Cold Creek Manor

• Finally putting an end to their days as slaves to the hustle-and-bustle of city life, Gothamites Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quaid) and his wife, Leah (Sharon Stone), pack up their kids and all their possessions and move into a recently repossessed mansion in the sticks of New York State. Once grand and elegant, the Cold Creek Manor is now a shambles, but Cooper and Leah have plenty of time to renovate.

COLD CREEK MANOR is a heart-pounding thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat in tension-filled suspense. Wanting to escape city life for the saner, safer countryside, New Yorkers Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quaid), his wife Leah (1995 Golden Globe winner Sharon Stone, Best Actress, CASINO), and their two children move into a dilapidated old mansion still filled with the possessions of the previous family. Turning it into their dream house soon becomes a living nightmare when the previous owne! r (Stephen Dorff) shows up, and a series of terrifying incidents lead them on a spine-tingling search for clues to the estate's dark and lurid past.Turn off your brain and Cold Creek Manor just might turn into an entertaining thriller. Taking an uncharacteristic detour into nonsensical plot mechanics, director Mike Figgis expertly pushes buttons with this nerve-jangling but ultimately hackneyed story (by Richard Jeffries) about a documentary filmmaker (Dennis Quaid) who moves his wife (Sharon Stone) and two kids into a run-down rural mansion once owned by the family of a simmering ex-convict (Stephen Dorff), who's got secret reasons for wanting Quaid's family to leave. This rote potboiler wants to be as thrilling as Fatal Attraction, but it's more like Pacific Heights--fun to watch as the tension escalates with Dorff's violent behavior, but seriously flawed as plot holes proliferate. With a few good shocks and slinky support from Juliette Lewis, it's pe! rfectly enjoyable as a popcorn distraction, but maybe they sho! uld've c alled it Cold Creaky Manor instead. --Jeff Shannon

Aliens of the Deep

• Take a once-in-a-lifetime journey with Academy Award(R)-winning director James Cameron (Best Director, TITANIC, 1997) in ALIENS OF THE DEEP, and make contact with another world. This incredible underwater adventure gives you extraordinary glimpses of unbelievable creatures that live in an alien world in the deepest depths of the sea. Could these alien life forms be clues to life in outer space? It

Take a once-in-a-lifetime journey with Academy Award(R)-winning director James Cameron (Best Director, TITANIC, 1997) in ALIENS OF THE DEEP, and make contact with another world. This incredible underwater adventure gives you extraordinary glimpses of unbelievable creatures that live in an alien world in the deepest depths of the sea. Could these alien life forms be clues to life in outer space? It's an exciting exploration you'll not soon forget.~~(c)Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. and Walden M! edia, LLC ~~James Cameron takes another foray into the depths with a new deep-sea documentary. Following the shipwreck of Ghosts of the Abyss, Cameron focuses his abundant energies on where life is not powered by sunlight. These implications are taken a bit further, thanks to some dandy effects, on how life may develop in the ice-covered waters of Jupiter's moons. Some of the newly seen creatures are truly amazing: a fish with feet, shrimp that can swim between boiling hot steam and icy currents. Plus there's a cute creature that looks like something from an animator's portfolio: an albino octopus with fins. Like Ghosts, this film is significantly different on DVD. Both were presented in IMAX 3-D but are only 2-D on DVD; however, also included are extended versions, doubling the original's 45-minute run time. The added footage gets you more in-depth coverage of the crew and the missions. Cameron is also an expert host, showing his enthusiasm for the project ("! I love this stuff!") while letting his younger scientist co-st! ars lead the way. (Ages 6 and older) --Doug Thomas

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

• Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. Hes the nations most notorious criminal, hunted by the law in 10 states. Hes also the lands greatest hero, lauded as a Robin Hood by the public. Robert Ford? No one knows him. Not yet. But the ambitious 19-year-old aims to change that. Hell befriend Jesse, ride with his gang. And if that doesnt bring Ford fame, hell find a deadlier way.Friendship become

Jesse James was a fabled outlaw, a charismatic, spiritual, larger-than-life bad man whose bloody exploits captured the imagination and admiration of a nation hungry for antiheroes. Robert Ford was a young upstart torn between dedicated worship and murderous jealousy, the "dirty little coward" who coveted Jesse's legend. The powerful, strange, and unforgettable story of their interweaving pathsâ€"and twin destinies that would collide in a rain of blood and betrayalâ€"is a story of America in all ! her rough, conflicted glory and the myths that made her.

