2046 | American Pie Presents: Band Camp | The Brothers Grimm | Charlatan
Chicago: The Razzle-Dazzle Edition | Cry Wolf | Dark Water | E.R. | Empire of the Wolves
The Exorcism of Emily Rose | Extreme Steam | Four Brothers | Gilmore Girls
The Great Raid | Ice Men | The Lenny Bruce Performance Film | Must Love Dogs
My Classic Cars: Legendary Muscle Cars | November | Once Upon a Mattress
Penguins Under Siege | Ray Harryhausen Gift Set | Serenity
Super-Duper Suitcase-O-Magic | Toy Story 2 | Tracy Takes On .. | The War of the Worlds
The Yards

	2046 Writer-director Wong Kar-wai has been careful not to call 2046 a sequel to his subversively erotic In the Mood for Love, even though it briefly reunites both its protagonists and the actors who played them (Tony Leung, Maggie Chung). Instead, Wong says in his commentary, he conceived 2046 as an echo to the frustrations and regrets that lingered from their tragically unrequited encounter in a Hong Kong boarding house. The intensity of that near-miss experience, which occurred in Room 2046, prompts the writer, Chow, to conjure a sort of purgatory where former lovers are allowed one last opportunity to work out their regrets and longings. When Chow’s narrative isn’t revealing a neon-tinged future – a noir-Metropolis, with magnificent trains that carry passengers to impossible destinations (one, a station known simply as 2046) -- Wong’s camera returns to mid-century Hong Kong to examine Chow’s recent past. No longer timid and polite, Chow found shelter in another apartment building, where a series of captivating women (Ziyi Zhang, Li Gong) just happened to inhabit Room 2046. Even though the sex in 2046 is less explicit than that in most of PG-13 titles, the electricity generated by Chow’s visits to Room 2046 could light Las Vegas for a week. -- Gary Dretzka
	Serenity The nation’s critics overwhelmingly approved of Joss Whedon’s very clever, mid-budget sci-fi Western, in large part because its price tag was a fifth of that on the sixth installment of Star Wars; That massively hyped picture – while a cut or two above the last two episodes -- had just stormed the nation’s multiplexes, and the pundits were still cranky over Fox’s blitzkrieg marketing campaign. By comparison, Serenity was fresh, unpretentious and a breeze to watch. It also enjoyed the benefit of an interesting back-story. The film was a feature-length, big-screen sequel to Whedon’s other critics’ darling, the abruptly canceled Fox TV series Firefly, and, as such, it became something of a cause célèbre. The plot will be familiar to fans of sci-fi, as it follows a crew of intrepid space gypsies on the run from the ruling Alliance, which is desperate to regain control of a telepathic young woman who’s been programmed as a human weapon; So, it goes. If you enjoy space odysseys – or loved Whedon’s more successful series, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer – chances are you’ll also dig Serenity; If DVD sales are solid, they could inspire Universal to consider making it a franchise. The DVD package includes commentary, outtakes and video dissertations on Firefly and space adventure. -- Gary Dretzka
	Must Love Dogs Blessed with a very attractive cast of familiar adult actors --Diane Lane, John Cusack, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Perkins, Stockard Channing, Christopher Plummer – Gary David Goldberg’s formulaic romantic comedy failed to generate much heat among the crowd that flocked to When Harry Met Sally …, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and other kindred titles. This was good news for the men who might otherwise have been dragged to this unabashed chick flick; Lane plays Sarah, a despondent pre-school teacher and recent divorcee, whose family is more desperate for her to get back into the dating game than she is. To this end, her sister puts an ad for Sarah onto an online match service, prompting a series of encounters that would be amusing, if we hadn’t already seen it in a dozen other movies. Before long, however, Cusack and Mulroney both emerge as serious suitors. Naturally, there’s a tug-of-war not only for Sarah’s affections, but also those of the audience. For most of his career, Goldberg’s canvass-of-choice has been television, with such hits as Lou Grant, Family Ties, Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge to his credit. Must Love Dogs likely will play better on the small screen, as well. And, yes, the DVD offers additional scenes, a gag reel and commentary.-- Gary Dretzka
