Out this week on DVD, Kasi Lemmons' exuberant Talk To Me ranks as the most overlooked film of the year. We can only hope that Don Cheadle will receive an Oscar nomination to get this film the audience it deserves. Charles Ferguson's documentary No End In Sight is also essential viewing. A cinematic edition of The Iraq War for Dummies, this documentary meticulously lays out how America got into its current predicament. Also, Day Watch and In The Land of Women.
1. Talk To Me
Focus Features
Kasi Lemmons' third feature film after Eve's Bayou and The Caveman's Valentine is an enormous success. Talk To Me takes the stale biopic formula and keeps the film steadily moving, from the raucous beginning to the bittersweet end. Cheadle practically bounces off the screen with a high energy, hilarious, and heartrending performance where every unexpected word keeps his audience--and that includes us--spellbound. Hopefully there's an Oscar nomination in store for him and co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Taraji Henson.
2. No End in Sight
Magnolia Home Entertainment
If you want take the leap from disbelief and confusion to a clearer, empowering understanding of how the U.S. arrived at our current predicament in Iraq, then political scientist Charles Ferguson's documentary No End in Sight is highly recommended. Ferguson presents a meticulous non-partisan account of America's march to war and the poor decisions that followed.
3. Day Watch
Fox Searchlight
The second installment of the fantasy trilogy that famously out-grossed The Lord of the Rings in its native Russia, Day Watch stages a timeless war between good and evil in the snowed-in streets of contemporary Moscow.
4. In The Land of Women
Warner Home Video
Aspiring writer Carter Webb (Adam Brody of The O.C.) flees L.A. for his grandmother's house in suburban Michigan in Jonathan Kasdan's directorial debut In The Land of Women. Carter plans to (1) recover from being dumped by his movie-star girlfriend, (2) write the novel he's been waiting on for years, and (3) take care of his possibly-demented grandmother Phyllis (Olympia Dukakis). On this goofy premise, Kasdan builds an engaging, gentle-humored film. Meg Ryan and Kristen Stewart also star.
