New to On Demand & DVD

You wouldn’t think a movie that opens with an up-close image of a character falling to his death on 9/11 would run the risk of being too cutesy, right? But that is among the charges leveled at Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, director Stephen Daldry’s taxing but ultimately rewarding adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer novel. In the decade since the terrorist attacks on New York City, Extremely Loud is one of the few films that have tackled the subject head on, as opposed to keeping it in the periphery. It views the tragedy through the eyes of young Oskar […]

When the announcement came that Stieg Larsson’s thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was getting the American remake treatment, like many, I winced. Too often, a domestic versioning ends up a dilution of the original, bloated with hyper-real action scenes and effects. But in the case of David Fincher’s telling, I’m happy to say that the strength of the material justifies the revisit. Critics worldwide agreed, and the film earned multiple award nominations and a won a total of seven various awards. Like its Swedish predecessor, the U.S. version tells the story of journalist and publisher Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel […]

The Internet is filled with side-by-side photos of J. Edgar Hoover and Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Hoover in the film J. Edgar. There is a similarity in facial shape and features grouped close together, and DiCaprio nails the famous Hoover scowl. Yet, in portraying a person who could be termed the most enigmatic man in American history over a span of more than 50 years, DiCaprio had to tap into the nature of the controversial FBI director. “It was a terrific challenge to breathe life into this person, because he was such a mystery,” DiCaprio says. “I did find that […]

Better known for destroying worlds with films such as Independence Day and 2012, director Roland Emmerich creates a historic one in the dramatic thriller Anonymous. The film supports the theory that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s plays — a debate among scholars of the Bard for years. Here, it’s postulated to be Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, (Rhys Ifans, pictured). A poet and playwright, he is among the most popular candidates to have authored Shakespeare’s works. In a seven-minute trailer for the film, Emmerich lays out 10 reasons why he believes that Shakespeare was a fraud. These are certainly compelling. But […]