	The Brothers Grimm At times, Terry Gilliam’s much-delayed fantasy picaresque, The Brothers Grimm, feels terribly undernourished, even with a budget reportedly in the neighborhood of $70 million. In his re-imagining of the story behind the fairy tales that will live as long as parents continue to read to their children, Gilliam offers tantalizing hints at how his picture might have looked, if he had another $40 million to spend on special effects. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger portray the folklore collectors as 19th Century rogues who use magic and technology to convince residents of several villages in French-occupied Germany that they can outwit the demons lurking in the woods. No one is more surprised than the brothers, when they realize that they’ve stumbled into a fairy-tale world – where the forest truly is enchanted -- unlike any they could have invented on their own. Much of The Brothers Grimm is quite wonderful, but the seams show whenever the fantastical gives way to the mundane world outside the forest. The DVD comes with deleted scenes, a making-of featurette and a commentary that alludes to some of problems faced by the filmmakers. (Oddly enough, Gilliam elected to delete the film’s most expensive and exciting scene, because it would diminished everything that came after it.) Even if Gilliam did get enough money to realize his dream, it remains debatable as to how much better the film might have performed at he box-office. -- Gary Dretzka
	Four Brothers The Yards: Director's Cut The connecting tissue in both of these hard-knocking urban dramas is the presence of Mark Wahlberg, who plays recently freed ex-cons with family problems. In Four Brothers, his Bobby Mercer returns to Detroit to avenge the death of his saintly mother, alongside his adopted brothers. In The Yards, his Leo Handler gets involved in the affairs of his aunt’s new husband, a crooked Queens businessman who conspires to eliminate minority contractors from a lucrative train-repair deal. Both of the films – urban westerns, if you will – are fast-paced and gritty, with plenty of explosive action (a.k.a., violence). John Wayne fans might see in John Singleton’s welcome return to genre fare, Four Brothers, more than a little bit of The Sons of Katie Elder, but it stood on its own during the summer doldrums as a diversion for players, wanna-bes and their dates. James Gray’s The Yards was most notable for its stellar cast, which, apart from Wahlberg, included Charlize Theron, Joaquin Phoenix, James Caan, Faye Dunaway and Ellen Burstyn. The reality of firmly entrenched institutional corruption is at the heart of the film (which has been given a special-edition make-over), but the prospect of being lectured to by Hollywood left its target audience cold. Four Brothers, which didn’t disguise its vigilantism, did much better at the box-office. -- Gary Dretzka
Penguins Under Siege If Penguins Under Siege and March of the Penguins are positioned on the same shelf at the local video emporium, there’s a very good chance some customers will mistake one for the other, and, after viewing the movie, wonder what caused all the fuss last summer. Both document the travails of penguin life south of the equator, and birthing rituals that family audiences will find fascinating. Upon closer inspection, though, the blackfoot penguins on the cover of the former seem quite a bit more proletarian than the elegant emperor penguins of the latter. One documentary was shot in Antarctica, while the other is set on the Skeleton Coast of southwestern Africa. One sticks strictly to the story of its winged subjects, while the other includes dissertations on seals, jackals and other seabirds that prey on the newly dropped eggs and newborn chicks. Yet, both are fascinating. The narrative flow of March is more gripping, to be sure, but Siege is similarly intelligent and beautifully shot (in sparkling high-definition). If March whetted anyone’s appetite for more penguin drama, Siege will provide plenty of it. -- Gary Dretzka
The Exorcism of Emily Rose As much a courtroom drama as any Exorcist-inspired horror show, The Exorcism of Emily Rose also asks viewers to choose sides between conventional religious belief and a willingness to believe that real angels and devils can inhabit our bodies, as well as our souls. Based on an actual exorcism, which resulted in the death of a young German woman, in 1976, The Exorcism of Emily Rose re-sets the drama in America, during a more recent winter, in a small Midwestern farm town. Instead of being performed by a pair of possibly overzealous German priests – or a mysterious stranger, like Max von Sydow’s Father Merrin -- the exorcism is carried out by a local parish priest (Tom Wilkinson) who makes for an articulate and sympathetic defendant. The ever-dependable Laura Linney and Campbell Scott do battle as representatives of the archdiocese and state, although it’s possible to read Roman Catholic mysticism vs. no-frills Protestantism into their confrontations, just as easily. Poor Jennifer Carpenter earned her salary for the beating she took from Emily’s inner demons, several of whom could be quite demonstrative. The pay-off might disappoint viewers principally interested in gore, audio dynamics and freak-out makeup -- of which there’s plenty – but it should satisfy those who buy into the courtroom drama. It’s difficult to determine exactly what separates the unrated version from the PG-13, but, either way, it’s not for the kiddies.-- Gary Dretzka
