New Items - May 2015: DVDs - Fiction

Big Eyes focuses on the artistic coupling of Margaret (Amy Adams) and Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz). Walter Keane became a worldwide celebrity and talk show fixture in the 1950s after he pioneered the mass production of prints of big-eyed kids, and used his marketing savvy to sell them cheaply in hardware stores and gas stations across the country. Unfortunately, he claimed to be the artist. That role was played by Margaret, his shy wife. She generated the paintings from their basement and Walter's contribution was adding his signature to the bottom. The ruse broke up their marriage and led to a divorce and a dramatic courtroom battle to prove authorship of the paintings.

This action-packed Marvel comic book collaboration revolves around Hiro Hamada, who lives in the futuristic East/West multicultural hybrid called San Fransokyo. A cocky 14-year-old tech geek who already graduated from high school, Hiro spends his time engaged in back-alley robot-battles, much to the dismay of his Aunt Cass and older brother Tadashi, who want him to go to college. Hiro eventually becomes enthusiastic about the idea, ultimately impressing stern Professor Callaghan with his knowledge of "microbots" (nano technology used to form anything). And then tragedy strikes, after which heartbroken Hiro bonds with gentle Baymax, an inflatable, translucent vinyl robotic healthcare companion designed to help ease pain. Big Hero 6 is bouncy and beguiling family fare, a charming film that values brains over brawn.

The adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune.

The three Hobbit films:
Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey
Hobbit : The Desolation of Smaug
Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies

With our time on Earth coming to an end, a team of explorers undertakes the most important mission in human history; traveling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.

Based on cautionary fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, James Lapine's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's insightful, slyly comedic Broadway musical is enchanting. The plot revolves around a humble baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) who together yearn for a child. Unfortunately, a witch (Oscar nominee Meryl Streep) has placed a curse on the family, and the only way it can be broken is for the couple to find particular items required by the witch, including Red Riding Hood's cape and Jack's (of Beanstalk fame) cow. Directed by Rob Marshall, the first half of Into the Woods is a playful farce, while the second is more serious, exploring what happens after "happily ever after.

Emmet, an ordinary, rules-following, perfectly average LEGO minifigure is mistakenly identified as the most extraordinary person and the key to saving the world. He is drafted into a fellowship of strangers on an epic quest to stop an evil tyrant, a journey for which Emmet is hopelessly and hilariously underprepared.

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, the film is an action drama focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys - seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 - possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1,000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind's greatest achievements.

MR. TURNER explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father and loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.

Selma chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Acclaimed all-star cast includes Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo (Lee Daniels’ The Butler), Oscar nominees Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction) and Oprah Winfrey (The Color Purple), and Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Lee Daniel's The Butler).

Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo an old bamboo cutter and his wife, a tiny girl grows rapidly into an exquisite young lady. The mysterious young princess enthralls all who encounter her, but ultimately she must confront her fate, the punishment for her crime.

Starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, this is the extraordinary story of one of the world's greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde. Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of -- time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science, and achieving more than they could ever have dreamed.

Olympian and war hero Louis Zamperini survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, only to be caught by the Japanese Navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Based on Hilary Mantel's novel and its sequel "Bring Up the Bodies," the series focuses on the relationship between Henry VIII (Damian Lewis) and his close adviser Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance). Wolf Hall follows the meteoric rise of Cromwell in the Tudor court, from his lowly start as the son of a blacksmith to becoming King Henry VIII's closest advisor.