September 2005 DVD & Blu-rays

A Brentwood housewife and her DA husband. A Persian store owner. Two police detectives who are also lovers. A black television director and his wife. A Mexican locksmith. Two car-jackers. A rookie cop. A middle-aged Korean couple... They all live in Los Angeles. And in the next 36 hours, they will all collide... A provocative, unflinching look at the complexities of racial conflict in America, "Crash" is that rare cinematic event—film that challenges audiences to question their own prejudices. Diving headlong into the diverse melting pot of post-9/11 Los Angeles, this compelling urban drama tracks the volatile intersections of a multi-ethnic cast, examining fear and bigotry from multiple perspectives as characters careen in and out of one another's lives. No one is safe in the battle zones of intolerance. And no one is immune to the simmering rage that sparks violence—and changes lives...

"The Holy Girl", Martel intimately explores the burgeoning sexuality and religious fervor of two teenage girls, Amalia (María Alche) and her best friend, Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg). Artfully piecing together a mosaic of nuanced details, fragments of sounds, and small moments, Martel creates a potent and specific portrait of adolescent life. In the town of La Ciénaga, Amalia lives with her attractive, divorced mother, Helena (Mercedes Morán), and her uncle, Freddy (Alejandro Urdapilleta), in the crumbling, run-down Hotel Termas, which her family owns and runs. After choir rehearsals the girls gather in the parish church for further instruction in faith and vocation. What does God want from me? How do I discern between the temptation of the Devil and the calling of God? In between the teachings, the girls gossip and whisper secretively. The lives of the girls and their families intersect with those of a group of visiting orhinolaryngologists (ear, nose and throat specialists) staying at the hotel for a medical convention, including the married, middle-aged Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso). One day, a crowd of people gather in the street to watch a man play an unusual, exotic instrument: a theremin. Amalia is in the crowd when a man standing behind her presses himself sexually against her. Later, in the hotel, she discovers that this man is Dr. Jano, one of the doctors attending the conference. Amalia finds herself drawn to the Doctor and for days she spies on him. Dr. Jano never notices her presence, but he does notice her mother, Helena. Helena greatly enjoys the attention from this man, but she has little hope as she knows he is married and has a family. Days afterward Amalia confides in Josefina what occurred in the street with Dr. Jano and of her secret mission: to save one man from sin. Dr. Jano becomes caught up in Amalia's web of good intentions and the respected doctor finds his world is on the brink of collapse when her adolescent obsession sets off a chain reaction of social catastrophe.

A young drifter enters strangers' houses - and lives - while owners are away. He spends a night or a day squatting in, repaying their unwitting hospitality by doing laundry or small repairs. His life changes when he runs into a beautiful woman in an affluent mansion who is ready to escape her unhappy, abusive marriage.

A contemporary romantic comedy about a high school teacher who meets and falls in love with a successful businesswoman. Although their lives are vastly different, the relationship seems perfect until the baseball season begins and she has to compete with his first true love: the Boston Red Sox.

Rocks Stars. Guitar Gods. Kids. At some point in almost everyone's life, they dream of becoming a rock star: feeling the roar of the crowd; basking in the adoration of legions of fans; experiencing the adventures of life on the road. Now imagine fulfilling that fantasy as a child. Welcome to "Rock School". A meditation on talent and teaching, "Rock School" is a celebration of youthful promise and steadfast dreams. It is also a kick-ass music movie that should be played loud!

A fable of innocence: thirteen-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a 'mom'. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibility. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it's hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again.

The true story of a dying river town in Indiana, which in 1971 succeeded in becoming the host for the Gold Cup of hydroplane boat racing. Competing on the racing circuit requires deep-pocketed sponsorships and top-of-the-line technology and equipment. Jim McCormick, even though he's now a father with a family to support and has a steady job, has never abandoned his dream of piloting the community-owned Miss Madison to victory in the sport's biggest event. Alas, the economic struggles of this trade-diminished municipality have severely crimped its level of support. But faced with the opportunity to welcome the prestigious championship, McCormick wins, or more correctly hustles, the town's backing and, despite the misgivings of his wife and a sizable percentage of his neighbors, undertakes to race Miss Madison and compete with the big boys.

In this suburban drama, a widower (played by Anthony LaPaglia) confronts his older son's (played by Aaron Stanford) decision to leave home and his younger son's self-destructive behavior.