The Great Raid The Miramax brain trust, such as it was, must have had a reasonably good rationale for not releasing The Great Raid, in the years since its completion in 2002. It took the multi-title fire sale, which preceded the expulsion of the Weinstein brothers from the company they founded, to free this very decent World War II picture from captivity. Consequently, John Dahl’s no-frills and patiently measured production recalls the event it was green-lit to dramatize, in the first place: the joint American-Filipino mission to rescue 511 POWs from the Cabanatuan POW camp in the final weeks of the war. One of the most dangerous and skillfully executed missions of the war, the raid also is among the least heralded by future generations. For those who’ve never heard of the Bataan Death March, which brought the POWs to this hellish place, a second disc is loaded with historical background material. It includes a feature-length documentary and interviews with veterans and chroniclers of the campaign to re-take the Philippines. -- Gary Dretzka
Toy Story 2 Apparently, the folks at Disney once considered relegating this delightful sequel to the 1995 blockbuster, Toy Story – a landmark in computer-generated animation – to direct-to-video status, at a much shorter length. The folks at Pixar, however, were of another mind. They convinced their distribution partner of the artistic and commercial potential of a second, fully budgeted theatrical release, which would exploit the advantages of cutting-edge technology and advance the story of Woody (Tom Hanks). Of course, their strategy worked to perfection, and Toy Story 2 became a huge hit with audiences and critics, alike. In this go-round, a worse-for-the-wear Woody suffers separation anxiety when Andy is sent away to summer camp, but the cowboy hero isn’t allowed much time to feel sorry for himself. Instead, he quickly finds himself in the hands of a toy collector, who knows the value of a freshly restored Woody doll (action-figure, in p.c. parlance). Meanwhile, the gang back home is suffering a bit of separation anxiety of their own. Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) embarks on a rescue mission, with the rest of the crew, and the rest is … well … history. The two-disc DVD package, of course, comes loaded with the usual extras expected of a major Disney re-launch. -- Gary Dretzka
Dark Water This soggy thriller represents yet another attempt by Hollywood to re-make a popular Japanese creepshow in its own image. This time, the source material was Honogurai mizu no soko kara, which was directed by Hideo Nakata from a novel by Koji Suzuki, the team also responsible for the Ring pictures. Instead of handing the American version over to Nakata, as DreamWorks did with its adaptation of Ring 2, Touchstone looked south, to Brazil, where the estimable Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station) must have had some time on his hands. He did what he could with a story that, in translation, was widely seen as a commentary on the horror of finding a place to live in New York City, instead of a pure psychological thriller. In it, a recently divorced woman, Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly), and her daughter, Ceci, consider themselves fortunate to find affordable shelter in a Roosevelt Island dump with a hellish plumbing problem. When the leaks in their walls, ceiling and fixtures start behaving like the rare monsoonal rain that’s coincidentally soaking the entire city, it becomes clear to Dahlia that they should have considered moving to New Jersey, instead. Needless to say, they’re being plagued by what’s now commonly known in the movies as sick-house syndrome, a variation on the more familiar haunted-house virus. The expert cinematography and sound design – as described in a bonus featurette – help establish a suitably foreboding atmosphere of impending doom. Not surprisingly, the little girl gets a handle on the problem ahead of her mom, who probably should have called Ghostbusters after the water in the tub started turning colors. -- Gary Dretzka
American Pie Presents: Band Camp To describe this straight-to-video extension of Universal’s American Pie franchise as sophomoric is to give too little credit to the intellectual prowess of the average high school underclassman. Only a Hollywood screenwriter – Brad Riddell, if you must know – could produce something this stupid, degrading and cynically constructed. In summary, Stifler’s younger brother, Matt, is required by local authorities to endure a summer at Band Camp (even though he doesn’t play an instrument), where, typically, he conspires to produce a Band Girls Gone Wild hidden-camera video. To this end, several more than the usual number of chesty young women are required to disrobe, shake their boobies, shower together and talk dirty. Series regular Eugene Levy and porn legend Ginger Lynn Allen make brief appearances, and, while they’re the only things worth watching in the whole package, naturally their best scenes have been relegated to the outtake reel.
