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You've Got Mail
: essential video:By now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do actually meet face to face early on, but Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot. The ...
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Getting in
: essential video:By now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do actually meet face to face early on, but Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot. The ...
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Robin Hood - Men in Tights
: essential video:It's not Blazing Saddles, but there are some chuckles to be found in Mel Brooks's 1993 spoof of the Robin Hood legend. Cary Elwes is Robin (with a lighthearted jab at Kevin Costner's bad English accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), while Richard Lewis plays an angst-ridden King John, and Roger Rees a snotty Sheriff of Nottingham. Comic David Chappelle has some good moments as the only black member of Robins's noble thieves, and Brooks does his own spin on Friar Tuck: Rabbi Tuchman. The song-and-dance sequences featuring ...
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Mel Brooks Collector Set (7pc) (Coll)
:Description:The movies included in this Mel Brooks box set are: High Anxiety History of the World, Part 1 Silent Movie Robin Hood : Men in Tights The Twelve Chairs To Be or Not to Be
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Con Air
: :Con Air is proof that the slick, absurdly overblown action formula of Hollywood mega-producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Days of Thunder, The Rock, Crimson Tide) lives on, even after Simpson's druggy death. (Read Charles Fleming's exposé, High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, for more about that.) Nicolas Cage, sporting a disconcerting mane of hair, is a wrongly convicted prisoner on a transport plane with a bunch of infamously psychopathic criminals, including head creep Cyrus the Virus (John Malkovich), black militant Diamond Dog (Ving Rhames), ...
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Half Baked
: :Cannabis comedy doesn't get more juvenile than this pro-pot goof about three stoners who come to the rescue of a fourth buddy when he's arrested for feeding a lethal dose of junk food to a diabetic police horse. Kenny (Harland Williams) is sent to jail, and to rescue him from the almost inevitable trauma of homosexual rape (giving you some idea of this movie's level of humor), his buddies set out to raise his $100,000 bail by selling high-grade weed ripped off from a pharmaceutical research lab. That's about it for ...
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Blue Streak
: :Martin Lawrence can certainly talk a blue streak (witness his concert film, You So Crazy), but he tones it down to PG-13 for this by-the-book action comedy. Lawrence stars as Logan, a bank robber and jewel thief (nice role model we're supposed to cheer for) who, just before he is arrested, manages to stash the $20 million diamond he has just heisted at a construction site. When he is released from prison two years later, he returns to the scene of the crime only to find that the completed building houses a ...
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Russell Simmon's Def Comedy Jam All Stars 4
: :Martin Lawrence can certainly talk a blue streak (witness his concert film, You So Crazy), but he tones it down to PG-13 for this by-the-book action comedy. Lawrence stars as Logan, a bank robber and jewel thief (nice role model we're supposed to cheer for) who, just before he is arrested, manages to stash the $20 million diamond he has just heisted at a construction site. When he is released from prison two years later, he returns to the scene of the crime only to find that the completed building houses a ...
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200 Cigarettes
: :Trying to cash in on the '80s-nostalgia bandwagon, this New Year's Eve ensemble comedy, set in 1981 Manhattan, offers a vintage soundtrack, some memorable fashion statements, and most notably a talented ensemble that's pretty much all dressed up with no place to go. The large cast--featuring such bleeding-edge actors as Christina Ricci, Ben Affleck, Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, Jay Mohr, and a surprisingly demure Courtney Love--does manage to exude some charm, but in all the cross-cutting between numerous subplots we never get a chance to spend much time with anyone. Just ...
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Undercover Brother
: :Blaxploitation movies deserve a good spoofing, and Undercover Brother tweaks the subgenre with a few good laughs. But what might have been an Afro-centric Austin Powers (adapted by John Ridley from his Internet film series) is instead a lackluster comedy with one basic joke: 'Whitey'--personified as a faceless corporate despot known as 'the Man'--has the power, but black folks have soul. With enough funk to make Shaft look passé, Eddie Griffin plays 'U.B.' with an oversized 'fro and a firm grasp of comedic possibilities. He's recruited by the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. (an all-black ...
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