MCN DVD Reviews: June 30, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

Heathers 20th High School Reunion Edition	Twenty years ago, when Heathers was first released, mainstream critics and other adult observers dismissed the inky-black comedy as a mean-spirited horror-genre death-fest. Not having set foot in a high school in the recent past, they missed the sharp social commentary and portrayals of teenagers whose wardrobes and attitudes were informed more by Vogue and Cosmopolitan than Teen or Tiger Beat magazines. Heathers added a high-gloss sheen to the teens-in-jeopardy subgenre, demonstrating how popular kids were more to be feared than respected, and that conformity, even disguised as high fashion, could be hazardous to one's health. Michael Lehmann and Daniel Waters' film would grow in popularity as buzz spread through the aisles of high schools nationwide, setting the table for such disparate productions as Jawbreaker, Clueless, Wild Things, The O.C., Gossip Girl and Juno. The 20th High School Reunion Edition adds such bonus features as a Return to Westerburg High documentary, interviews with the creative team, commentary and the featurettes Swatch Dogs and Diet Coke Heads and Don't be a Girl Scout. -- Gary Dretzka

Making of ...	Last year, this splendid Tunisian drama brought home trophies from several international festivals, including Tribeca, where Lotfi Abdelli was honored as best actor and writer-director Nouri Bouzid garnered a special mention his screenplay. And, yet, Making of has made its American debut on DVD, without the benefit of a theatrical run. These sorts of injustices no longer should surprise us. Better on DVD than nowhere at all ... or VHS, for that matter. Besides being a terrific thriller, Making of... attempts to explain how a young man, Bahta, with no apparent political leanings -- a hip-hopper and break-dancer, in a country that frowns on such things -- becomes convinced that God wants him to strap dynamite to his chest and kill infidels, or anyone unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Attempting to explain the inexplicable on film is nothing new, of course. By setting the drama in secular Tunisia, however, Bouzid is able to make arguments whose complexity transcends all the usual cliches and shortcuts associated with cinematic depictions of Arabs, Muslims, freedom-fighters and terrorists in film. Abdelli's defiant 25-year-old break-dancer wants nothing so much as to be treated like a man, and, if that wasn't possible in Tunisia, somewhere where people might appreciate his talents. It's been impossible for Bahta to get a passport or find a decent job, however, and the only people who treat him with respect are the fundamentalists who frequent his local cafe. They see him as a blank page, upon which they can sketch their jihadist masterpiece. The rest of the story is better seen than described. It's safe to say, though, the rhetoric dispensed by various characters won't fall easy on western ears. To understand how al-Qaeda was built, and, conversely learn why the terrorist fringe remains in the minority throughout the Arab world, it's essential that diverse viewpoints be presented in such easily accessible ways. But, Abdelli's performance would be reason enough to rent the DVD. -- Gary Dretzka

In Bruges	The celebrated Irish playwright Martin McDonagh probably didn't require any coaching from Quentin Tarantino or David Mamet while committing his profanity-laced screenplay for In Bruges to paper, but who else might have required of his characters that they employ the word fuck some 126 separate times during the course of his disturbingly violent 107-minute feature debut. Not that I'm complaining, really … assassins tend not to edit their conversations to protect the delicate ears of American audiences. The profanities do clash, however, with the hyper-civilized surroundings of the fairytale Flemish city of canals and medieval architecture. Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell play a pair of Irish gangsters who were instructed by their volatile boss (Ralph Fiennes, channeling Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast) to lay low in Bruges, after they botched a hit in the worst possible way. Gleeson's burly killer, Ken, is only too happy to play tourist while awaiting instructions. Farrell's anxiety-ridden Ken is less inclined to enjoy the wondrous buildings, churches and art. It isn't until he discovers a film crew shooting in the market square that Ken's spirits are lifted. That's because he's smitten by the presence of a beautiful blond production assistant and intrigued by the presence of a strong-willed and highly articulate little person. The more comfortable Ken becomes in these surroundings, however, the more we fear for his safety. In Bruges has been described as a meditation on sudden death, which was a topic explored, as well, in McDonagh's Oscar-winning short, Six Shooter, also starring Gleeson. Like so many other contemporary crime movies and books, In Bruges also is interested in things like honor, redemption, friendship, trust and duty. This is territory the former bad boy, Farrell, also assayed in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, to similar positive effect. After watching the bonus features, fans of the movie will surely want to include Bruges in future travel plans. -- Gary Dretzka

