2009-06-30

Top 10 Best DVDs of 2008-Amazon.com (part1)


No.1 Juno (Two-Disc Special Edition with Digital Copy) (2007)

Genre:Drama, Comedy

Director:Jason Reitman

Cast:Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney

Plot of The DVD
JUNO stars Ellen Page as the title character, a whip-smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker (Michael Cera). With the help of her hot best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno finds her unborn child a “perfect” set of parents: an affluent suburban couple, Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), longing to adopt. Luckily, Juno has the total support of her parents (JK Simmons and Allison Janney) as she faces some tough decisions, flirts with adulthood and ultimately figures out where she belongs.

The leading roles:


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Editorial Reviews of Amazon.com:
Somewhere between the sharp satire of Election and the rich human comedy of You Can Count On Me lies Juno, a sardonic but ultimately compassionate story of a pregnant teenage girl who wants to give her baby up for adoption. Social misfit Juno (Ellen Page, Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand) protects herself with a caustic wit, but when she gets pregnant by her friend Paulie (Michael Cera, Superbad), Juno finds herself unwilling to terminate the pregnancy. When she chooses a couple who place a classified ad looking to adopt, Juno gets drawn further into their lives than she anticipated. But Juno is much more than its plot; the stylized dialogue (by screenwriter Diablo Cody) seems forced at first, but soon creates a richly textured world, greatly aided by superb performances by Page, Cera, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the prospective parents, and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man) and Allison Janney as Juno's father and stepmother. Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) deftly keeps the movie from slipping into easy, shallow sarcasm or foundering in sentimentality. The result is smarter and funnier than you might expect from the subject matter, and warmer and more touching than you might expect from the cocky attitude. Page's performance is deceptively simple; she never asks the audience to love her, yet she effortlessly carries a movie in which she's in almost every scene. That's star power. --Bret Fetzer



No.2 The Dark Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy) (2008)

Genre:Action,Crime

Director:Christopher Nolan

Cast:Christian Bale,Heath Ledger,Aaron Eckhart,Michael Caine,Maggie Gyllenhaal,Gary Oldman,Monique Curnen,Ron Dean

Plot of The DVD
The movie begins with a gang of men with clown masks breaking into the bank where the mob has a large portion of their money stashed. It begins with five clowns, each getting a cut of the spoils. They suggest that a sixth member of the gang, who did the planning - nicknamed 'The Joker' - but sat out the robbery, doesn't deserve a cut. As the robbery goes on, the clowns begin to kill each other in order to get a larger cut, until a school bus crashes through the wall of the bank, killing another clown. A mob bank manager, who was himself shot with an automatic weapon after he tried to take out the clowns with a shotgun, tells the remaining clown that he doesn't know who he is dealing with. The clown kneels down and tells the banker that he believe that, "Whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you...stranger..." then removes his mask to reveal that he himself is The Joker. Joker puts a grenade into the banker's mouth and boards the bus, leaving a string attached to the pin. The bus pulls out with all of the bank's cash and the pins pops out. It is just a gas grenade. The Joker joins a long line of school buses leaving the scene as the police arrive...

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Editorial Reviews of Amazon.com:
The Dark Knight arrives with tremendous hype (best superhero movie ever? posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger?), and incredibly, it lives up to all of it. But calling it the best superhero movie ever seems like faint praise, since part of what makes the movie great--in addition to pitch-perfect casting, outstanding writing, and a compelling vision--is that it bypasses the normal fantasy element of the superhero genre and makes it all terrifyingly real. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is Gotham City's new district attorney, charged with cleaning up the crime rings that have paralyzed the city. He enters an uneasy alliance with the young police lieutenant, Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), and Batman (Christian Bale), the caped vigilante who seems to trust only Gordon--and whom only Gordon seems to trust. They make progress until a psychotic and deadly new player enters the game: the Joker (Heath Ledger), who offers the crime bosses a solution--kill the Batman. Further complicating matters is that Dent is now dating Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, after Katie Holmes turned down the chance to reprise her role), the longtime love of Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne.
In his last completed role before his tragic death, Ledger is fantastic as the Joker, a volcanic, truly frightening force of evil. And he sets the tone of the movie: the world is a dark, dangerous place where there are no easy choices. Eckhart and Oldman also shine, but as good as Bale is, his character turns out rather bland in comparison (not uncommon for heroes facing more colorful villains). Director-cowriter Christopher Nolan (Memento) follows his critically acclaimed Batman Begins with an even better sequel that sets itself apart from notable superhero movies like Spider-Man 2 and Iron Man because of its sheer emotional impact and striking sense of realism--there are no suspension-of-disbelief superpowers here. At 152 minutes, it's a shade too long, and it's much too intense for kids. But for most movie fans--and not just superhero fans--The Dark Knight is a film for the ages.--David Horiuchi



