Kathmandu:

I object to you all seeing Big Buck Production’s and missing out on the small great DVDs. Here are some:

The Last Time is a film that entices you along to the end. Starring Ted Keaton as a hated but successful top executive in New York who takes Brendan Fraser under his wing after he begins an affair with Fraser’s fiancée Amber Valletta. Then you find you’ve been had.

The Land Of The Blind with Tom Hollander, Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland, is a tale about a dictatorship that has bits of Animal Farm all over it. The movie answers the question what happens to an idealistic political prisoner when he becomes a dictator.

The Big Nothing is a black comic thriller about a small town in America with the entire cast trying to get out of town, with a lot of stolen money. It is Simon Pegg’s second outing after Hot Fuzz. Chaos has us laughing but wondering if we should.

Talk To Me is a biopic about Petey Greene (Don Cheadle) a released convict who becomes a DJ with Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) managing him. There is some Oscar talk about Don Cheadle. The characters of Petey’s girlfriend played by Taraji P Henson and other supporting actors add gravitas to the film.

Becoming Jane has Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen with figures who might have appeared in her life and her books. James McAvoy is her Mr Darcy. Love, disappointments enrich the film’s heroine who never married and brings a 200 years old figure to life.

Breach is about FBI man Hanssen (Chris Cooper) who was responsible for the death of more American agents than anyone else. Eric O’ Neil (Ryan Philleppe) is the young FBI agent sent to bring him down. The movie is directed by Billy Ray with suspense and great character studies.

You Kill Me with Ben Kingsley as an alcoholic killer is a black laugh aloud farce about a hit man who starts passing out while trying to kill someone. He goes to San Francisco, falls for Tea Leoni and attends AA meeting where he says, “My name is Frank and I am an alcoholic hit man”. And the audiences inevitably say, “Hi Frank”. Director John Dahl adds toughness and humanity.

Hairspray: You can’t go wrong with the re-make of an old musical this time around starring John Travolta as a loving mother, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, James Marsden and on and on but the real star is Nikki Blonsky, fat feisty and bubbly. She lights up the screen even as Michelle Pfeiffer tries to put her not just down but away. Director Adam Shankman does the dance numbers with deftness that will keep you jiving.

Redacted is powerful, horrifying and sickening. It’s Brian De Palma directing a group of amateurs in story about the rape of a 15 years old Iraqi girl. What’s clever is the media he uses from a soldiers amateur movie to a French documentary film to websites. De Palma’s war is not just horrible, it’s grotesque.

Rescue Dawn: Werner Herzog directs Christian Bale and Steve Zahn in a movie about POW’s in Laos who escape their captors and are captured in the jungle where they go from delirious to delusional. Both actors mi-ght be nominated for Oscar.

Waitress is about an unhappily married woman who bakes pies with special names and ingredients depending on her mood in a small American town. The local doctor proves a brief escape, as do her colleagues and an old Southern gentleman and of course pies, pies, pies. Tender, funny, sad just like life.