Valentine's Day

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• Format: DVD
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CATCH AND RELEASE - DVD MovieJennifer Garner's lips grow more Angelina-esque every year. In the romantic comedy Catch and Release, Garner (Alias, 13 Going On 30) plays Gray Wheeler, a young woman whose fiance dies unexpectedly before the wedding, leaving Gray unable to afford her home--so she moves in with her fiance's best friends, Sam (Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and Dogma) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger, Lucky Number Slevin). But the presence of another old friend named Fritz (Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood) leads to the unveiling of a secret: Gray's fiance had a child with another woman. Catch and Release lacks the clear story structure that most romantic comedies are built on, but trades it for a richer sense of the ambiguities of human relati! onships. Garner, though lovely and personable, is a bit bland--fortunately, she's surrounded by actors with all kinds of edges, including Smith (who shows an unexpected and uncloying earnest side), Fiona Shaw (from the Harry Potter movies) as the fiance's grieving mother, and Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear), who demonstrates once again her powers as a fearless and surprising actress. Catch and Release is an uneven movie, with a remarkably elegant visual style that sometimes clashes with the workmanlike dialogue, but it can't be written off as the same old Hollywood claptrap. Though a happy ending is inevitable, the path it takes has some surprising turns and flashes of unexpected emotional depth.-- Bret Fetzer

Stills from Catch and Release (click for larger image)

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SIGNIFICANT OTHERS:SERIES - DVD Mov! ieThe 1998 Fox television series Significant Others amo! unted to six episodes (three of which never aired) before cancellation, but this two-disc set strongly suggests that the witty, nimble dramedy from the creators of Party of Five deserved a longer run. In a nutshell, PO5 went on hiatus in '98, and irritated fans of that series ignored replacement program Significant Others, which follows the career and romance hassles of three twentysomething best friends. Fox pulled the plug on Significant Others very quickly, but fans of actor Scott Bairstow (who went on to a recurring role on PO5) and two terrific actresses, Jennifer Garner and Elizabeth Mitchell (who next turned up in the PO5 spin-off, Time of Your Life), should definitely look into this truncated project.

Bairstow plays Henry, an aspiring writer reduced to churning out website pornography and inexperienced enough to enter, wide-eyed, into an affair with his older, married boss. Campbell (Eion Bailey of Band of Brothers! ), in defiance of his parents' wishes, stumbles through initial steps to become a producer of children's videos; he's also coping with the shock of discovering pals Henry and Nell (Garner) are getting it on and that an old girlfriend (Mitchell) is marrying his shallow, older brother. Talented Nell, destined for big things but afraid of commitment, hops from one important job to the next and develops an attachment to her absent father's best friend. As with PO5 (and Sisters, another primetime series from some of the same producers), Significant Others treats serious topics with smart dialogue and enough of a light touch to make the series feel comforting and familiar. Still, that's not enough for the irrepressible Garner (Alias, 13 Going on 30), whose enchanting, tragi-comic performance on this series is almost larger-than-life and reminds one of such Golden Age stars as Jean Arthur and Ginger Rogers. --Tom KeoghGHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS! PAST - DVD MovieStarring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Gar! ner and directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), Ghost of Girlfriends Past seems to be lacking some of the chemistry we have seen from the stars in similar romantic comedies, but is still entertaining and worth a watch. McConaughey plays a womanizer named Conner Mead far from settling down who is forced to take a Christmas Carol-type journey through girlfriends of his past, present and future while attending his brother’s wedding weekend. Jenny (Garner) is the childhood sweetheart and longstanding object of his affection. Will he be able to grow up and admit his love for Jenny before the weekend is over, or will he continue his man-whore ways and lose her forever? Although McConaughey and Garner both tread familiar territory, they’re so good at it that you don’t mind. Some of the best scenes in the movie involve Michael Douglas, who is perfect as Conner’s dead uber-womanizing mentor Uncle Wayne, and Lacey Chabert, who is also hilarious as the stressed out! bride-to-be. Yes, it’s predictable and cheesy, but it has some real moments and provides laughs--and that is exactly what a romantic comedy is for. --Lisanne ChastainFROM THE FORCES THAT BROUGHT YOU X-MEN AND DAREDEVIL?Superstar Jennifer Garner proves that looks can kill as the sexiest action hero ever to burst from the pages of Marvel Comics. Restored to life after sustaining mortal wounds in Daredevil, an icy, solitary Elektra (Garner) now lives only for death as the world?s most lethal assassin. Using her bone-crunching martial arts skills and Kimagure?the ability to see into the future?Elektra is on a collision course with darkness? until her latest assignment forces her to make a choice that will lead either to her redemption or destruction in the ultimate battle between good and evil!While 2003's Daredevil was a conventional superhero movie, the 2005 spinoff, Elektra, is more of a wuxia-styled martial arts/fantasy flick. Elektra (Jennif! er Garner) has returned to her life as a hired assassin, but s! he balks at an assignment to kill a single father (Goran Visnjic, ER) and his teenage daughter (Kirsten Prout). That makes her the target of the Hand, an organization of murderous ninjas, scheming corporate types, and a band of stylish supervillains seeking to eliminate Elektra and tip the balance of power in the ongoing battle of good vs. evil.