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days	In 2008, radical fundamentalism affects people of all religions, nationalities and political persuasions. Abortion may be the hottest of hot-button issues in the U.S., if only because it so easily separates the liberals from the conservatives and has been used as a recruiting tool for hard-core religionists. The debate is less audible in countries where the blocking and bombing of medical facilities -- and ritual humiliation of patients -- is discouraged or not part of a pro-choice activists' arsenal. It's easy to see how the deeply moving Romanian drama, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, might be considered to be argument for choice and against governments that turn women who want take control of their own bodies into criminals. To me, though, Cristian Mungiu's film attempts to make a broader statement about autocratic rulers and fundamentalists who get the police states they want by forcing citizens to break or sidestep unreasonable laws. (Let's face it, if George Bush's conservative, male-dominated Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, only outlaws will seek and perform abortions ... again.) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is set in Bucharest just prior to the lifting of the Iron Curtain and collapse of the beyond-repressive Ceausescu regime. A college student, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), agrees to help her roommate, Gabriela (Laura Vasiliu), obtain an illegal abortion. They agree to meet a Mr. Bebe in a specific hotel, where the procedure will be performed. The deal begins to go haywire when the reservation is lost, and Otilia finds lodging in a hotel that demands ID of any and all guests and visitors. Then, when Gabriela admits to being further along than first thought, Mr. Bebe demands sexual favors, along with more money. As the tension mounts, and Gabriela's wavering gets even more pronounced, Otilia is forced to shoulder even more of responsibility and risk. The outcome, for all involved, is always in doubt. This does not mean, however, that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days whitewashes the moral and ethical questions surrounding abortion. Gabriela is an incredibly irresponsible woman, whether as a lover, friend, patient or potential mother. At first, Mr. Bebe seems to be a sympathetic, perhaps even heroic, character, but his hotel-room behavior is despicable. Neither does Mungiu hide from view the brutal results of a late-term abortion. Meanwhile, Otilia not only must endure her friend's selfishness and Mr. Bebe's demands, but she also is given a sneak preview of her future as an unfulfilled and unhappy wife and in-law to a family of boors. This is an amazing picture, and, while the interviews are dry, they add much to an understanding of the film. -- Gary Dretzka

The Spiderwick Chronicles: Two-Disc Special Edition The Sword in the Stone: 45th Anniversary Special Edition Jungle Book 2: Special Edition	This delightful fantasy-thriller is based on a series of five books known collectively as The Spiderwick Chronicles. Its popularity has also spawned various movie tie-ins, including a video game, posters and action figures. My kids were in college by the time the series launched, in 2003, so I was unaware of its existence. If I were required to describe it to other parents my age, I'd start by asking them to imagine what kinds of ooky things descendents of the original Addams and Munster families might discover when rummaging through the long-abandoned mansions of their famous forebears. If the items included Lily Munster's recipes and Uncle Fester's blueprints, a simple incantation could still ignite a frightful reunion of hobgoblins, fairies, trolls, monsters and creepy-crawler critters. That, in a nutshell, is what happens when a recently divorced woman (Mary-Louise Parker) uproots her children from their New York digs and moves into a creaky old house in the country once occupied by their now-ancient great-aunt (Joan Plowright) and her scientist father (David Strathairn), who disappeared 80 years previously. Even before they have time to unpack, the freak show begins. Apparently, before he split for points unknown, the scientist encircled the house with a force field powerful enough to keep all manner of villainous varmints - visible only when looking through special lenses -- from breaking in and stealing his formulas and recipes. While mom is in town looking for work, the kids are rudely introduced to the little people who have protected the secrets for decades and fear the new occupants will screw things up … which, of course, they do. The ensuing mayhem pits the freaked-out kids (Freddie Highmore, in twin roles, and Sarah Bolger) against an ever-growing pack of wonderfully rendered monsters. There's a clichéd subplot involving the intentions of the kids' absent father, as well as an exploration of the cost of parental neglect, but The Spiderwick Chronicles is most interesting when the computer-generated monsters square off against the protectors of Arthur Spiderwick's legacy. Director Mark Waters (Freaky Friday) does a decent enough job choreographing the action, even if he tends to rush through the expository material. The monsters' antics likely will scare younger children, just as the villains in Gremlins, Goonies and Darby O'Gill and the Little People unhinged their parents and grandparents. The generous menu of making-of and background features will help alleviate much of the anxiety … a luxury not available in Dark Ages of special effects. In anticipation of the Blu-ray generation, Disney is getting whatever mileage might be left in such catalogue titles as The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book 2. The 45th Anniversary Special Edition of the Arthurian legend adds only an interactive game and a couple more sing-alongs to what was offered in the previously released Golden Edition. The animated feature was based on the children's book by T.H. White. I'm pretty sure that the anemic sequel, The Jungle Book 2, was intended to be launched as a DVD original, but internal pressures and exhibitor demands inspired a brief theatrical run. It made money, but required marketing support and other drains to the bottom line. Jungle boy Mowgli was voiced by Haley Joel Osment, while Baloo the bear sounded exactly like John Goodman. Adults anticipating a film that re-captures the magic of The Jungle Book will be disappointed. -- Gary Dretzka

