title: Ransom (Special Edition) function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();�<br> studio: Touchstone Home Entertainment MPAA rating: R starring: Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise, Delroy Lindo release year: 2004 film rating: Four Stars sound/picture: Four Stars reviewed by: Mel Odom One of every parent’s greatest fears is that his or her child will be abducted. The news constantly carries stories about children taken by non-custodial parents. The faces of missing kids appear on milk cartons and in post offices and major retail stores like Old West bounty papers. Some people may feel that the missing children issue has reached epidemic proportions. Mostly, however, these children were taken by family members or someone close to them who mean the child no harm. But some of them go missing, abducted by strangers for sexual or murderous intent. Children are kidnapped for ransom relatively rarely, but history is filled with such occurrences.

title: Basic Instinct function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Live Entertainment MPAA rating: R starring: Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, George Dzundza, Jeanne Tripplehorn release year: 1992 film rating: Three-and-a-half stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein There are a lot of really annoying things about 'Basic Instinct,' but for a reviewer, the most irksome is this: it's an instance of genuinely stylish, smart technique put in the service of a truly silly story. Director Paul Verhoeven has snappy, breathless pacing and visual style to burn, aided by cinematographer Jan De Bont (who went on to direct the equally good-looking 'Speed' and 'Twister'). However, cinematic flair stretches only so far. In 'Basic Instinct,' Michael Douglas plays San Francisco homicide detective Nick Curran, who crosses paths with gorgeous and wealthy murder suspect Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone). Catherine loves to have sex with men and women and may or may not be a serial killer who describes her crimes in the novels she writes. Nick falls under her spell, but will he meet ...

title: Targets function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();�<br> studio: Paramount Home Video MPAA rating: R starring: Boris Karloff, Tim O'Kelly, Nancy Hsueh, Peter Bogdanovich, Sandy Baron, Monty Landis, Arthur Peterson, James Brown, Mary Morgan, Tanya Morgan release year: 1968 film rating: Four Stars sound/picture: Four Stars reviewed by: Bill Warren Peter Bogdanovich was a busy cinema journalist in the late 1950s and early '60s, and had interviewed many of the key figures in movie history. But he was also a walking stereotype: he really wanted to direct. He worked for a while for Roger Corman, assisting on "The Wild Angels" and directing one of those movies Corman assembled out of a Russian film, "Women of the Prehistoric Planet." (Bogdanovich doesn't mention this in the "Targets" commentary track.)

title: Phone Booth function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();�<br> studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment MPAA rating: R starring: Colin Farrell, Forest Whitaker, Kiefer Sutherland, Katie Holmes, Radha Mitchell release year: 2003 film rating: Three-and-a-Half Stars sound/picture: Three Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein Film and TV writers have a standard joke when they are confronted with requests for what they consider unreasonable cuts in their action/thriller scripts: “Set it in a phone booth.” The expression is not heard so often nowadays, probably less because there are fewer unreasonable requests from producers and studio executives than because there are fewer phone booths (a fact duly noted in the film).

title: Gangs Of New York function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Miramax Home Entertainment MPAA rating: R starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Brendon Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, John C. McGinley release year: 2002 film rating: Four Stars sound/picture: Four Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein It has been said that history is written in blood, a theory that “Gangs of New York” bears out. Director Martin Scorsese and writers Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, working from Cocks’ story (inspired, Scorsese mentions in the commentary, by a non-fiction tome that gives the film its name), blend documented incident with fiction to create a tapestry that vividly illustrates how many clashing forces, hammering ferociously at each other, all contribute to the nature of a nation. “Gangs” is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- we are awed and moved by Scorsese’s epic scope and vision (and by the prodigious amount of information he uses to fill each frame), but while we ...