Hansen re-creates the real West with his imaginative telling of the life of the most famous outlaw of them all, Jesse James, and of his death at the hands of the upstart Robert Ford. James, a charismatic, superstitious, and moody man, holds sway over a ragged gang who fear his temper and quick shooting. Robert Ford, a young gang member torn between worshipping Jesse and taking his place, guns him down in cold blood and lives out his days tormented by the killing.2008 soundtrack to the acclaimed film starring Brad Pitt. The soundtrack's composers, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, come from the internationally celebrated bands Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three and Grinderman. Cave and Ellis composed, played and produced this compelling and intense soundtrack for director Andrew Dominik's savage tale of the true West, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. This soundtrack perfectly captur! es the charismatic and unpredictable nature of the film's cen! tral pro tagonist. Like the film, Cave and Ellis' music cuts through the mythic figure of Jesse James to reveal the complex, contradictory man beneath. Daring and passionately delivered, this beautiful soundtrack retains its captivating power even without the benefit of Dominik's images. Mute.

Jesse James was a fabled outlaw, a charismatic, spiritual, larger-than-life bad man whose bloody exploits captured the imagination and admiration of a nation hungry for antiheroes. Robert Ford was a young upstart torn between dedicated worship and murderous jealousy, the "dirty little coward" who coveted Jesse's legend. The powerful, strange, and unforgettable story of their interweaving pathsâ€"and twin destinies that would collide in a rain of blood and betrayalâ€"is a story of America in all her rough, conflicted glory and the myths that made her.

Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. He’s the nation’s most notorious criminal, hunted by the law in 10 states. He’s also the! land’s greatest hero, lauded as a Robin Hood by the public. Robert Ford? No one knows him. Not yet. But the ambitious 19-year-old aims to change that. He’ll befriend Jesse, ride with his gang. And if that doesn’t bring Ford fame, he’ll find a deadlier way. Friendship becomes rivalry and the quest for fame becomes obsession in this virile epic produced in part by Ridley Scott and featuring gripping portrayals by Brad Pitt (winner of the Venice Film Festival Best Actor Award) as Jesse and Casey Affleck as the youth drawn closer to his goal…and farther from his own humanity.Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery,! then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over t! he next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a backshooting crony.

The film--only the second to be made by New Zealandâ€"born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper (2000), was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Bra! d Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise.

Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerizing in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a wellnigh-novelistic backstory for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit;! and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Elli! s) and s creenwriter of the Aussie "Western" The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title.

Still, the real costar is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few Westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson

George of the Jungle

• Deep in the heart of the African jungle, a baby named George, the sole survivor of a plane crash, is raised by gorillas. George grows up to be a buff and lovable klutz who has a rain forest full of animal friends-like Tookie, his big-beaked messenger, Ape, a talking gorilla whos smarter than your average rocket scientist, and Shep, a gray-haired peanut-loving pooch of an elephant. When poachers me

Disney presents the smash hit comedy that families and critics everywhere went bananas over! Deep in the heart of the African jungle, a baby named George, the sole survivor of a plane crash, is raised by gorillas. George grows up to be a buff and lovable klutz (ENCINO MAN'S Brendan Fraser) who has a rain forest full of animal friends -- like Tookie, his big-beaked messenger, Ape, a talking gorilla who's smarter than your average rocket scientist, and Shep, a gray-haired peanut-loving pooch of an ele! phant! When poachers mess with George's pals, the King Of Swing swings into action. But before you can say, "Watch out for that tree," George comes face-to-bark with a few vine-covered obstacles! You'll go wild for this "wonderfully wacky comedy" that People Magazine calls "impossible to resist!"Not even the executives at Disney could have predicted the runaway success of this live-action movie inspired by Jay Ward's goofy 1960s cartoon character. Not only did George make a killing at the box office, but Disney's marketing wizards turned it into one of their best-selling videos. It's hard to begrudge the movie's success, even if this is the kind of mindless entertainment that caters to the lowest common denominator. In any case, it's obvious that kids love this movie, in which the idiotic George (Brendan Fraser) repeatedly swings into trees and attracts the attention of a lovely jungle explorer (Leslie Mann) who decides to call off her engagement to a wealthy snob (T! homas Hayden Church) in favor of the vine-swinging hunk with a! n elepha nt named Shep (that thinks it's a dog) and an ape named Ape (with a proper Brit voice provided by John Cleese). Filled with slapstick gags and some funny special effects, the movie can be a bit of a trial for adults, but it's a hilarious treat for its intended audience. --Jeff Shannon

