DVD Update for week of Jan. 4

Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Fri., Jan. 4:

 

   “Premium Rush” is a race-against-time as Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a Manhattan bicycle messenger entrusted with a mysterious envelope that he must deliver within a prescribed timeframe; it’s memorable only for the impressive chase scenes and stunt work on a bike without brakes.

    Robert Pattinson stars as a hotshot investment tycoon in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” a cynical, pretentious  thriller that purportedly examines our obsession with power, money, control, information, technology, sex, mortality, revolution, destruction and, ultimately, redemption.

    “The Words” refers to a new book written by an author (Dennis Quaid) who describes an ambitious young writer (Bradley Cooper) who discovers an old manuscript and publishes it as his own; basking in fame and fortune, he encounters a mysterious old man (Jeremy Irons), the manuscript’s real author.

    Writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Resident Evil: Retribution” continues the sci-fi/horror series in which Milla Jovovich remains the human race’s last-and-only hope against the vicious bio-pharmaceutical company that concocted the T-virus, a plague that triggered a zombie apocalypse.

    In that same vein, “The Millennium Bug” follows the Haskin family as they seek refuge from Y2K hysteria in the isolated forests of the Sierra Diablos Mountains, only to be abducted by a vicious hillbilly clan and beset by a monstrous nightmare erupting from deep below.

    Spike Lee’s “Red Hook Summer” celebrates African-American strength and resilience in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood as a middle-class Georgia boy (Jules Brown) spends summer vacation with his devout Methodist grandfather, Da Good Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters).

   Kids – ages three to seven – can learn about science the fun way with “Isis: The Happy Professor,” and there’s a new Wild West cowgirl “Cinderella,” featuring a furry and feathered cast of animated characters in an inventively reimagined story.

   PICKS OF THE WEEK:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis star in “Looper,” an exciting, action-packed, futuristic thriller revolving around the tricky concept of time-travel and its challenging consequences. …and Clint Eastwood scores in “Trouble With the Curve,” playing a cranky, aging baseball scout on one final recruiting trip with Amy Adams as his daughter.

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