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Heart DVDs

DVDs close to the heart.

Straight From the Heart

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Music of the Heart (Miramax Collector's Series)

Music of the Heart (Miramax Collector's Series) Why, you might ask, would Wes Craven direct a conventional biopic about Roberta Guaspari, a divorced mother of two who created an acclaimed music program in East Harlem's troubled school system? After all, Craven built his career on Freddy Krueger and the Scream trilogy, and you won't find razor-tipped gloves or a single drop of blood in Music of the Heart. All Craven has to do is provide a safe working environment for Meryl Streep (who earned an obligatory Oscar nomination), sublimate his deft directorial style, and surrender to the banalities of Pamela Gray's screenplay, which would've played more effectively on cable TV. To be fair, Music of the Heart (partially inspired by the 1996 documentary Small Wonders) serves its purpose quite nicely. Streep is flawless in a non-showy role, and the story of Guaspari's celebrated violin training program provides the requisite rush of inner-city inspiration. As a fact-based companion to Mr. Holland's Opus, the film is less effective but similarly engaging; you'd have to be cold-hearted to dismiss it altogether. It's best when focusing on Guaspari's school program and the 10-year struggle to keep it alive; the drama falters when dealing half-heartedly with her tentative relationships, notably with a journalist (Aidan Quinn) who shies from commitment. And Craven? He seems content to direct by the numbers here, leaving inspiration on the screen while forfeiting his own. --Jeff Shannon

Where the Heart Is

Where the Heart Is Not to be confused with the 1990 comedy flop featuring Uma Thurman, this Where the Heart Is boasts a winning performance from Natalie Portman. Novalee Nation (Portman), a pregnant teenager from Tennessee, is bound for California with her worthless boyfriend, Willy Jack (Dylan Bruno). A pit stop at an Oklahoma Wal-Mart proves fateful when Willy Jack abandons her there. She secretly sets up camp at the megastore and spends her days meeting with kindly booster Sister Husband (Stockard Channing) and eccentric librarian Forney Hall (James Frain). Her life takes another turn after she gives birth in the store (clean up, aisle six!) and finds a best friend in sassy nurse Lexie Coop (Ashley Judd). Meanwhile, Willy Jack has found a talent agent (Joan Cusack) and tries to make some life changes of his own. Where The Heart Is offers charming, folksy fun; homespun wisdom; and an obstacle course of plot development (if the Wal-Mart angle weren't enough, there's also a kidnapping, a tornado, and at least half a dozen other major events thrown in). Director Matt Williams, who produced the popular sitcoms Roseanne and Home Improvement, takes television's cut-to-commercial route to make giant leaps in space and time from scene to scene. It's disorienting, but the remarkable female cast (which includes Sally Field in a cameo) lends plausiblilty to the muddle, even when you don't think anything more could possibly happen. --Shannon Gee

Places in the Heart

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Wild At Heart

Wild At Heart David Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart is an utterly random and ugly experience with pockets of startling imagery and inspired set pieces. Based on a Barry Gifford novel, the film stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as lovers on the lam whose relationship is tested and who meet some truly dangerous wackos (including an almost-simian Willem Dafoe). Lynch's thoughts seem to be everywhere, and he expects the audience to keep up with a story that seems more a collection of avant-garde whims than a coherent vision with the intuitive brilliance of his Blue Velvet. Cage gives one of his more chaotic performances, but then he was just reading Lynch's signposts. --Tom Keogh

Heart and Souls

Heart and Souls Robert Downey Jr. has never been more charming than in this comedy about a yuppie who is revisited in adulthood by the spirits of four people who had been his friends as a child. The ghosts (Kyra Sedgwick, Charles Grodin, Alfre Woodard, Tom Sizemore) all have unfinished business in this world before they can move on to the next, and Downey's character agrees to let them inhabit his body while they sort it all out. The appealing cast alone strongly recommends this movie, but Downey's remarkable facility for physical comedy--manifesting the personalities of his supernatural pals as they possess him--is a riot. Elisabeth Shue makes the best of her part as the hero's girlfriend; Leaving Las Vegas was still ahead of her, but one can see her talent straining to get out here. The DVD release has a widescreen presentation, production notes, theatrical trailer, biographies of the cast, closed captioning, an optional French soundtrack and Spanish subtitles, and Dolby sound. --Tom Keogh