As the star of Alias, Garner has proven that she can kick butt with the best of them, and some of the visual effects are impressive, but the action sequences tend to be anticlimactic, and there's not much to the story. Fans will notice numerous references to Frank Miller's comic books, but there's very little resemblance to Miller's cold-blooded killer (Elektra with an agent? Elektra referring to herself as a "soccer mom"?).

Is Elektra better than Daredevil? Not really, even with the distinct advantage of having all Garner and no Ben Affleck. That could be the spinoff's greatest disappointment:! after Spider-Man 2 raised the bar for comic-book movies, Elektra lowered it back to Daredevil's level. Directed by Rob Bowman (the X-Files movie), and featuring Terence Stamp as the mysterious mentor Stick, Will Yun Lee (Die Another Day) as the chief villain, and NFL-player-turned-mixed-martial-arts-champion Bob Sapp as the immovable Stone.

DVD features
Ben Affleck's much-rumored cameo is one of the deleted scenes on the Elektra DVD. It's a one-minute throwaway, and while he's supposedly appearing as Matt Murdock (who romanced Elektra in Daredevil), the barrage of celebrity gossip makes it impossible to see him as anything other than Jennifer Garner's real-life boyfriend. There's also a making-of featurette, which is mostly promotional hype other than a few interesting effects shots; four editing featurettes; and Jennifer Garner's videotaped message to ComicCon. --David Horiuchi

More on Elektra

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Elektra: The Album (Soundtrack CD)	Elektra: The Movie (Comic Adaptation)	Frank Miller Comic Books
Daredevil (Director's Cut) (DVD)	Jennifer Garner stars in Alias (DVD)	More Superhero DVDs

Jennifer Garner (Daredevil, TV's "Alias") and Mark Ruffalo (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) star in this hilarious flash-forward romance about a pre-teen girl who goes from geek to glamorous. With the help of some magic wishing dust, 13 year-old Jenna Rink (Garner) becomes 30 and gorgeous overnight, with everything she ever wanted, except for her best friend Matt (Ruffalo). Now, this grown woman must create some magic of her own to help the little girl inside find the true love she left behind.The starriest cast you may ever see sparkles in a hilarious and heartwarming romcom from the director of Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries. Stories crisscross, collide and boomerang in this look at a day in the life of love. There's a proposal. Flowers that didn't get sent. A big fat secret that's finally told. The "I'll show up and surprise him" that ended up surprising her. Fights, kisses, wrong turns, right moves and more. Whether new to or through with lo! ve, you'll fall in love with this 19-star, funny-side-up celeb! ration o f romance.For those in love with love--and even for those who think they're jaded and over it--Valentine's Day and its superb cast are the uplifting elixir that's called for. Director Garry Marshall must have called in every favor he had in Hollywood to line up this amazing cast. Much as Robert Altman does in his best films, Marshall follows intertwining and intersecting couples around Los Angeles as they hook up, break up, and act up as Valentine's Day--with all its intense expectations--looms. Bradley Cooper plays one half of a couple struggling to get back on track. Julia Roberts plays an army officer en route from Iraq (!) to visit a lover halfway around the world. Jennifer Garner is appealing as the girlfriend of a cad (Patrick Dempsey), who managed to overlook telling her he was married; will Garner's character go all Fatal Attraction? Standouts include the always-charming Anne Hathaway, whose character supplements her income with a freelance gig that, sh! all we say, involves using multiple accents over the phone--much to the consternation of her beau, played by Topher Grace. Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo play a long-married couple whose strong marriage may be rocked by an old and very inconvenient truth. And young stars Emma Roberts, Taylor Lautner, and Taylor Swift sparkle enough to draw in younger viewers. And if love doesn't always go as planned for these couples (and singles), it's Marshall's deftness as a director that keeps the scenes moving along crisply to the next lovers, or victims. Marshall seems to be aiming to achieve for Valentine's Day what Richard Curtis did for Christmas in Love Actually--and if he falls a little short, it's not due to any lack of star power or onscreen dazzle. "Love is the only shocking act left on the planet!" exclaims Ashton Kutcher's character. If so, viewers of Valentine's Day can expect to be shocked--into a warm romance with this, yes, valentine to love. --A.T! . Hurley