Persepolis	Based on an autobiographical comic book by Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis tells the remarkable story of a talented and free-spirited Iranian teenager whose dreams are short-circuited by the religious fanaticism that dominated the country's Islamic revolution. At first, Marji (voiced as a teenager and woman by Chiara Mastroianni) goes along with the changes imposed on women and teenage girls, but a shocking act of politically inspired violence convinces her to take the advice of her grandmother (Danielle Darrieux) and mother (Catherine Deneuve) and seek the freedom promised, if not always delivered by the west. Marji's journey is complicated by her love for her country, which transcends any natural borders or manufactured ideology. The English-language DVD and Blu-ray editions should encourage subtitle-phobic Americans to take a chance on the Oscar nominee, even if the animation isn't as visually stunning as that in Shrek or Ratatouille. The voice-actors also included Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands and Iggy Pop, and bonus material adds backgrounders on the making of both the French and English editions, commentary and a press interview from the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. -- Gary Dretzka

Fool's Gold	The Amy Fischer Story notwithstanding, Andrew Tennant has become one of the go-to directors entrusted with such formulaic rom-com star vehicles as Sweet Home Alabama, Anna and the King, Ever After, Hitch, Fools Rush In and It Takes Two. Apparently, the only thing expected of him is to keep the actors in focus and the movies on-budget, because none of the movies is particularly memorable. Here, Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey play recent divorcees who reunite to comb the ocean floor for a sunken treasure located within feet of an island owned by a ruthless American rapper. After the rapper's henchmen do their best to convince McConaughey's buff beach boy, Ben, that he should forget about raiding Davy Jones' locker - oops, wrong movie - he is befriended by a billionaire yachtsman (Donald Sutherland) and his ditzy daughter (Alexis Dziena, the teen sex bomb in Broken Flowers). The only things not totally predictable are the lovely settings - including a spectacular blow hole -- for treachery and gold digging. Although Hudson and McConaughey look as if they were born to play these sorts of roles, the chemistry between them is that of rascally high-school jock and flirtatious homecoming queen. In her prime, Hudson's mom - Goldie Hawn - probably rejected scripts like these on a daily basis. The real fun comes in watching Sutherland and Dziena - think Barron Hilton and his granddaughter, Paris -- attempt to bridge the generation gap in shipboard conversations. Otherwise, Fool's Gold serves primarily as an unnecessary sequel to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. -- Gary Dretzka

