Bring It On (Widescreen Collector's Edition)

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Closed-captioned; Collector's Edition; Color; DTS Surround Sound; DVD; Widescreen; NTSC

Pert pom-pom-waving comedy stars Kirsten Dunst as the newly-named captain of a San Diego high school's cheerleader squad who tries to whip her five-time championship-winning team into shape for the regionals. Problems arise when new member Eliza Dushku notices that they've been using routines swiped from another team, an inner-city squad who's ready for a showdown on the gym floor. With Gabrielle Union, Jesse Bradford. 99 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1; "making of" featurette; audio commentary; deleted scenes; extended scenes; home movies; music video; DVD-ROM content; theatrical trailer.Sunny, happy Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) is the new leader of the Toros, the cheerleading squad of Rancho Carn! e, an affluent San Diego high school that has lousy football players but one hell of a cheerleading team. National champions, they're the ones who bring in the bodies to the football games with their award-winning moves and sassy grace, and they're poised to take their sixth national cheer title. Torrance's new reign as cheer queen, though, is cut short when she discovers that her snotty, duplicitous forerunner was regularly stealing routines from the East Compton Clovers, the hip-hop influenced cheerleaders of a poor inner city school, and passing them off as the original work of the Toros. Scrambling to come up with a new routine for the Toros--and do the right thing by giving the Clovers their due--Torrance butts heads with the proud and understandably wary Isis (Gabrielle Union), the leader of the Clovers, who wants nothing to do with a rich blond white girl, but does want to get her squad to the championships. Problem is, only one team can take home the national title.! Who's it gonna be?

An unexpected box-office hit in the la! te summe r of 2000, Bring It On is a smart, snappy teen comedy that bristles with good cheer (literally) and lively, down-to-earth characters. The story may be fairly predictable (who's going to win the big championship?), but director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jessica Bendinger have fleshed out their characters with formidable strength and provided them with sharp dialogue. Dunst is a radiant comedian, projecting warmth, determination, sincerity, and a sublime airheadedness, and Union is an impressive dancer and counterpart to Dunst, matching her admirably despite her limited onscreen time. An excellent young supporting cast rounds out the film, most notably Eliza Dushku (Faith of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jesse Bradford (Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill) as siblings new to Rancho Carne, who become Torrance's best friend and potential new boyfriend, respectively. All in all, a pleasantly surprising and intelligent teen movie. Don't miss the opening se! quence, a hilarious send-up of all those high school cheerleading routines you had to sit through at boring pep rallies. --Mark Englehart

Gone in 60 Seconds

• TESTED OK
• 2000 DATE ON THIS DVD

Academy Award(R)-winners Nicolas Cage (1996 Best Actor, LEAVING LAS VEGAS; ADAPTATION, MATCHSTICK MEN) and sexy Angelina Jolie (1999 Best Supporting Actress, GIRL INTERRUPTED; LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER) ride an unstoppable wave of speed and adrenaline in this hot, egdy action hit from high-octane producer Jerry Bruckheimer (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, PEARL HARBOR). Legendary car booster Randall "Memphis" Raines (Cage) thought he'd left the fast lane behind -- until he's forced out of retirement in a do-or-die effort to save his kid brother (Giovanni Ribisi, LOST IN TRANSLATION, TV's FRIENDS) from the wrath of an evil mobster! But with speed to burn and attitude to spare, Memphis hastily reassembles his old crew -- a rogues' gallery including Academy Award-winner Robert Duvall (1983 Best Actor, TENDER MERCIES; OPEN RANGE) -- and! floors it in a full-throttle race to pull off the ulimate car heist: 50 exotic beauties in 24 hours -- and the cops are already on to them! Directed by Dominic Sena and written by Scott Rosenberg, GONE IN 60 SECONDS is an action-packed thrill ride that comes out fast and never slows down.Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi) is a cocky young car thief working with a crew to steal 50 cars for a very bad man whose nickname is "The Carpenter." Being young and cocky, Kip messes up, so it's up to his big brother, Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage), to come out of car thief retirement and save him. With a cast that includes Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Cage, and Ribisi, it would be easy to say this story wastes all their talents--which it does, but that's not the point. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film. A good story and complex characters would only get in the way of the action scenes and slow the movie down. No, Gone in 60 Seconds (based on the cult 1974 fi! lm of the same name) is not about the stars as much as it's ab! out cars . Fast cars. Rare cars. Wrecked cars. All cars. Too bad director Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) doesn't come across as more of a gearhead; he seems less interested in fast cars than fast cuts. But is this movie fun? Absolutely, and it's fun because it's so stupid. With pointless car chases and hackneyed dialogue in one of the most predictable plots of the year, Gone in 60 Seconds is a comic film that's not quite a parody of itself, but darn close. --Andy Spletzer