Ice Men This Canadian export follows an extremely well-trod path, and, as such, suffers more from familiarity and predictably than any other cinematic blemish. Set in the winter woodlands of Ontario, five old friends gather in a secluded cabin for a relaxing weekend of hunting, hockey, booze, reminiscing and farting in the hot tub. (Did I mention this movie was made in Canada?) Naturally, long-submerged tensions quickly rise to the surface, and carefully guarded secrets are revealed in drunken stupors. Ice Men was directed by Thom Best and written by Michael MacLennan, both of whom are veterans of the Showtime series, Queer as Folk; (Best also shot the offbeat, equally Canadian curling comedy, Men With Brooms) The usual claustrophobia associated with such confessionals – it reminded me most of Live Nude Girls – is relieved greatly by the pretty scenery.-- Gary Dretzka
November Courteney Cox tries hard in this twisty psycho-thriller from director Greg Harrison (Groove) and writer Benjamin Brand, but it’s still impossible (for me, anyway) to separate her Friends persona from those in such fragile projects as November; Like the inside-out dramas Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the plot of November defies easy encapsulation. Cox plays a photographer and teacher whose boyfriend (James LeGros) is killed in a convenience-store robbery. That much is clear, anyway. Things get complicated when a photo of her car, parked at the scene of the crime, mysteriously finds its way into a review of slides in her classroom, and no one takes credit for it. November has a nice impressionistic look to it, but most viewers will need a road map to keep track of all the detours in the plot. -- Gary Dretzka
The War of the Worlds: Special Collector's Edition Ray Harryhausen Gift Set With the arrival on DVD of the Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The World of the Worlds, it’s well worth recalling the original, 1953 film adaptation from producer and sci-fi pioneer George Pal. Considering that CGI and other sophisticated special-effects technology was still decades away from common application, it’s an amazing achievement. The same sort of accomplishment was witnessed in The Time Machine, Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide; The other special-effects legend represented in a new DVD is stop-motion animator, Ray Harryhausen, for whom Pal served as a mentor. He put much of what he learned into practice on the three films included in this gift set, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and It Came From Beneath the Sea, while adding split-screen and stop-motion technology to the mix. They’re primitive, to be sure, but still lots of fun. (The gift set comes with a scrapbook of Harryhausen memorabilia and background material.) The War of the Worlds package comes with commentary by actors Ann Robinson and Gene Barry, director Joe Dante, historians Bob Burns and Bill Warren; the Original Mercury Theater radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds; and featurettes on H.G. Wells and the film’s special effects. -- Gary Dretzka
TV to DVD Tracey Takes On: The Complete First Season Once Upon a Mattress America's Funniest Home Videos: The Best of Kids & Animals ER: The Complete Fourth Season Gilmore Girls: The Complete Fifth Season In 1987, the gifted Brit actress/comedian/mimic Tracey Ullman provided the fledgling Fox television network with one of its few bright lights, The Tracey Ullman Show. The series offered a fresh, hip twist to the traditional network variety format -- on its last legs, in broadcast television – with its merger of sketch-comedy, rock music and animation (The Simpsons started here). The entirely character-based Tracy Takes On became an HBO staple in 1996, after a series of Tracey Takes On … specials (… New York is included here). Kooky and wonderfully inventive, Ullman created highly recognizable characters who were conceived both as grotesque stereotypes and lovable eccentrics. In this way, the series often felt like an edgier version of The Carol Burnett Show; The three-disc package arrives with character studies, with a tight focus on Fern; a bit of commentary; and an