Be Kind Rewind	French director Michael Gondry is nothing if not challenging. His distinctly eccentric music videos and such offbeat movies as Human Nature, The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Minds seem to be continuations of dreams experienced during REM sleep and brought to the screen verbatim. If the stories don't always make literal sense to audiences, it's probably because Gondry has yet to come to grips with his own subconscious. Be Kind Rewind takes place in and around the ramshackle Be Kind Rewind video store in a blue-collar section of Passaic, N.J. Its owner, Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover), believes that the legendary jazz musician Fats Waller was born in this exact spot, and it should be designated a cultural landmark. The city has other plans for the building, and they don't include preservation. Before Mr. Fletcher heads out of town to attend a commemoration of Waller's music, he demands only one thing of his trusted clerk, Mike (Mos Def), and that is to keep neighborhood bozo Jerry (the ubiquitous Jack Black) as far from the endangered business as possible. Even before Mike can order his friend to scram, however, Jerry has managed to de-magnify every single VHS cassette in Be Kind Rewind. (It's a long story.) Normally, this wouldn't be a huge problem. The store's customer base appears limited to one nutty old lady (Mia Farrow), who desperately wants to rent Ghostbusters. To satisfy her appetite, Mike and Jerry conspire to re-enact the classic '80s comedy and render it to video in a severely abridged version. It proves to be such a hit that locals begin lining up for re-enactments of RoboCop, Rush Hour, 2001: A Space Odyssey, King Kong and Driving Miss Daisy. Mike and Jerry also film a kooky biopic of Fats Waller, which they intend to screen as a show of support for Mr. Fletcher. Even if almost nothing in the first half of the movie makes literal sense, there's something irresistible in Mike and Jerry's mission to satisfy customers and save the store. It's here that the magic inherent in movie making -- and movie watching - breaks through the chaos, bringing all the disparate idea strings together and rewarding our patience. The collection could use a few more bonus features, but that probably will come in time, as well. -- Gary Dretzka




Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins Here's another movie that audiences - primarily of the urban demographic -- enjoyed quite a bit more than the critics. Martin Lawrence plays Roscoe Jenkins, a successful TV talk-show host, who's reluctant to return to his rural Southern home for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary. A single father, soon to tie the knot with a beautiful, if unconvincingly fragile Survivor winner, Jenkins has a dozen reasons not to be enthusiastic about the landmark event. All of them can be traced to a childhood in which he played second fiddle to various siblings and cousins, and couldn't meet the expectations of his father (James Earl Jones). Jenkins may have made more money than all of his relatives combined, but, because he wasn't the pick of the litter, he remains the butt of family jokes. So far, so cliché, especially when an old love interest (Nicole Ari Parker) arrives at the elbow of his childhood nemesis (Cedric the Entertainer) and a new game of Survivor begins. Throw in Mike Epps, Mo'Nique, Michael Clarke Duncan, Margaret Avery and Louis C.K., and you have the makings of a pretty good party. And, in the hands of writer-director Malcolm D. Lee -- cousin of Spike and director of Undercover Brother and The Best Man - that's exactly what Welcome Home is. The humor is every bit as broad, crude and slapsticky as one might expect from such a set-up, but an extremely generous PG-13 provided Lee with a bit more latitude than that granted the adult-oriented comedy. I liked it … sue me. Oh, yeah, the making-of featurettes and deleted scenes are better than average, as well. -- Gary Dretzka

