Message in a Bottle (Keepcase)

Message in a Bottle (Keepcase) Review

Message in a Bottle (Keepcase) Overview

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE - DVD Movie

Message in a Bottle (Keepcase) Specifications

If, as they say, you're in a certain mood, Message in a Bottle can be just the ticket. Based on Nicholas Sparks's bestselling novel, this handsome but overly calculated romance tale stars Robin Wright Penn as Theresa, a Chicago Tribune researcher who finds a note encased in a green bottle that has floated onto a Cape Cod shore. The message within is a heartfelt, yearning declaration of love to a woman named Catherine, but the author is unknown until Theresa (rather improbably) tracks him down in North Carolina. He's Garret Blake (Kevin Costner), a taciturn builder of sailboats and a grieving widower whose late wife, poetically speaking, was the intended recipient of the seafaring note Theresa found. Theresa, a divorcée with a son, decides to meet Garret, only to find him as bottled-up as his message. Nevertheless, a romance blooms on the strength of quality time in a sailboat and lots of cuddling, though the script tosses in bits of conflict to keep their relationship spicy. Directed by Luis Mandoki (When a Man Loves a Woman), this love story is entirely by the numbers, with Costner inhabiting (rather than performing) a stock fantasy of a man perfect in every way save his broken heart. Penn brings more vibrancy to her equally predictable part, but fortunately for all, Paul Newman, John Savage, Robbie Coltrane, and Illeana Douglas are on hand in nicely textured character parts. Sometimes predictability is exactly what one wants when settling in for an evening of home video, and this movie fits the bill nicely. The appealing cinematography is by ace cameraman Caleb Deschanel. --Tom Keogh

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jun 21, 2011 17:10:04

My Dog Skip (Keepcase)

My Dog Skip (Keepcase) Review

My Dog Skip (Keepcase) Overview

MY DOG SKIP - DVD Movie

My Dog Skip (Keepcase) Specifications

This boy-and-his-dog movie, a nonpareil family film, is, as one of the characters so aptly puts it, "a heartbreak waiting to happen." Frankie Muniz, winning over audiences in the TV series Malcolm in the Middle, has competition in My Dog Skip--Skip himself (adorably played by a total of six Jack Russell terriers). Muniz, an inveterate charmer, stars as Willie Morris (from whose memoir the film is adapted), a gawky, awkward boy growing up during World War II under an overly protective father (Kevin Bacon). When his mom (Diane Lane) gives him Skip on his 9th birthday, his life is changed in every way for the better. Previously disinterested peers become pals, and he experiences puppy love with a girl named Rivers (Caitlin Wachs). There are plenty of high jinks and rah-rah touches of Americana, and the film also attempts to deal with sophisticated emotions--Willie's boyhood hero turns out to be less than heroic--but its devastating emotional core comes, simply and obviously, with Skip's eventual aging and demise. Dog lovers will be wiped out; those who don't care for canines shouldn't even be bothering to read this review. (Ages 8 and older) --David Kronke

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Apr 29, 2011 20:30:08

Contact (Keepcase)

Contact (Keepcase) Review

Contact has long been in my list of top 10 movies. A big fan of Carl Sagan in my youth (his series Cosmos inspired many budding Astronomers I'm sure) seeing his novel contact realised as a motion picture was a joyful occasion for me and while there are a few differences from the book I was extremely pleased with the result.

The choice of Jodie Foster as Elly worked well as she brought her considerable acting talent to crafting a character driven by a thirst for knowledge and the need to know that we are not alone. Other powerful performances from Tom Skerrit and Matthew McConaughey round out the main characters in this movie nicely.

Stunning visuals, great soundtrack, and great philosophical questions to answer.

This will always be one of my favourite movies and I am glad that I can now enjoy it in magnificent full HD.

Contact (Keepcase) Overview

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/08/2009

Contact (Keepcase) Specifications

The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these days--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest) reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation, but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contact deserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio filmmaking on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 25, 2010 01:26:05