting, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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The Woodsman—Columbia/TriStar
Amy Carter  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
Kevin Bacon stars as a convicted pedophile who has served his time and is moving on with life in Philadelphia. To add the necessary dramatic twist, his apartment is located directly across the street from a school. The dark but equally fair-to-all-sides movie is Nicole Kassell's directorial debut, and she handles the responsibility well. Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt, David Alan Grier, and the wonderful Mos Def round out the excellent cast.
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The Sea Inside—New Line
Christy Grosz  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 4
A sad but strangely triumphant story, The Sea Inside follows the life of a quadriplegic who spent nearly three decades fighting for his right to assisted suicide. Javier Bardem plays the resolute man, poet Ramon Sampedro, who was paralyzed in a diving accident in his late teens and struggled with the Spanish government until 1998. Although writer/ director Alejandro Amenabar never attempts to justify Sampedro's decision, he draws a multifaceted character whose reasons for choosing to end his life make sense, no matter which side of the debate you might fall on.
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Ocean's Twelve—Warner Brothers
Amy Carter  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 0
For those of you out there who are anticipating an even bigger party than the fun that was Ocean's Eleven, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. The beauty of the first film was that everything came together in the end, and you left feeling like you'd really been privy to geniuses at work. Everything, and I mean everything, was part of the big picture. Ocean's Twelve just makes you scratch your head. What happened to these seriously smart guys? How in the world did they end up in this situation, and where's the big heist that made the first film so much fun? But, most importantly, who thought it would be funny for Julia Roberts' character to pretend to be Julia Roberts? Has Hollywood completely lost its mind?
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House of Flying Daggers—Columbia/TriStar
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 5
Audio: 5
Extras: 2
House of Flying Daggers is, in many ways, similar to many other martial-arts movies you've seen (most notably, the crazily popular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). It has all of the action and incredible fight sequences we've come to expect from the best Hong Kong exports. From a visual standpoint, though, it has more in common with the stylized color works of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. And what visuals they are. In Hero, director Yimou Zhang used massive amounts of color. Sometimes entire shots would be one color. Here, that is rarely the case, but color is no smaller a tool—just a more finely honed one. The story is of a love affair between an assassin and a policeman as a war builds around them.
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Geoffrey Morrison Blog
More CES Coverage
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jan 11, 2006
Here are the rest of the pictures I took at CES . Well, the rest that were worth anything. I have a few other products I saw at the show that I’ll talk about later, probably Friday.
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Kinsey—20th Century Fox
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 2
If nothing else, Kinsey shows us just how far we haven't come since Alfred Kinsey first published his books on human sexual behavior in the 1940s and '50s. When we see the sex photos that Professor Kinsey shows his students during his first college course about sex, we're just as shocked as they are that we're actually being allowed to see them-and that the MPAA didn't slap an NC-17 rating on the film as a result. In a manner befitting the subject, writer/director Bill Condon provides a straightforward, almost clinical examination of Kinsey's life, which succeeds primarily because of the wonderful performances by Liam Neeson as Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife Clara.
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The Big Red One: The Reconstruction—Warner Brothers
Chris Chiarella  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 4
Samuel Fuller's quasi-autobiographical World War II drama, named for the symbol of the 1st Infantry, was brutally trimmed for its 1980 theatrical release. Now painstakingly pieced back together and enhanced for modern audiences, The Big Red One is almost 50 minutes longer and hereby revealed as a genuine epic. It's better than ever on every level. We can finally witness one of star Lee Marvin's most richly crafted roles as it was meant to be seen.
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Are We There Yet?—Columbia/TriStar
Gary Frisch  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
Before XXX State of the Union iced his destiny as an action star, Ice Cube stretched his wings with this charming but fairly routine family-bonding flick that hit box-office bling earlier this year. The family here is a surrogate, as Cube hauls a pair of spirited kids from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver in his new Lincoln Navigator in order to win points with their hottie divorce mom. Illicit thoughts of mom aside, the road trip actually brings him close to the two brats. It's a no-lose formula, and any film with Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek's Lt. Uhura) earns extra points in my book.
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Beaches Special Edition—Touchstone
Aimee Giron  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
Directed by Garry Marshall, Beaches is a story about two 11-year-old girls who meet on the beach in Atlantic City and continue to keep in touch and weather the challenges of adult life throughout the years. The film is best remembered for its ability to turn on your waterworks, but the best thing about it is that it doesn't sugarcoat what really happens in a friendship, like the one between CC Bloom (Bette Midler) and her best friend, Hillary Whitney, (Barbara Hershey). Beaches is a moving story, filled with camaraderie, jealousy, glory, pain, and forgiveness.
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