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The Hours
DIRECTOR: Stephen Daldry
CAST: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Stephen Dillane, Miranda Richardson, Toni Collette, Claire Danes
SYNOPSIS: Novelist Virginia Woolf (Kidman) writes a novel while contemplating suicide, a 1950s housewife (Moore) reads it while contemplating suicide and a 21st century woman (Streep) lives it while her ex-lover (Harris) contemplates suicide. Kidman won a best actress Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf.
WHAT WE SAID: St. Petersburg Times film critic Steve Persall gave The Hours a B- when he reviewed it in January. He called it "the most finely crafted film of the past year that I never want to sit through again. The performances are flawless, the screenplay is intelligently crafted, and the overall mood is relentlessly bleak. It is a film to be admired, not embraced, and certainly not to be enjoyed for any reason other than its expertise. The Hours is a morose film, based on Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and mounted with Oscar posterity in mind. Each scene seems calculated to be shown while the nominees are announced, with the sort of smug intellectualism marking the similarly pedigreed The Shipping News a year ago. Glacially paced and somberly presented, The Hours demands that viewers be as impressed with the production as the filmmakers are with themselves."
MPAA RATING: PG-13 (mature themes, profanity, suicidal images)
RUNNING TIME: 114 min.
DVD FEATURES: Commentaries by Daldry, Cunningham, Streep, Moore and Kidman, theatrical trailers, four featurettes: Three Women, The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf, The Music of The Hours, The Lives of Mrs. Dalloway, widescreen.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
DIRECTOR: Shinichiro Watanabe
CAST: Koichi Yamadera, Unsho Ishizuka, Megumi Hayashibara, Aoi Tada, Tsutomu Isobe, Ai Kobayashi, Mickey Curtis, Nakajima Akihiko, Beau Billingslea, Melissa Charles, Hitoshi Hirao, Renji Ishibashi, Wendee Lee, David Lucas, Miki Nagasawa, Hiroshi Naka, Tsutomu Taruki
SYNOPSIS: The cultish Japanese anime television series gets feature-length treatment with a band of bounty hunters on the trail of terrorists armed with a deadly virus.
WHAT WE SAID: The St. Petersburg Times did not review this film. Patrick Z. McGavin of the Chicago Tribune said the film "features a spectacular universe dense with character and elaborate detail. . . . In this English-dubbed version, Watanabe steeps his story in film history, rummaging through works such as Shane and Blade Runner. . . . At nearly two hours, Cowboy Bebop is longer than necessary, and some of the eccentric characterizations become monotonous. Still, this is magnetic, beautiful stuff."
MPAA RATING: R (violence)
RUNNING TIME: 116 min.
DVD FEATURES: Theatrical trailers, The Making of Cowboy Bebop and behind-the-scenes featurettes, music videos, conceptual art galleries, storyboard comparisons, character profiles, widescreen
Dark Blue
DIRECTOR: Ron Shelton
CAST: Kurt Russell, Ving Rhames, Scott Speedman, Brendan Gleeson, Kurupt, Michael Michele, Lolita Davidovich
SYNOPSIS: Cop drama set in Los Angeles during the riots sparked by the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
WHAT WE SAID: St. Petersburg Times correspondent Philip Booth said in his February review that Russell turned in a strong performance but was crippled by a weak plot. "Dark Blue, adapted from an old screenplay by ace noir novelist James Ellroy, feels a bit borrowed, hinting at corrupt cop dramas from the recent, edgier Narc all the way back to 1973's Serpico. The setting - Los Angeles before and during the (1992) riots also feels somewhat contrived. . . . a device to distract attention from the movie's deficiencies." He gave the movie a C+.
MPAA RATING: R (graphic violence, profanity, sexuality, nudity, mature themes)
RUNNING TIME: 118 min.
Intacto
DIRECTOR: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
CAST: Max von Sydow, Eusebio Poncela, Leonardo Sbaraglia
SYNOPSIS: Four people brought together by fate are engaged in a death-defying game conducted by a mysterious casino operator (von Sydow).
WHAT WE SAID: The St. Petersburg Times did not review the film. A.O. Scott of the New York Times said, "The premise of Intacto, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's moody and intriguing metaphysical thriller, is that some people have the ability to steal luck from others. . . . Intacto is thought-provoking and stylish, if also somewhat hermetic. Whether Fresnadillo invites you to think about anything outside the universe he has so skillfully constructed is open to question, but that may come as something of a relief."
MPAA RATING: R (violence and brief nudity)
RUNNING TIME: 108 min.
Kangaroo Jack
DIRECTOR: David McNally
CAST: Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Christopher Walken, Dyan Cannon, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas, David Ngoombujarra
SYNOPSIS: A hairdresser (O'Connell) and a musician (Anderson) chase a kangaroo with stolen mob money in its pouch.
WHAT WE SAID: Billy Norris, 15, St. Petersburg Times Xpress movie critic, gave the movie a C+
in January. "This is a cute, though somewhat mediocre movie, with a funny story that most kids will take pleasure in viewing. I wouldn't expect this one to wow older crowds, but they'll still be able to sit through it. The trailers lead you to believe the main character is a talking kangaroo, but that is not the case, and that's a plus. The kangaroo (part computer-generated, part animatronic) gives the film a cartoonlike quality. The rest of the cast gets their job done, too, delivering some goofy, slapstick humor."
MPAA RATING: PG (language, crude humor, sensuality and violence)
RUNNING TIME: 84 min.
DVD FEATURES: Commentary by Kangaroo Jack, animal casting sessions, gags and outtakes, widescreen
Lost in La Mancha
DIRECTOR: Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe
CAST: Jeff Bridges (narrator), Bernard Bouix, Ren Cleitman, Johnny Depp, Benjamin Fernandez, Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Vanessa Paradis, Phil Patterson, Nicola Pecorini, Gabriella Pescucci, Jean Rochefort
SYNOPSIS: Documentary about director Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys, Brazil) and his ill-fated attempt to make Cervantes' novel into a film called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. An ailing lead actor, torrential rain in Spain and jets flying overhead are just the beginning.
WHAT WE SAID: The St. Petersburg Times did not review this film. Stephen Holden of the Washington Post called the documentary "fascinating but hardly enjoyable. It's like watching ants eat an elephant. It's almost too much to bear. Gilliam, almost more a visionary than a director, began the project with great joy and pleasure. He had the stars he wanted, the money he wanted, the script he wanted, the time he wanted and the freedom he wanted. . . . We watch Gilliam, seemingly quite a decent guy, fighting despair and panic as the production goes further and further awry."
MPAA RATING: R (language)
RUNNING TIME: 93 min.
DVD FEATURES: Two discs. Theatrical trailers, interviews with cast and crew, deleted scenes, costume design, storyboards and production stills from The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam interviews with author Salman Rushdie and Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times, Lost in La Mancha at the Toronto Film Festival, making-of featurette, filmmaker biographies