DVD Releases for January 6, 2009

Pineapple Express

Genre: Action, Comedy

MPAA Rating: R

Movie Website: RidetheExpress.com

Actors/Actresses: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Danny R. McBride, Amber Heard, James Remar

Plot Summary: Lazy stoner Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) has only one reason to visit his equally lazy dealer Saul Silver (James Franco): to purchase weed, specifically, a rare new strain called Pineapple Express. But when Dale becomes the only witness to a murder by a crooked cop (Rosie Perez) and the city’s most dangerous drug lord (Gary Cole), he panics and dumps his roach of Pineapple Express at the scene. Dale now has another reason to visit Saul: to find out if the weed is so rare that it can be traced back to him. And it is. As Dale and Saul run for their lives, they quickly discover that they’re not suffering from weed-fueled paranoia; incredibly, the bad guys really are hot on their trail and trying to figure out the fastest way to kill them both. All aboard the Pineapple Express.

The film is directed by David Gordon Green (“All the Real Girls”). The screenplay is by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg from a story by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg. Judd Apatow and Shauna Robertson produce.

The Wackness

Genre: Comedy

MPAA Rating: R

Movie Website: TheWackness.com

Actors/Actresses: Josh Peck, Sir Ben Kingsley, Method Man, Mary Kate Olsen, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, Aaron Yoo

Plot Summary: It’s the summer of 1994, and the streets of New York are pulsing with hip-hop and wafting with the sweet aroma of marijuana–but change is in the air. The newly-inaugurated mayor, Rudy Giuliani, is beginning to implement his anti-fun initiatives against “crimes” like noisy portable radios, graffiti and public drunkenness. Set against this backdrop, Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) spends his last summer before college selling dope throughout New York City, trading it with his shrink (Ben Kingsley) for therapy, while crushing on his step-daughter (Olivia Thirlby). Famke Janssen, Mary Kate Olsen,and Method Man round out the cast in this edgy, bittersweet, and funny coming of age story.

Righteous Kill

Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Thriller

MPAA Rating: R

Movie Website: RighteousKill-themovie.com

Actors/Actresses: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, 50 Cent, Donnie Wahlberg, Carla Gugino

Plot Summary: A pair of veteran New York City police detectives are on the trail of a vigilante serial killer. After 30 years as partners in the pressure cooker environment of the NYPD, highly decorated Detectives David Fisk and Thomas Cowan should be ready for retirement, but aren’t. Before they can hang up their badges, they are called in to investigate the murder of a notorious pimp, which appears to have ties to a case they solved years before. Like the original murder, the victim is a suspected criminal whose body is found accompanied by a four line poem justifying the killing. When additional crimes take place, it becomes clear the detectives are looking for a serial killer, one who targets criminals that have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. His mission is to do what the cops can’t do on their own–take the culprits off the streets for good. The similarities between the recent killings and their earlier case raise a nagging question: Did they put the wrong man behind bars?

Babylon A.D.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Movie Website: BabylonADmovie.com

Actors/Actresses: Vin Diesel, Gérard Depardieu, Michelle Yeoh, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Strong, Radek Bruna, Melanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson

Plot Summary: It is the not-too-distant future. Thousands of satellites scan, observe and monitor our every move. Much of the planet is a war zone; the rest, a collection of wretched way stations, teeming megalopolises, and vast wastelands punctuated by areas left radioactive from nuclear meltdowns.

It is a world made for hardened warriors, one of whom, a mercenary known only as Toorop (Vin Diesel), lives by a simple survivor’s code: kill… or be killed. His latest assignment has him smuggling a young woman named Aurora from a convent in Kazakhstan to New York City.

Toorop, his new young charge Aurora (Melanie Thierry) and Aurora’s guardian Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh) embark on a 6,000 mile journey that takes them from Eastern Europe, through a refugee camp in “New Russia,” across the Bering Straight in a pilfered submarine, then through the frozen tundra of Alaska and Canada, and finally to New York. Facing obstacles at every turn, Toorop, the killer for hire, is tested like never before, in ways he could never have imagined – as he comes to understand that he is the custodian of the only hope for the future of mankind.

For the first time in his life, Toorop has to make a choice: to make a difference or walk away and save himself.

Too bad it came on the day he died.

Bangkok Dangerous

Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller

MPAA Rating: R

Movie Website: BangkokDangerousmovie.net

Actors/Actresses: Nicolas Cage, Shahkrit Yamnarm, Charlie Yeung, Panward Hemmanee, Nirattisai Kaljaruek, Dom Hetrakul

Plot Summary: The life of an anonymous assassin takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. Joe (Nicolas Cage), a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat. He hires Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a street punk and pickpocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment. Strangely, Joe, the ultimate lone wolf, instead finds himself mentoring the young man while simultaneously being drawn into a tentative romance with a local shop girl. As he falls further under the sway of Bangkok’s intoxicating beauty, Joe begins to question his isolated existence and let down his guard… just as Surat decides it’s time to clean house.

Directors Oxide Pang and Danny Pang (“The Eye”) paint an explosive picture of the Bangkok underworld, illuminated with neon and saturated in violence. Based on the Pang Brothers’ wildly popular Hong Kong action film of the same name “Bangkok Dangerous” is written by Jason Richman.

Disaster Movie

Genre: Comedy

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Actors/Actresses: Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, Carmen Electra, Kim Kardashian, G-Thang, Nicole Parker, Crista Flanagan, Ike Barinholtz

Plot Summary: In “Disaster Movie,” the filmmaking team behind the hits “Scary Movie,” “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie” and “Meet the Spartans” this time puts its unique, inimitable stamp on one of the biggest and most bloated movie genres of all time – the disaster film.

“Disaster Movie” follows the comic misadventures of a group of ridiculously attractive twenty-somethings during one fateful night as they try to make their way to safety while every known natural disaster and catastrophic event – asteroids, twisters, earthquakes, the works – hits the city and their path as they try to solve a series of mysteries to end the rampant destruction.

Taking aim at everything and everyone, from “Indiana Jones” and “Iron Man” to Amy Winehouse and “High School Musical,” “Disaster Movie” lampoons the blockbuster movie, pop culture icons and public figures along the way as Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer satirize everything as only they can.