Gone in 60 Seconds [Blu-ray]

• GONE IN 60 SECONDS (BLU-RAY DISC)

Academy Award(R)-winners Nicolas Cage (1996 Best Actor, LEAVING LAS VEGAS; ADAPTATION, MATCHSTICK MEN) and sexy Angelina Jolie (1999 Best Supporting Actress, GIRL INTERRUPTED; LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER) ride an unstoppable wave of speed and adrenaline in this hot, egdy action hit from high-octane producer Jerry Bruckheimer (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, PEARL HARBOR). Legendary car booster Randall "Memphis" Raines (Cage) thought he'd left the fast lane behind -- until he's forced out of retirement in a do-or-die effort to save his kid brother (Giovanni Ribisi, LOST IN TRANSLATION, TV's FRIENDS) from the wrath of an evil mobster! But with speed to burn and attitude to spare, Memphis hastily reassembles his old crew -- a rogues' gallery including Academy Award-winner Robert Duvall (1983 Best Actor, TENDER MERCIES; OPEN RANGE) -- and floor! s it in a full-throttle race to pull off the ulimate car heist: 50 exotic beauties in 24 hours -- and the cops are already on to them! Directed by Dominic Sena and written by Scott Rosenberg, GONE IN 60 SECONDS is an action-packed thrill ride that comes out fast and never slows down.Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi) is a cocky young car thief working with a crew to steal 50 cars for a very bad man whose nickname is "The Carpenter." Being young and cocky, Kip messes up, so it's up to his big brother, Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage), to come out of car thief retirement and save him. With a cast that includes Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Cage, and Ribisi, it would be easy to say this story wastes all their talents--which it does, but that's not the point. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film. A good story and complex characters would only get in the way of the action scenes and slow the movie down. No, Gone in 60 Seconds (based on the cult 1974 film of ! the same name) is not about the stars as much as it's about ca! rs. Fast cars. Rare cars. Wrecked cars. All cars. Too bad director Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) doesn't come across as more of a gearhead; he seems less interested in fast cars than fast cuts. But is this movie fun? Absolutely, and it's fun because it's so stupid. With pointless car chases and hackneyed dialogue in one of the most predictable plots of the year, Gone in 60 Seconds is a comic film that's not quite a parody of itself, but darn close. --Andy SpletzerFasten your seat belts for the ride of your life as Jerry Bruckheimer's high-octane hit reaches a new gear in a revolutionary high-definition format. Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie go full throttle as they try to pull off the ultimate heist -- 50 exotic cars in 24 hours! The action revs up like never before on Blu-ray disc. Experience every jaw-dropping chase scene in stunning 1080p. Feel the screech of the tires and the roar of the engines presented in 5.1 48 kHz, 24-bit uncompressed audio.! Enjoy GONE IN 60 SECONDS like never before -- with a pristine high-definition picture and theater-quality sound.Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi) is a cocky young car thief working with a crew to steal 50 cars for a very bad man whose nickname is "The Carpenter." Being young and cocky, Kip messes up, so it's up to his big brother, Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage), to come out of car thief retirement and save him. With a cast that includes Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Cage, and Ribisi, it would be easy to say this story wastes all their talents--which it does, but that's not the point. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film. A good story and complex characters would only get in the way of the action scenes and slow the movie down. No, Gone in 60 Seconds (based on the cult 1974 film of the same name) is not about the stars as much as it's about cars. Fast cars. Rare cars. Wrecked cars. All cars. Too bad director Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) doesn't com! e across as more of a gearhead; he seems less interested in fa! st cars than fast cuts. But is this movie fun? Absolutely, and it's fun because it's so stupid. With pointless car chases and hackneyed dialogue in one of the most predictable plots of the year, Gone in 60 Seconds is a comic film that's not quite a parody of itself, but darn close. --Andy Spletzer