Earthman Arthur Dent is having a very bad day. His house is about to be bulldozed, he discovers that his best friend is an alien--and to top things off, Planet Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur's only chance for survival: hitch a ride on a passing spacecraft. For the novice space traveler, the greatest adventure in the universe begins when the world ends. Arthur sets out on a journey in which he finds that nothing is as it seems: he learns that a towel is just the most useful thing in the universe, finds the meaning of life, and discovers that everything he needs to know can be found in one book: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

"It's All About Love" takes place in the near future and tells the story of a couple fighting for their love, and ultimately for their lives, in a world out of balance. John (Joaquin Phoenix) and the world famous ice skater Elena (Claire Danes) have a modern marriage and they have lived apart for several years, John in Poland and Elena mostly in New York. Time has made the distance between them grow, and eventually John goes to see Elena in New York to get her signature on their final divorce papers. Upon arriving in New York, John realizes that strange and unexpected things are happening around Elena. People he once knew as friends seem not to be friends after all. The love he thought was dead blossoms once more. And it's up to John to save Elena from her fate, if he can.

Four siblings live happily with their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. The children all have different fathers. They have never been to school. The very existence of three of them has been hidden from the landlord. One day, the mother leaves behind a little money and a note asking her 12-year-old boy to look after his younger siblings. And so begins the children's odyssey, a journey nobody knows. Despite their mother's abandonment, the four children do their best to survive in their own little world, devising and following their own set of rules. But when they have no choice but to engage with the world outside the apartment, the fragile balance that has sustained them collapses. Kore-eda incorporated documentary techniques to makes this film extraordinarily intimate and unaffected. Filmed chronologically over a year, "Nobody Knows" captures the young amateur actors growing as their characters do, highlighting the details of the children's lives, whether the nuances of a manicure, a toy piano, squeaking sandals, a cup of instant noodles, or a box of chocolates, to evoke not only the distinctive world of these particular abandoned children, but the gentleness and beauty of every childhood.

Pro quarterback Paul Crewe and former college champion and coach Nate Scarboro are doing time in the same prison. Asked to put together a team of inmates to take on the guards, Crewe enlists the help of Scarboro to coach the inmates to victory in a football game fixed to turn out quite the other way.

A 10-year-old outcast is shunned by his classmates and forced to spend summer vacation alone. With his two imaginary friends, he goes on a mission to prove dreams can become reality.

Set on a world populated entirely by robots, this is the story of a young genius, Rodney (Ewan McGregor), who wants to make robots capable of making the world a better place, but he finds his dream challenged by a corporate tyrant and a master inventor, Big Weld (Mel Brooks), while also being seduced by a sexy corporate robot, Cappy (Halle Berry).

"Inside Deep Throat" examines the unanticipated lasting cultural impact generated by "Deep Throat", a sexually explicit film first shown in a midtown Manhattan adult theater in June 1972 that quickly became the flashpoint for an unprecedented social and political firestorm. Generally considered the most profitable film of all time (produced for less than $25,000), "Deep Throat" unexpectedly became a cultural phenomenon at the moment when the nation's movements of sexual liberation, equal rights and questioning authority demanded a combustible focus. The barely one-hour long adult title became compulsory viewing for millions of Americans. More than 30 years later, "Inside Deep Throat" examines the chasm between the modest intentions of the filmmakers behind "Deep Throat" and the unforeseen, ironic impact and legacy that their film left on society.

This biopic focuses on the life of 20th-century Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani during the period after the first World War.

An expressionist work comprised of surreal action involving: a hockey rink that houses a forgotten wax museum, where ghosts of dead lovers stroll; and a beauty salon where a demented doctor, wearing a corset, performs abortions.

Hiding inside a group of eight young FBI profilers learning to hunt serial killers is a killer attempting to hunt them. As one by one the agents begin to disappear, none can be trusted. Each one is under suspicion. And they are all in mortal danger until, in the ultimate test of their crime-solving skills, they uncover the mysterious predator lurking in their midst.

Set in Ghobadi's native Kurdistan, close to the Turkey-Iran border, 13-year-old Soran orders other children around as he installs an antennae for villagers keen to hear of Saddam's fall. Eventually, he falls for Agrin but is disturbed by her brother Henkov, who was left armless after he stepped on a landmine and who can now seemingly predict the future.

In the 1970s, a group of teenage surfers from a tough neighborhood known as "Dogtown" in Venice, California pioneered a revolutionary new style of skateboarding. Riding the waves at the Pacific Ocean Park pier, the Z-Boyz, known for their aggressive style and hard street attitude, combined the death-defying moves of surfing with the art of skateboarding and became overnight sensations and local legends. With empty pools as their canvas, the Z-boyz paved the way to what is now referred to as "extreme sports," and created a lifestyle that spread infectiously to beomce a worldwide counterculture phenomenon. But all of this fame would take its toll on the friendships that they thought would last a lifetime as the sport that started out as an afternoon hobby turned into big business.