in-performance feature. And, speaking of Burnett, she now can be seen on DVD in the third TV version of the Broadway hit, Once Upon a Mattress; In the first two adaptations of the fairy tale, The Princess and the Pea, Burnett played Princess Winnifred the Woebegon; in the most recent version (a week prior to the DVD launch), she’s the nagging Queen Aggravaine, to Tracey Ullman’s Winnifred, and executive producer. After nearly 50 years, both the musical and Burnett have held up pretty well. America's Funniest Home Videos which probably will never drop off ABC’s prime-time lineup, has been one of the major beneficiaries of the technological trend toward ever-more portable and affordable motion-picture cameras. For the last 16 years, any knucklehead with a clumsy kid or nut-job pet has been able to approximate the walk along the red carpet at Cannes, by sending in a tape that becomes a finalist in the annual year-end competition. As such, it may be the least-expensive show in the history of television to produce. OK, it also can be pretty funny, too. The new three-disc box from Shout Factory is a compilation of The Best of Kids & Animals, which is further segmented into an All Animal Extravaganza and a celebrity-judged Battle of the Best, from the show’s first two seasons. Also included are two season finales, during which the winners are chosen. Hosts Bob Saget and Tom Bergeron both are represented. I, for one, would love to see an uncensored edition, with bloopers from the home videos taken in bedrooms, backseats and boardrooms. After his nasty-as-I-wanna-be appearances in The Aristocrats and on Entourage, Saget would be the perfect host. In ER: The Complete Fourth Season, the guys and gals are required to deal with the sudden appearance of a camera crew from a reality-TV show (the season-opener was shown live); the loss of Susan (Sherry Stringfield); the addition of trauma specialist Elizabeth Corday (the sexy and conflicted Alex Kingston) and a quirky chief of staff, played by Bill Macy; the start of Carter’s residency; and the requisite amount of inner-city violence and Baby Boomer angst. One of the most affecting episodes involves Doug and Mark’s trip to California, during which one of the doctors must settle his father's estate, and the other pays a visit to his estranged San Diego family. Maria Bello, George Clooney and Julianna Margulies also are still with the series. In the fifth season of Gilmore Girls, Rory engages in a tryst with a married man, proving that the apple didn’t fall very far from Lorelai’s tree. Meanwhile, mom has begun her relationship with diner owner, Luke. Fresh off her introduction to the world of adultery, the second-year Yalie develops a crush on a spoiled preppie, who tests her liberal ideals. This also was the season the WB standout turned 100, an event that is given much attention in the bonus features. -- Gary Dretzka
My Classic Cars: Legendary Muscle Cars Extreme Steam As Tim Allen so capably demonstrated in Home Improvement, the male Homo sapiens is as likely to be turned on sexually by a well-tuned lawn-mower engine or shiny socket wrench, as any Playboy bunny dressed in gauze and high heels. That preternatural urge is what puts these wonderful packages from Questar into the no-brainer category, when it comes to the gifting of dads of all ages. Horsepower, and lots of it, is the fuel that powers the six-volume Legendary Muscle Cars, which originated on the Speed Channel series, My Classic Car; The generous package of auto-erotica features the products of ’50s and ’60s-era GM, Ford, Chrysler (a.k.a., Mopar), as well as Jay Leno: Certified Car Nut; For train-spotters nostalgic for the days when locomotives left their mark on the landscape in plumes of dark smoke and clouds of steam, Extreme Steam is also guaranteed to raise a smile. Among the titles are Santa Fe 3751: Route of the Chiefs, Steam '98, Union Pacific’s Clinchfield Challenge and Workin’ on the Santa Fe. -- Gary Dretzka