Young at Heart

Young at Heart This 1954 musical remake of Four Daughters stars Doris Day as a well-bred New England woman who marries a chip-on-his-shoulder musician (Frank Sinatra). Lots of tears, yes, but this version of Fannie Hurst's novel is considerably cheered up from the 1938 tearjerker. Dorothy Malone and Elizabeth Fraser play Day's sisters (a fourth sister present in Four Daughters was written out), Robert Keith is the paterfamilias to a bunch of musical prodigies, and Gig Young is entertaining as the composer-boarder who tries deflecting the sisters' interest in him by bringing Sinatra home one day. Both Day and Sinatra really shine in this, and the songs include the Johnny Richards-Caroline Leigh title tune, which became part of Sinatra's standard repertoire. --Tom Keogh

Untamed Heart

Untamed Heart If you're a die-hard romantic with a soft spot for three-hanky weepers, this well-acted love story from 1993 will be just what the doctor ordered. It's about a waitress named Caroline (Marisa Tomei) who works the graveyard shift in a Minneapolis diner, where the silent, introverted Adam (Christian Slater) works as a dishwasher and janitor. Only Caroline manages to bring the solitary Adam out of his shell, and when he rescues her from an assault, their tentative friendship slowly blossoms into mutual trust and love. Adam has a weak heart and desperately needs a heart transplant, but a story told to him by orphanage nuns--that he was raised in the jungle with the powerful heart of a baboon--makes him feel invincible. This sets the stage for a tender and tragic love story that director Tony Bill handles as a delicate balance of blue-collar reality and misty-eyed fairy tale, and the quiet chemistry between Tomei and Slater makes it work. If you don't get a little choked up by the movie's heartfelt conclusion, you just might need a heart transplant yourself. --Jeff Shannon

Crimes of the Heart

Crimes of the Heart Three Oscar-winning actresses have a go at one of playwright Beth Henley's southern-fried comedies, and cook up an agreeable gumbo. In the town of Hazelhurst, Mississippi, Diane Keaton dithers her birthday away as one sister (Jessica Lange) returns from a flopped attempt at a singing career in Hollywood, and the other sister (Sissy Spacek) languishes in jail after shooting her abusive hubby. Truth be told, all three have been a little touched in the head ever since the long-past day when their mother hanged herself along with the family cat. Bruce Beresford provides the workmanlike direction, and Sam Shepard and Tess Harper contribute supporting turns. But this one's all about the three skillful stars, who eschew showboating and defer to each other with real grace--they have the rhythms of family conversation down pat, and they embody the glances and sighs of sisterhood, rather than acting them. --Robert Horton

Heart Burn

Heart Burn You'd have thought that Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols had remade Heaven's Gate: that was the critical reaction to this film version of Ephron's semiautobiographical novel about her own marital woes. The fact that they had Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep playing thinly disguised versions of Carl Bernstein and Ephron probably made them bigger, fatter targets. In fact, the film was a genuinely funny and painful look at the effects of marital infidelity and divorce, in the story of two married writers and what happens when the pregnant wife finds out the husband has been fooling around behind her back. The film is more dramatic and less quip-filled than Ephron's novel, which made the Ephron character a food writer and was peppered with recipes. Nicholson stepped into his role at the last minute, when Nichols fired Mandy Patinkin for being too intense and not funny enough. --Marshall Fine

Straight From the Heart

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Heart of America

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American Heart

American Heart Jeff Bridges may be the American film actor with the most unseen great performances to his credit. Near the top of the list of Bridges's most overlooked films is this one, the first fiction film by documentary maker Martin Bell (Streetwise). Bridges plays Jack, an ex-con fresh out of prison and back in Seattle, where he is joined by Nick (Edward Furlong), a teenage son he barely knows. Nick wants nothing more than to spend time with Jack, to feel like a family. But Jack can barely cope with the concept of holding a job and staying out of trouble; he can hardly take care of himself, let alone be responsible for a teenager. Bell shows the toll on both as they slowly develop a bond and, after several false starts, learn to trust and care for each other. Bridges is magnificent as this loner who must learn to trust feelings he'd given up on years before. It's an involving and tragic tale. --Marshall Fine

The Heart of Me

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Heroes of the Heart

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Love & Romance

Let Romance Motivate Us
All of us need motivation. We eat because we feel hungry. We drink water because we are thirsty. We do everything in life for a reason. [ continued ]