These are the movies being released on DVD and Blu-Ray: “G-Force“, “Inglourious Basterds“, “Ponyo“, “Taking Woodstock“, and “The Hangover”.

G-Force

Synopsis: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings his first 3-D film to the big screen with G-Force, a comedy adventure about the latest evolution of a covert government program to train animals to work in espionage. Armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment, these highly trained guinea pigs discover that the fate of the world is in their paws. Tapped for the G-Force are guinea pigs Darwin (voice of SAM ROCKWELL), the squad leader determined to succeed at all costs; Blaster (voice of TRACY MORGAN), an outrageous weapons expert with tons of attitude and a love for all things extreme; and Juarez (voice of PENELOPE CRUZ), a sexy martial arts pro; plus the literal fly-on-the-wall reconnaissance expert, Mooch, and a star-nosed mole, Speckles (voice of NICOLAS CAGE), the computer and information specialist.

Cast: The Wibberleys, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Tim Firth Nicolas Cage, Steve Buscemi, Tracy Morgan, Bill Nighy, Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Kelli Garner, Gabriel Casseus, Jack Conley, Penelope Cruz, Tyler Patrick Jones; Directed By: Hoyt Yeatman

Inglourious Basterds

Synopsis: Inglourious Basterds begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema.

Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own

Cast: Brad Pitt, Cloris Leachman, Diane Kruger, Mike Myers, B.J. Novak, Eli Roth; Directed By: Quentin Tarantino

Ponyo

Synopsis: From the Academy Award®-winning director and world-renowned Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki comes PONYO, a story inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid.” Already a box-office success in Japan, the story of a young and overeager goldfish named Ponyo (voiced by NOAH CYRUS) and her quest to become human features an outstanding roster of voice talent, including CATE BLANCHETT, MATT DAMON, TINA FEY, CLORIS LEACHMAN, LIAM NEESON, LILY TOMLIN, BETTY WHITE and FRANKIE JONAS as Sosuke, a young boy who befriends Ponyo.

Cast: Hayao Miyazaki, Hiroki Doi, Jôji Tokoro, Tomoko Yamaguchi, Yuki Amami; Directed By: Hayao Miyazaki

Taking Woodstock

Synopsis: A generation began in his backyard. From Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), comes Taking Woodstock, a new comedy inspired by the true story of Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was.

It’s 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, The El Monaco. The bank’s about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents.

When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers, thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for the motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor’s farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.

Cast: Demtri Martin, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, Imelda Staunton, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Henry Goodman, Eugene Levy, Paul Dano, Dan Fogler, Mamie Gummer; Directed By: Ang Lee

The Hangover

Synopsis: From “Old School” director Todd Phillips comes a comedy about a bachelor party gone very, very wrong.

Two days before his wedding, Doug (JUSTIN BARTHA) drives to Las Vegas with his best buddies Phil and Stu (BRADLEY COOPER and ED HELMS) and his future brother-in-law Alan (ZACH GALIFIANAKIS), for a blow-out bachelor party they vow they’ll never forget.

But when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning with pounding headaches, they can’t remember a thing. Their luxury hotel suite is beyond trashed and the groom is nowhere to be found.

With no clue about what happened and little time to spare, the trio must attempt to retrace their bad decisions from the night before in order to figure out where things went wrong in the hopes of finding Doug and getting him back to L.A. in time for his wedding.

But the more they begin to uncover, the more they realize just how much trouble they’re really in.

Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Legendary Pictures, a Green Hat Films Production of a Todd Phillips Movie: “The Hangover,” starring Bradley Cooper (“He’s Just Not That Into You”), Ed Helms (“The Office”), Zach Galifianakis (“What Happens in Vegas”), Heather Graham (“Baby on Board”), Justin Bartha (the “National Treasure” films) and Jeffrey Tambor (“Arrested Development”).

The film is directed by Todd Phillips (“Old School”) from a screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore (“Four Christmases”). Todd Phillips and Dan Goldberg (“Old School”) produce, with Thomas Tull (“Watchmen”), Jon Jashni (“Observe and Report”), William Fay (“Observe and Report”), Scott Budnick (“School for Scoundrels”), Chris Bender (“American Pie,” TV’s “Kyle XY”) and J.C. Spink (“Kyle XY”) serving as executive producers.

The creative team includes director of photography Lawrence Sher (“Dan in Real Life”), production designer Bill Brzeski (“The Bucket List”), and editor Debra Neil-Fisher (“Baby Mama”). Music is by Christophe Beck (“What Happens in Vegas”). Soundtrack album is available on New Line Records.

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor; Directed By: Todd Phillips

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According to Christopher Monfette of IGN.com, this is one Hangover that you won’t want to go away.

Almost more than any other genre, comedy is virtually critic-proof, completely and utterly subjective in the face of your own sense of humor. Nine times out of ten, a black cat leaping out of an alley will scare most people. More often than not, a weepy scene between loved ones parted by either distance or death will elicit an audience’s sympathy. But when it comes to comedy, unless there’s simply nothing of good, old-fashioned, laugh-out-loud value, anything beyond a guy slipping on a banana peel or taking a shot to the nuts – which are universally funny – is ultimately at the mercy of taste. And so, it turns out, the absence of funny can be measured; the presence of funny is entirely up to you.

