Thunderpants

• An 11-year-old boy's amazing ability to break wind leads him to fame as he fulfills his ambition of becoming an astronaut. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN Rating: R Age: 796019803458 UPC: 796019803458 Manufacturer No: 80345

Oscar® nominee Laura Linney (Kinsey) stars as Laura Marshall, an overzealous, evangelical Christian do-gooder who fills her home with down-and-out boarders, including a senile, cross-dressing murderous mute. Desperate to expand his horizons, Laura’s shy teenage son Ben (Rupert Grint, of Harry Potter fame) lands a job tending to self-proclaimed "Dame" Evie Walton (Oscar® nominee Julie Walters, Billy Elliot), an over-the-hill actress with the mouth of a drunken sailer and an insatiable lust for life. The battle for Ben’s soul begins as Evie shanghais Ben away from his repressive roots and takes him on an adventure that transforms him from boy to ma! n. A winning entry at the 2006 Moscow International Film Festival, Driving Lessons is an experience Stephen Farber of Movieline calls "a delightful coming-of-age story."More down-to-earth than Auntie Mame, Driving Lessons imparts the same simple, but enduring messageâ€"be yourself. In the directorial debut from screenwriter Jeremy Brock (Mrs. Brown), 17-year-old Ben (Harry Potter's Rupert Grint, sluggish yet sympathetic) lives with his vicar father, Robert (Nicholas Farrell), and pious mother, Laura (Laura Linney doing a passable, but inconsistent British accent), in a tree-shaded London suburb. Soft-spoken Ben writes poems and looks forward to passing his driver's test. When his mother encourages him to get a job, he becomes an assistant to retired actress Evie Walton (Billy Elliot's Julie Walters, hunched up to look elderly). He finds her overbearing at first. Still, Evie is preferable to Laura, who may do volunteer work with her husband! 's parishioners, including bizarre boarder Mr. Fincham (Jim No! rton), b ut also cheats on him with Reverend Peter (Oliver Milburn) and engages her resentful son in the subterfuge. Then Evie tricks Ben into driving her to Edinburgh for a poetry reading, where he learns to assert himself and she learns to put the dramatics on holdâ€"at least for a few minutes. Ben also loses his virginity to a woman he just met, sending a secondary message some parents might not appreciate (the film's sprinklings of profanity earned it a PG-13). Driving Lessons itself seems stranded between coming-of-age story and character study. Ironically, Farrell gives the most convincing performance as Ben's bird-loving father. Engaging if uneven, this parable about hypocrisy and self-expression might have been more interesting if presented from his perspective. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Driving Lessons (click for larger image)

Beyond Driving Lessons at Amazon.com

More Films about Coming of Age

The Films o! f Julie Walters

Learn to Drive

They share the same birth month, so the orphanage calls them December Boys. But these teens â€" Maps, Spit, Spark and Misty â€" have much more in common. With no hopes of ever joining a family, they form their own familial bonds. Then the unexpected news comes that a young couple may adopt one of them, and the long-time pals suddenly share something else: a rivalry to be the chosen one.Take dead aim at action-packed laughs with this killer comedy featuring an all-star cast. Emily Blunt steals the show as Rose, a free-spirited thief who finds herself in the cross hairs of a world-class assassin named Victor (Bill Nighy). But when Victor spares Rose’s life, the lonely hearted hitman sets off an outrageous chain of events that turn both their worlds upside down. Joined by a gun-toting! apprentice (Rupert Grint), the unlikely trio teams up to thwart the murderous intentions of Victor’s unhappy client. An 11-year-old boy's amazing ability to break wind leads him to fame as he fulfills his ambition of becoming an astronaut.

Come Early Morning

• COME EARLY MORNING FF AND WS (DVD MOVIE)

(Drama/Romance) Lucy is a 30-something woman who keeps waking up with a stiff hangover and a guy she doesn't even want to look at. If coming to grips with why she keeps repeating this pattern isn't enough, Lucy also begins to realize that she needs to get in touch with her familial past and, more importantly, with the person she has become.Come Early Morning comes as a mid-afternoon career correction for Ashley Judd, an actress oft dissed in the years since her fresh, breakout performance in the indie gem Ruby in Paradise. No mystery there: what other lovely and talented woman has appeared in such a string of crummy serial-killer movies? By redemptive contrast, Come Early Morning suggests a de facto sequel to Ruby 13 years down the road. Again Judd limpidly portrays a young Southern woman, Lucy, trying to get free of a debil! itating heritage--dysfunctional family on every side--and find her way to some kind of contentment. Lucy makes more bad decisions than Ruby did. For her, early morning isn't so much a new day as the hour when she faces waking up with one more guy she couldn't care less about. She plans it that way, because commitment is something she flees with grim resolve. But she also knows that the program isn't working for her.

The writing-directing debut of another offbeat actress, Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy), this is a beautifully observed film, free of condescension toward its Arkansas folk, with an appreciative eye for the plain beauties of small-town life and semi-rural roads, and a sharp ear for three-cushion dialogue. "Did I miss Easter?" Lucy's housemate quietly cracks when she finds Lucy dressed for Sunday-go-to-meetin'; Lucy's trying to reconnect with her estranged dad (a magical, almost wordless performance by the wonderful Scott Wilson), who's started attendi! ng "a new holy-roller church." She also meets a newcomer (Jeff! rey Dono van, excellent) who ought to be Mr. Right ... but nothing quite plays out according to formulaic expectation in this movie--among the most satisfying of 2006, which most people are going to have to discover on DVD. --Richard T. Jameson

The Good, the Bad, the Weird [Blu-ray]

• THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRDBLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)

Probes the dark side of more than 40 unforgettable men and women who made history in profound, sometimes shocking ways.From South Korea comes this wild take on Sergio Leone s classic spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It s 1930s Manchuria and greed is in the air. A manic outlaw, a nasty holy man and a determined bounty hunter are all in hot pursuit of a treasure map. Throw in Chinese gangsters, the Japanese army and other rival factions also in pursuit of the invaluable map, and it all comes down to a you ve-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it showdown in the desert. One of the most expensive films ever made in South Korea, THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD was the talk of festivals worldwide and won such prizes as the Asia Pacific Screen Award for its cinematography and the Asian Film Award for Best Supporting Actor (Jung Woo-sung).

Captivity

• Special Features include * The Making of Captivity Featurette * On-the-Set Look Featurette * Deleted Scenes
• Widescreen 16 x 9 (2.35:1)
• Feature Film run time 85 minutes
• 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX Audio
• 6.1 DTS-ES Audio

CAPTIVITY - DVD MovieTop cover girl & fashion model jennifer tree has it all - fame, beauty, money & power. Everyone wants her...but some more than others. Alone after a charity event, she is drugged & taken.