Super-Duper Suitcase-O-Magic Starter kits for aspiring magicians are among the most enduring of evergreen Christmas gifts. All come with a selection of rudimentary tricks and an instructional book that some kids will find fascinating, and baffle those whose talents lie elsewhere. What separates Will and Mac King’s Magic in a Minute from those gathering dust in the attics of countless boomer and boomer-baby parents is the addition of a DVD that demonstrates and explains gags laid out in Book-O-Magic, using props included in suitcase. DVD technology allows kids to use the freeze-frame, reverse, and slo-mo functions to put each of the 14 tricks under the kind of scrutiny VHS cassettes were ill-equipped to provide. And, King makes learning fun. -- Gary Dretzka
Chicago: The Razzle-Dazzle Edition It’s likely that this special-edition DVD of the 2003 Best Picture winner was released to take advantage of the hoopla surrounding Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, which has yet to set the nation’s box-offices on fire. In addition to the excellent screen adaptation of Bob Fosse’s sexy musical, the package contains several new making-of featurettes, extended Musical Performances, close-ups on Chita Rivera, Marshall and Liza Minnelli, who played Roxie Hart on Broadway. -- Gary Dretzka
Cry Wolf Genre fare doesn’t get much more generic than Cry Wolf, which rounds up an ethnically diverse group of practical jokers from an elite prep school and encourages them to plan a hoax involving a local serial killer. The Wolf, as he’s been tagged by the pranksters, doesn’t take kindly to the ruse and retaliates by e-mail. Pretty scary, huh? Jon Bon Jovi plays a journalism teacher, who may or may not be the killer. -- Gary Dretzka
Charlatan One doesn’t need to be fluent in Farsi to get a kick out of this recent export from Iran, home of one of the world's most consistently relevant (despite government restrictions) film industries. In Charlatan, actor-director Arash Moayerian has crafted a wonderfully zany farce, which borrows from every genre convention advanced in the products of Hollywood and Bollywood. A pair of misfit roommates, one an aspiring filmmaker, is enlisted in a mission to rescue a fetching (even in her chador) young woman from a thuggish gang of kidnappers. The epic chase scene overflows with references – including direct lifts from the original soundtracks – to American and Italian westerns, James Bond thrillers and, even, Saturday Night Fever; The film is as low-tech as it could possibly be, but the goofy dialogue and non-stop action more than compensate for cut-rate production values. -- Gary Dretzka
The Lenny Bruce Performance Film By now, the trials and tribulations of Lenny Bruce – the martyr -- have overshadowed the work of Lenny Bruce … the comedian. Before he became a poster child for the First Amendment and a prisoner of his drug addiction, Bruce was a supremely perceptive, wildly creative and truly funny stage performer in the stand-up tradition. He did bits, shtick, impressions and the occasional song. Later, his delivery would become more rapid-fire and improvisational, like a John Coltrane solo. He stalked the stage like a panther, and invited his audiences to share his life, which was becoming more difficult with each new arrest and trial for obscenity or drugs. The Lenny Bruce Performance Film, which has been kicking around for a while now, is a recording of his penultimate (a word that might have gotten him arrested in Chicago) performance. It shows a Bruce who’s consumed by his legal struggles, and has been denied a forum for his comedy by club owners afraid of being hassled by the local cops. Even here, though, a ghost of his former self, Bruce is electrifying. If his performance turns you on, there’s a wealth of material on CD that will flesh out the portrait of Bruce as a comic, social critic and wordsmith. -- Gary Dretzka
Empire of the Wolves The French cinema may be a lot of things, most of them good, but the one thing it definitely isn’t is a reliable source of grisly horror films and thrillers larded with non-stop action. Because Hollywood and Hong Kong more than make up the slack, however, there’s really no reason for concern. International star Jean Reno plays a crooked cop, investigating a series of grisly murders in a Turkish neighborhood of Paris. Empire of the Wolves is making its U.S. debut on DVD. -- Gary Dretzka