New To Video – Week of June 19-25

Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas star in this interracial take on Romeo and Juliet in which a wanna-be ballerina moves from her small town to the big city of Chicago, where she picks up some hip-hop moves and falls in love while she’s at it.

A hostage negotiator (Russell Crowe) is hired by a hostage’s wife (Meg Ryan) to rescue her husband (David Morse) from cocaine traffickers in South America As the rescue effort drags on, wife and negotiator fall in love, and you wonder why they don’t just leave the hostage right where he is.

David Mamet‘s showbiz satire about what happens when a big-budget Hollywood movie goes on location to a small Vermont burg and Tinseltown types rub elbows with the local rubes. Starring Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman and William H. Macy.

Sean Penn directs this thriller-chiller about a cop (Jack Nicholson) on the verge of retirement who becomes obsessed by the grisly murder of an 8-year-old girl and vows to her mother to catch the wacko who did it. With Robin Wright Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Sam Shepard and Mickey Rourke.

Matthew Modine plays a movie star/addict who blacks out one night and has no idea what he’s done until a year later after he sobers up. Dennis Hopper, Claudia Schiffer also star.