No.3 Iron Man (Two-Disc Special Collectors' Edition) (2008)

Genre:Action,Adventure,Drama

Director:Jon Favreau

Cast:Robert Downey Jr.,Terrence Howard,Jeff Bridges,Gwyneth Paltrow,Leslie Bibb,Shaun Toub,Faran Tahir,Clark Gregg

Plot of The DVD
Tony Stark is the complete playboy who also happens to be an engineering genius. While in Afghanistan demonstrating a new missile he's captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them but instead he creates an armored suit and a means to prevent his death from the shrapnel left in his chest by the attack. He uses the armored suit to escape. Back in the U.S. he announces his company will cease making weapons and he begins work on an updated armored suit only to find that Obadiah Stane, his second in command at Stark industries has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He uses his new suit to return to Afghanistan to destroy the arms and then to stop Stane from misusing his research.

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Editorial Reviews of Amazon.com:
You know you're going to get a different kind of superhero when you cast Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role. And Iron Man is different, in welcome ways. Cleverly updated from Marvel Comics' longstanding series, Iron Man puts billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (that's Downey) in the path of some Middle Eastern terrorists; in a brilliantly paced section, Stark invents an indestructible suit that allows him to escape. If the rest of the movie never quit hits that precise rhythm again, it nevertheless offers plenty of pleasure, as the renewed Stark swears off his past as a weapons manufacturer, develops his new Iron Man suit, and puzzles both his business partner (Jeff Bridges in great form) and executive assistant (Gwyneth Paltrow). Director Jon Favreau geeks out in fun ways with the hardware, but never lets it overpower the movie, and there's always a goofy one-liner or a slapstick pratfall around to break the tension. As for Downey, he doesn't get to jitterbug around too much in his improv way, but he brings enough of his unpredictable personality to keep the thing fresh. And listen up, hardcore Marvel mavens: even if you know the Stan Lee cameo is coming, you won't be able to guess it until it's on the screen. It all builds to a splendid final scene, with a concluding line delivery by Downey that just feels absolutely right.--Robert Horton



No.4 John Adams (HBO Miniseries) (2008)

Genre:Biography,Drama,History

Cast:Paul Giamatti,Laura Linney,Stephen Dillane,John Dossett,David Morse,Sarah Polley,Samuel Barnett,Danny Huston,Madeline Taylor

Plot of The Movie
John Adams A miniseries on the life of John Adams and the first 50 years of the United States.
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American politician and the second President of the United States (1797–1801), after being first Vice President (1789–1797) for two terms. He is regarded as one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.
Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution. As a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, he played a leading role in persuading Congress to adopt the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a representative of Congress in Europe, he was a major negotiator of the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and chiefly responsible for obtaining important loans from Amsterdam.

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Editorial Reviews of Amazon.com:
Based on David McCullough's bestselling biography, the HBO miniseries John Adams is the furthest thing from a starry-eyed look at America's founding fathers and the brutal path to independence. Adams (Paul Giamatti), second president of the United States, is portrayed as a skilled orator and principled attorney whose preference for justice over anti-English passions earns enemies. But he also gains the esteem of the first national government of the United States, i.e., the Continental Congress, which seeks non-firebrands capable of making a reasoned if powerful case for America's break from England's monarchy. The first thing one notices about John Adams' dramatizations of congress' proceedings, and the fervent pro-independence violence in the streets of Boston and elsewhere, is that America's roots don't look pretty or idealized here. Some horrendous things happen in the name of protest, driving Adams to push the cause of independence in a legitimate effort to get on with a revolutionary war under the command of George Washington. But the process isn't easy: not every one of the 13 colonies-turned-states is ready to incur the wrath of England, and behind-the-scenes negotiations prove as much a part of 18th century congressional sessions as they do today.
Besides this peek into a less-romanticized version of the past, John Adams is also a story of the man himself. Adams' frustration at being forgotten or overlooked at critical junctures of America's early development--sent abroad for years instead of helping to draft the U.S. constitution--is detailed. So is his dismay that the truth of what actually transpired leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence has been slowly forgotten and replaced by a rosier myth. But above all, John Adams is the story of two key ties: Adams' 54-year marriage to Abigail Adams (Laura Linney), every bit her husband's intellectual equal and anchor, and his difficult, almost symbiotic relationship with Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) over decades. Giamatti, of course, has to carry much of the drama, and if he doesn't always seem quite believable in the series' first half, he becomes increasingly excellent at the point where an aging Adams becomes bitter over his place in history. Linney is marvelous, as is Dillane, Sarah Polley as daughter Nabby, Danny Huston as cousin Samuel Adams, and above all Tom Wilkinson as a complex but indispensable Ben Franklin. --Tom Keogh



No.5 Mad Men - Season One (2007)

Genre:Drama

Creator:Matthew Weiner

cast:Jon Hamm,Elisabeth Moss,Vincent Kartheiser,January Jones,Christina Hendricks,Bryan Batt

Plot of The Movie
John Adams Mad Men is an American television drama series created by Matthew Weiner. It is broadcast in the United States and Canada on the cable network AMC, and is produced by Lionsgate Television. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its second season on October 26, 2008.
Set in New York City, Mad Men takes place in the 1960s at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on New York City's Madison Avenue. The show centers on Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a high-level advertising executive, and the people in his life in and out of the office. It also depicts the changing social mores of 1960s America.

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Editorial Reviews of Amazon.com:
Welcome to a world where Monday has a three drink minimum. Mad Men exists here and it's a fabulous place to visit, back before Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique really made much of an impact and before the Surgeon General put warning labels on cigarettes. It was an America on the brink of social explosion and Mad Men, which tells the story of a group of Madison Avenue advertising executives in the early 1960s, captures that surface stillness perfectly, complete with the growing tension barely contained below the surface.
The show succeeds on every level. HBO famously passed on Mad Men, created by former Sopranos executive producer and writer Matthew Weiner. AMC picked it up, and thank goodness they did. From the first episode, Season One becomes an essential, utterly addictive television- watching experience. Beautifully filmed and masterfully written, the show manages to present the period honestly but with little nostalgia, and as soon as you get over the constant smoking, drinking and treatment of women as little more than "girls" who get coffee and answer the phone, the complexity of these characters (especially the dashing Jon Hamm as Creative Director Don Draper) will leave you completely captivated. Season One features clandestine office romances, shadowy pasts, a ton of adultery, closeted homosexuality and a lot more drama that seems risqué even for 2008. But again, one of the most impressive things about Mad Men is that everything is executed with absolute class, style and elegance. And bonus for the DVD viewer: Like The Sopranos, Mad Men has a ton of little moments and hints leading up to character revelations and plot twists that make watching the episodes over and over continually rewarding.–-Kira Canny

Most popular movies all over the world

Most popular movies all over the world. HD also is available as you click on the poster picture! Have fun!



The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Terminator Salvation Knowing


Blessed Is the Match Madea Goes To Jail Race To Witch Mountain

Obsessed Dance Flick Star Trek

The Ugly Truth Good Chandni Chowk To China

The Day the Earth Stood Still Twilight Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Che Seven Pounds Adventureland

The Tale of Despereaux The Reader The Pink Panther 2

Yes Man Watchmen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Marley and Me The Spirit 9

Angels & Demons Fired Up Madagascar Escape 2 Africa

The Unborn Nothing but the Truth Up

While She Was Out Bolt The Wrestler

What Doesn’t Kill You Slumdog Millionaire Defiance

The International Bedtime Stories Duplicity

Wendy and Lucy Friday the 13th Monsters Vs. Aliens

Astro Boy Delgo Valkyrie

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Confessions of a Shopaholic Gran Torino

MilkNew In Town Reclaiming the Blade

Inkheart AdorationFour Christmases

The Beautiful Truth Australia Special

Ciao Transporter 3 Revolutionary Road

Hotel For DogsA Good Day To Be Black and Sexy Timecrimes

The Alphabet Killer My Name Is BrucePlague Town

Doubt Let the Right One In Dear Zachary

Quantum of Solace Zack and Miri Make a Porno Dark Streets

WALL•E My Bloody Valentine: 3D 12



 

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