Definitely, Maybe Chaos Theory Jack and Jill vs. the World Just Add Water I really hadn't paid much attention to Ryan Reynolds' career since he graduated from the gross-out circuit and began taking roles as a leading man in romantic comedies. The simultaneous releases of Definitely, Maybe and Chaos Theory provide sufficient evidence, though, that Reynolds has made the transition with his personality and humor intact, and, with proper care and feeding, he could enjoy a decent adult career. In Definitely, Maybe, Reynolds' political consultant Will Hayes is asked by his precocious daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin), to recall the loves of his life before she was born. Thus, Maya and viewers are introduced to the diverse trio of accomplished ladies (Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, Isla Fisher) at the core of his love story mystery. Writer-director Adam Brooks avoids taking the easy path to a happy ending for Maya's dad, who, we already know, is in the midst of a divorce from Maya's mother. Neither is Will perfect marriage material. The complexity of the relationships is a problem, but Reynolds' strong presence eases the passage for the girl. Chaos Theory could just as easily have been titled, Murphy's Law or No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. In it, Reynolds plays a successful motivational speaker and efficiency expert tripped up by his wife's playful decision to move the kitchen clock back 10 minutes, thereby throwing off the delicate balance of his daily schedule. What ensues provides a working model of an actual mathematical principle known as the chaos theory or butterfly effect. In the course of about 24 hours, a single misinterpreted phone conversation causes the efficiency expert's life to spin irretrievably out of control. Putting Humpty Dumpty together again takes the better part of the next 90 minutes of movie time. Emily Mortimer, who plays the mischievous wife, isn't spared her own fair share of punishment. Chaos Theory has plenty of problems, but, at least, you can see that much thought was put into the story. These days, that's saying a lot. In the tear-jerker romance, Jack and Jill vs. the World, poor Freddie Prinze Jr. is required to play an unlucky-in-love advertising exec, Jack, who accidentally falls for a kooky young actress, Jill, with a deep, dark secret. OK, Jill (Taryn Manning) has a disease that is likely to kill her. (The good ones always do.) She neglects to inform Jack of her predicament, even after putting honesty at the top of their iron-clad relationship contract. This causes Jack to act in a mostly unsympathetic way, even though her hacking cough should have tipped him off to her problem. Will they get back together? Who cares. Even the presence of Danny DeVito, Dylan Walsh (Nip/Tuck) and Jonah Hill (Superbad) couldn't ensure a theatrical release for Hart Bochner's surprisingly appealing Just Add Water. Equal parts romance and vigilante comedy, Just Add Water is set in a decaying desert town that is controlled by a young meth cooker. It also is on the short list of California communities to be declared a toxic nightmare. Walsh's character is a parking lot attendant whose only reason for remaining in Trona is a mousey wife who refuses to leave the house. His neighbors are the kind of slackers and stoners who would be turned away from the gates of most trailer parks. A few other normal folks live and work in town, but not enough to keep the drug dealers from terrorizing them. That changes when a wealthy outsider played by DeVito opens a gas station and convinces the residents to sober up long enough to take action. Just Add Water has a distinct direct-to-DVD feel to it, but even the most useless characters are given multi-dimensional personalities and reasons for us to care about their welfare. -- Gary Dretzka

The Hammer Finishing the Game Meet the Spartans/305 Like you, I've watched more movies about boxing than I care to recall. A disproportionate number of them have been very good, but, when they're bad, they stink. It filled me with dread to learn that The Hammer starred Adam Carolla - someone who's built a career around being a guy's guy - as a 40-year-old carpenter with aspirations of re-igniting an aborted boxing career. Sylvester Stallone was barely able to pull off last year's resurrection of Rocky Balboa, so what hope was there for a radio personality and talk-show co-host. While The Hammer won't make anyone forget Raging Bull, Fat City or, even, Girlfight, it's an entirely watchable entertainment. The credit goes to Carolla, who, before getting into the radio dodge, was a perfectly respectable boxer and carpenter. Frequent writing partner Kevin Hench helped Carolla shape his story, while director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld kept it from falling into the potholes of sentimentality and forced symbolism. (Herman-Wurmfeld also directed Kissing Jessica Stein, which explains the too-rare appearance by Heather Juergensen.) I'm not sure Carolla has another movie in him, but The Hammer is better than it had any right to be. Finishing the Game is a mockumentary that imagines what might have transpired in the wake of Bruce Lee's death, in 1973, when a production company attempted to re-cast and finish Game of Death, the martial-arts epic he left behind him. Here, only about 12 minutes remained extant, while, in actuality, 30 minutes of action provided a foundation for the 1978 release of the same title. Fitfully funny, at best, Finishing the Game doesn't break any new ground in parodying the filmmaking process, nor is it easy to discern how the film's rendition of the period distinguishes 1973 from any other of the ensuing 35 years (apart from the polyester fashions and post-hippie hair-dos). More likely, director Justin Lin's intention was to comment on how Asian-American actors have been pigeon-holed by Hollywood casting directors, who see them primarily as kung-fu fighters, delivery boys and Viet Cong guerrillas. As writer-director of Better Luck Tomorrow and director of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Lin knows whereof he speaks. Unfortunately, most of the gags are obvious and delivered unconvincingly. Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle would have been a better model for Lin. Far less inspired is Meet the Spartans: Unrated 'Pit of Death' Edition, from the same team that gave us such parodies as Spy Hard, four editions of Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie and, soon, Disaster Movie. By extension, that means Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer also are responsible for keeping Carmen Electra off the unemployment rolls. Inspired mostly by the success of 300, Meet the Spartans also takes aim at Casino Royale, Happy Feet, Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Transformers, Stomp the Yard, Rocky Balboa, Dancing With the Stars, Ugly Betty, American Idol, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Some of the material is funny - how could it not be? -but the homophobic gags wear thin after about a half-hour. Ken Davitian (the hairy producer, in Borat) steals most of the scenes in which he appears. The many bonus features will please those who enjoy reading the parodies in Mad-magazine and the satire of the far more talented Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team.. By comparison to the similarly themed 305, however, Meet the Spartans is right up there with Airplane! and Police Squad! This lame-brained mockumentary, written and directed by Daniel and David Holechek, theorizes that a quintet of nerdy Spartans was assigned to guard the now-famous goat path, but their cowardice and ineptitude were no match for the Persian invaders. Even giving the Holecheks the benefit of an Internet doubt, 305 feels like something that escaped YouTube -- instead of merely being adapted from bits created for the site -- or was conceived during a post-convention kegger at ComiCon. -- Gary Dretzka

