Product Description

DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26410 in DVD
• Brand: CAGE,NICHOLAS
• Published on: 2004-02-01
• Released on: 2004-02-24
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 116 minutes

Features

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• AC-3; Anamorphic; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC

Amazon.com
Marking a welcome return to the breezy style of Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men reminds us that the director of Gladiator is equally adept with quirky comedies and offbeat characters. Smoothly adapted from the novel by Eric Garcia and set amidst the sunlit, 1950s-style architecture of L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, this gently dramatic comedy centers on Roy (Nicolas Cage), a divorcée whose career as a con artist is complicated by: (1) his ongoing struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder, which manifests itself through various quirks and rituals; (2) a wily partner (Sam Rockwell) whose criminal ambitions are greater than Roy suspects; and (3) the arrival of 14-year-old Angela (Alison Lohman), claiming to be the daughter he's never known. Turns out she's got a knack for dad's profession, and that turns Matchstick Men into a multilayered comedy with unexpected twists and surprising revelations. To say more would spoil the fun; suffice it to say that Hans Zimmer's playful score and a Sinatra-laced soundtrack are perfect complements to Cage's engaging eccentricities. --Jeff Shannon

DVD features
Future filmmakers (and probably some current ones) could learn a lot from the 72-minute "Tricks of the Trade," which follows director Ridley Scott from pre-production through test screenings. The viewer is a fly on the wall as Scott partakes in location meetings, costume fittings, music-scoring sessions, and the like; everyone is as at ease as the director with a camera crew follows their every move. "Tricks" has all the usual DVD extras--interview segments, deleted scenes, ego-massaging--but documentary filmmaker Charles de Lauzirika is so smart in incorporating these elements, his final result is one of most deft--and most entertaining--DVD extras in the format's young history. --Doug Thomas

From The New Yorker
Nicolas Cage plays a man called Roy, who is both a head case-paranoid, agoraphobic, eaten up by nervous tics-and a smooth professional con artist. How these two sides mesh is never made clear; the director, Ridley Scott, is perhaps too busy making beautiful patterns out of Southern Californian sunlight to notice that his hero doesn't add up. Roy and his partner Frank (Sam Rockwell) rip off the unsuspecting, and the entire movie depends on the extent to which they may or may not choose to practice their skills on each other. The scams feel small, however, beside the big news in Roy's life-the reappearance of his daughter, Angela (Alison Lohman), fourteen years old and as tolerantly disposed toward the world as her father is petrified by it. The film, in fact, belongs to Lohman, who is so easy and unaffected that she makes the surrounding players look like freaks. Scott, normally so adept at leaping from one genre to the next, seems torn between the suspense of the con and the gentler demands of a parental love story; Lohman alone is bold enough not to notice the difference.-A.L. (9/22/03) -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker