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Video / DVD

New releases

A look at what's hitting the shelves

By Times Staff Writer
Published May 19, 2005

DIRECTOR: Bill Condon

CAST: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Donnell, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker

SYNOPSIS: Biography of eros researcher Alfred Kinsey (Neeson), who kick-started the sexual revolution in defiance of puritanical standards. Linney was nominated for a supporting actress Academy Award.

WHAT WE SAID: Times film critic Steve Persall gave the movie an A. "On the surface, Bill Condon's Kinsey is one man's biography, yet it's really a biography of modern American culture. If you don't believe that, simply notice how much of our nation is built on sex or the repression of it," he wrote. "Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey is sex, and sex is America."

MPAA RATING: R; strong sexual content, frontal nudity, harsh profanity, mature themes

RUNNING TIME: 118 min.

DIRECTOR: Alejandro Amenabar

CAST: Javier Bardem, Belen Rueda, Lola Duenas, Celso Bugallo, Tamar Novas

SYNOPSIS: A former sailor (Bardem) paralyzed by a diving accident demands his right to end his frustrating life. The Spanish drama won the Academy Award for best foreign language film.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the film an A. "It's funny how melodramatic cliches seem so much classier with subtitles. Alejandro Amenabar's film contains plenty: a bravely dying hero, various bedside sympathizers and a grand courtroom showdown between one man and "the system.' But The Sea Inside soars beyond pathos into the rarified air of heartbreaking (or at least heart-bending) cinema," he wrote. "Much of the credit goes to Javier Bardem's towering portrayal of a man who spends most of the movie flat on his back."

MPAA RATING: PG-13; profanity, mature themes of euthanasia

RUNNING TIME: 125 min.

DIRECTOR: Trey Parker

CAST: Voices of Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Daran Norris

SYNOPSIS: The creators of South Park spoof the war on terrorism, lousy action movies and pompous liberal celebrities, and do it all with marionettes.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the movie an A-. "Hands down, if those marionette strings are long enough, the funniest political movie of 2004 is Team America: World Police, an adults-only puppet show from the relentlessly twisted minds that created South Park," Persall wrote. "There's something to appease and offend everyone, from gung-ho invasions of foreign nations for suspect reasons to Hollywood antiwar activists Tim Robbins, Alec Baldwin and Michael Moore being blown to bits. Both sides of the aisle are likely to be rolling in it."

MPAA RATING: R; harsh profanity, explicit marionette sex, graphic puppet violence, anatomically incorrect puppet nudity, mature themes (or not)

RUNNING TIME: 98 min.

DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Sax

CAST: Michael Keaton, Chandra West, Deborah Kara Unger, Ian McNeice, Sarah Strange, Nicholas Elia

SYNOPSIS: Keaton plays a widower whose dead wife speaks to him through radio static.

WHAT WE SAID: Times reviewer Philip Booth gave the movie a C. "Mostly cheesy, occasionally spooky, this film owes something to The Ring (bad things happen when you watch videos) and Frequency (how to use your radio to contact the living dead), with a little Final Destination (a man receives information about others' impending deaths) thrown in," he wrote. "Those willing to suspend disbelief might find Sax's film a reasonably scary good time. Others should heed the urgently whispered exhortations of a concerned voice from the other side: "Go now'."

MPAA RATING: PG-13; profanity

RUNNING TIME: 101 min.

DIRECTOR: Lawrence Guterman

CAST: Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Traylor Howard, Steven Wright, Bob Hoskins, Ben Stein, Kal Penn

SYNOPSIS: A cartoonist (Kennedy) dons the occult mask that made Jim Carrey much funnier.

WHAT WE SAID: Times reviewer Rick Gershman gave the film a D. "Cumming has fun mugging his way through," he wrote. "And Stein is droll fun as usual, supplying the film's back story. The rest, however, is ugly, boring and crude, a disappointment no matter how low one's expectations are."

MPAA RATING: PG; action, suggestive humor, language

RUNNING TIME: 86 min.

[Last modified May 18, 2005, 15:12:33]