With that in mind, if it were up to this critic, The Hangover would easily be praised as potentially the funniest comedy to hit theatres in the last few years. It’s been awhile since I remember having laughed this hard or having been so effortlessly amused by a movie, and where so many Bachelor Party-inspired comedies grab too quickly for the low-hanging fruit of nudity and vulgarity – neither of which are necessarily bad, mind you — The Hangover manages to create a clever mystery and real, honest-to-goodness characters in the midst of its many of shenanigans. And that’s a surprise, quite frankly, given what this Las Vegas-set comedy could easily have become, but despite a few pacing issues in the middle of the film, The Hangover rises above the trappings into which other, similar comedies have so often stumbled.

It’s the eve of Doug’s wedding, and so his two best friends, Phil and Stu (Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms), as well as his fiancé’s slightly off-balance brother, Alan (Zach Galifianakis), take Doug for a wild night in Vegas prior to the big day. And before you can say “What could possibly happen!?” the s**t gets real. Cut to twelve hours later when Phil, Stu and Alan wake up in a luxury suite, sans Doug, with a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, a stolen police car downstairs at the valet, and absolutely no memory of the previous evening. The big question is, “Where’s Doug?” but to answer that the gang has to retrace their steps from the night before, making The Hangover a kind of comedic mystery involving a hooker, an imprisoned Chinese mobster, a pissed-off Mike Tyson and an assortment of progressively stranger encounters. Also praiseworthy are the subtle, completely logical clues that the film provides the audience as to where Doug may have vanished, leaving the sharper-eyed viewers with a sense of accomplishment that they might have put things together before our main characters.

It’d be easy to simply set up an insane scenario, populating a room with animals and objects, and let the audience’s imaginations fuel the laughs – which, indeed, they do for the first portion of the film – but where The Hangover succeeds is in making the truth of what actually happened live up to the promise of the aftermath. That said, the film is admittedly funniest in its first half, but that director Todd Phillips and writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore were able keep the back half as amusing as they did is as much a tribute to the film’s comedic chops as to the absolutely hysterical performances from Cooper, Helms and Galifianakis.

You’d be hard-pressed to name a better-matched comedy trio since Phillips’ own Old School back in 2003, but where Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn seemed like separate elements competing for the comedy crown, these hungover friends work seamlessly together to earn and support almost every single laugh. Cooper is the likable but smarmy, self-obsessed pack-leader who, despite his ego, undoubtedly loves his buddies, while Helms plays the brow-beaten straight man with the domineering girlfriend. Galifianakis, however, completely steals the movie as the eccentric Alan, who may or may not be developmentally challenged…Make no mistake, this is the movie that will pull Galifianakis from the realm of the cult comedian into the mainstream, but one wonders if playing awkward, quasi-simpletons isn’t simply his trademark shtick. If so, it’ll certainly limit how far Galifianakis can go as an actor and calls into question whether he could ever carry a movie as a lead, but he’s just so damn funny that we can’t help but hope that he has a long, successful career in cinematic comedy ahead of him.

The only real failing of the film is its second act, which suffers from some minor pacing issues, and a 15-minute lull where the laughs simply aren’t as abundant. And that the determination regarding just where Doug disappeared to ultimately comes from a play on words during a seemingly random dialogue exchange – rather than from a legitimate clue – seems a bit too easy, like the writers were looking for a quick way to shift gears into the third act. Thankfully, however, the third act stuff – which could have felt as if the film had given up or lost its steam – actually regains some of the comedic punch of the opening moments, culminating in a series of photographs that’ll have audiences howling riotously in their seats throughout the credits.

The Hangover could easily have been a cheap, crass, throwaway comedy, but with a great cast and a solid director, audiences are about to get one of the most bankable, legitimately hilarious films we’ve seen in quite some time. With a possible sequel already given the greenlight, we’re hoping that this same group can capture lightning in a bottle one more time.

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Release date: Friday June 5, 2009
Genre: Comedy
Running time: 100 min.
Director: Todd Phillips
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Screenplay: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Producer(s): Daniel Goldberg, Todd Phillips
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor
Official Site: hangovermovie.com
Rating: R for pervasive language, sexual content including nudity, and some drug material
Available film art: The Hangover movie posters

Synopsis
From the director of “Old School” comes a new comedy about a bachelor party gone horribly wrong. Two days before his wedding, Doug and his three buddies drive to Vegas for a blow-out night they’ll never forget. But when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning with pounding headaches, they can’t remember a thing. Their posh hotel suite is beyond trashed and the groom is nowhere to be found. With no clue of what happened and little time to spare, the trio must attempt to retrace their bad decisions from the night before in order to figure out where things went wrong and hopefully get Doug back to L.A. in time for his wedding. However, the more they begin to uncover, the more they realize just how much trouble they’re really in.

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