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Video / DVD

New releases

A look at what's headed to the shelves

By Times Staff
Published September 29, 2005

Lords of Dogtown

DIRECTOR: Catherine Hardwicke

CAST: Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson, Heath Ledger, Nikki Reed, Johnny Knoxville, Michael Angarano, Rebecca De Mornay

SYNOPSIS: Four buddies revolutionize the sport of skateboarding in the 1970s. Based on a true story, directed with care by Hardwicke (Thirteen).

WHAT WE SAID: St. Petersburg Times film critic Steve Persall gave the movie a B+. "Lords of Dogtown operates on film the way its heroes do their thing on skateboards, with fits, starts and stumbles that lull onlookers just before something spectacular happens. The movie changes tones the way skaters change direction, in broad loops sometimes, abruptly at others. Such raggedness adds character to Catherine Hardwicke's movie and reflects the mystique of the Z-Boys, pioneers of the concrete surf," Persall wrote.

MPAA RATING: PG-13; extreme sports risks, profanity, sexual situations, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, all involving teenagers

RUNNING TIME: 107 min.

DIRECTORS: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha

CAST: Voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Robin Williams, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, Jim Broadbent, Jennifer Coolidge

SYNOPSIS: Animated tale of a robot (voice of McGregor) and his buddy (Williams) saving a kindly corporation from the clutches of capitalists.

WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the movie a C. "Robots is a drawing-board idea that never quite takes off. An interesting world populated by robots is drawn, yet we never truly relate to the population. Human viewers can connect to toys, fish, fairy tales and comic book heroes because they're staples of our culture. Artificial intelligence is still just a bit too fantastic to represent our everyday lives," he wrote. "Plug Toy Story or Finding Nemo into the DVD player and see what Robots is missing."

MPAA RATING: PG: brief rude language, suggestive material

RUNNING TIME: 91 min.

DIRECTOR: Mick Davis

CAST: Andy Garcia, Elsa Zylberstein, Hippolyte Girardot, Omid Djalili, Eva Herzigova, Udo Kier

SYNOPSIS: The story of the last days of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, his rivalry with Picasso and his romance.

WHAT WE SAID: The St. Petersburg Times did not review this film. Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote, "The best and maybe the only use to be made of the catastrophic screen biography Modigliani is to serve as a textbook outline of how not to film the life of a legendary artist."

MPAA RATING: R; for some language and drug use

RUNNING TIME: 128 min.

[Last modified September 28, 2005, 10:06:07]