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Video/DVD

New releases

What's new on the store shelf.

By Times Staff
Published February 3, 2005

Ray

DIRECTOR: Taylor Hackford

CAST: Jamie Foxx, Regina King, Kerry Washington, Clifton Powell, Harry Lennix, Bokeem Woodbine, Curtis Armstrong, Richard Schiff, Larenz Tate

SYNOPSIS: The life and occasionally troubled times of music legend Ray Charles, uncannily portrayed by Foxx, who won a Golden Globe as best actor in a musical or comedy for the role. The film is nominated for six Oscars: picture, director, actor (Foxx), film editing, costume design and sound-mixing.

WHAT WE SAID: Times film critic Steve Persall gave the film a B, even though he praised Foxx's performance. "One thing a movie about Ray Charles should never lack is rhythm. Certainly it's there in the music. It's also in the tick-tock mannerisms and melodious cadence of Charles' raspy voice, impersonated to perfection by Jamie Foxx, who richly deserves an Academy Award nomination," Persall wrote in his October review. "But rhythm of a cinematic sort is lacking to a noticeable degree in Taylor Hackford's Ray, specifically in the screenplay by James L. White. Both artists want to avoid the chronological pattern so many biographies adopt on screen, instead using flashbacks to cover childhood events and montages to condense Charles' successes and problems. It's wise to be different, but only if being different will get the job done. That isn't always the case with Ray. Nothing gets confusing but nearly everything seems disconnected. . . . Better filmmakers would make it work."

MPAA RATING: PG-13; drug abuse, profanity, sexual situations

RUNNING TIME: 152 min.

DIRECTOR: Peter Chelsom

CAST: Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Anita Gillette, Bobby Cannavale, Lisa Ann Walter, Omar Benson Miller, Richard Jenkins, Nick Cannon

SYNOPSIS: A bored businessman (Gere) begins ballroom dance lessons to be near a lovely instructor (Lopez), while his wife (Sarandon) gets suspicious. Based on the 1996 Japanese film of the same name.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the movie a B-plus. "Shall We Dance? is a puff piece with a solid core," he wrote. "It's a crowd-pleaser, but not by stooping to mainstream tastes. Feel-good movies are seldom this smart, and smartness is seldom this mass-appealing."

MPAA RATING: PG-13; sexual references, profanity

RUNNING TIME: 106 min.

DIRECTOR: Charles Stone III

CAST: Bernie Mac, Angela Bassett, Michael Rispoli, Brian J. White, Chris Noth, Paul Sorvino

SYNOPSIS: Mac plays a retired baseball player forced back into the game when he's discovered to be three hits shy of the esteemed 3,000 mark.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the movie a B minus. "Bernie Mac plays a baseball player in Mr. 3000, but he's really more of a weight lifter. There's no other way to explain the way he single-handedly raises a terribly undercooked screenplay to something approaching comedy," he wrote.

MPAA RATING: PG-13; profanity, sexual content

RUNNING TIME: 104 min.

DIRECTOR: Spike Lee

CAST: Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Ellen Barkin, Woody Harrelson, Jim Brown, Ossie Davis, John Turturro, Brian Dennehy, Monica Bellucci, Chiwetel Ejiofor

SYNOPSIS: A whistle-blower (Mackie) loses his job and prostitutes himself to lesbians wanting children.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the film a C-. "Spike Lee juggles too many chain saws with She Hate Me, and the result is a mesmerizing mess," he wrote. "Nobody will accuse Lee of lacking ambition. Taste? Quite possibly. Cohesion? Absolutely. But certainly not ambition, in a movie that begins with declaring President Bush as phony as a $3 bill and ends with a sensual threesome pledging loyalty, if not sex, to each other. In the halls of Congress, no less."

MPAA RATING: R; strong sexuality, harsh profanity, nudity, brief violence

RUNNING TIME: 138 min.

DIRECTOR: Mira Nair

CAST: Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Romola Garai, Rhys Ifans, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Eileen Atkins

SYNOPSIS: Lavish adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's 19th century novel.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the film a B, writing that it is "an occasionally ravishing example of stiff-upper-lip cinema, in which British propriety fuels the plot and defying convention makes the hero." Persall noted that Witherspoon's real-life pregnancy was not well-disguised, which he said distracted from an otherwise solid performance.

MPAA RATING: PG-13; brief violence, sensuality, nudity

RUNNING TIME: 137 min.

DIRECTOR: Takashi Shimizu

CAST: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bill Pullman, Jason Behr, Clea DuVall, Grace Zabriskie, William Mapother

SYNOPSIS: An American nurse (Gellar) in Tokyo encounters a haunted house with a curse.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the film a C-. He wrote, "Something must be lost in translation in Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge, an American adaptation of his Japanese hit, Ju-On: The Grudge. It's reported that the original is a nifty little creepshow. The remake, even with Shimuzu running the show, certainly isn't. What we have here is a run-of-the-kill haunted house yarn."

MPAA RATING: PG-13; scary images, brief violence, profanity and sensuality

RUNNING TIME: 89 min.

[Last modified February 3, 2005, 19:24:37]