Charlie Bartlett Drillbit Taylor It's a Boy Girl Thing Two decades after John Hughes gave us Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, mainstream audiences aren't exactly clamoring for movies about high school life that smart, witty and empathetic. Teenagers themselves don't seem too trust movies that take them seriously, either. Juno may have been the exception that proved the rule, but it still isn't clear if its amazing box-office success should be attributed to kids or adults. Even if he weren't a recluse, Hughes probably would have a hard time getting arrested in Hollywood these days. Charlie Bartlett may not have been in the same league with Ferris Bueller - or Rushmore, Pump Up the Volume, Harold & Maude and My Bodyguard, which it also resembles - but its lack of success among critics and at the box office shouldn't keep first-time director Jon Poll and writer Gustin Nash from seeking the high road in their next project. Unlike Max Fischer, in Rushmore, Charlie Bartlett is a child of privilege, who, after being expelled from his prep school for forging IDs (and other crimes), is forced to attend the local public high school. At first, his natural elitism makes him easy prey for the school bullies who also control the drug trade. This changes after Charlie (Anton Yelchin, from Huff) discovers that he has a gift for giving psychological advice to neurotic students and enlists the meanest bully to dispense Zoloft, Ritalin, Prozac and other mood-altering drugs in exchange for their lunch money. His first misstep occurs when he bonds with the angry daughter (Kat Denning) of the school's suspicious and overprotective principal (Robert Downey Jr.). Just as the students begin to assert themselves in ways deemed rebellious by the principal, one of Charlie's patients nearly dies of an overdose. Even if the ensuing faceoff is fairly predictable, the cast's enthusiasm keeps things bouncing right along, as does Hope Davis, who, as Charlie's oblivious mom, doesn't see anything wrong with washing down her own pills with wine. As far-fetched as this scenario might sound, it's a million times more realistic than Gossip Girl. Bullies also play key roles in Drillbit Taylor, a less-than-inspired comedy about three dweebs who hire a homeless ne'er-do-well (Owen Wilson, in low gear) to protect them as they make their way to and from school each day. The high-school bully is an archetype that has withstood the tests of time and logic, and is instantly recognizable to audiences of all ages. Here, however, the bullies are drawn as Gestapo enforcers. They display no human emotions, or redemptive qualities, and their punches can be felt all the way to the cheap seats in the balcony. These evil boys have even intimidated Drillbit, whose laid-back, laissez-faire attitude toward life in general has allowed him to ingratiate himself to the faculty, who believe he's a substitute teacher. Even though Drillbit continues to collect the boys' money - ostensibly so he can life off the fat of the land in northern Canada -- he is reluctant to come to their rescue. This forces them to rely on their own devices, a strategy that doesn't quite work. Director Steven Brill is a frequent collaborator with Adam Sandler, which explains the film's lack of subtlety, while writers Seth Rogan and Kristofor Brown have added their touches to such dignified projects as Superbad, Da Ali G Show and Beavis and Butt-Head. (Less obvious, credit for the story idea goes to one Edmond Dantès, protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo and Hughes' frequent pseudonym.) Drillbit Taylor might have worked better if the folks at Apatow Productions weren't so eager to rest on their laurels. Far less profound is It's a Boy Girl Thing, a teen comedy that requires a macho jock (Kevin Zegers) to wake up one morning in the body of his more cerebral next-door neighbor (Samaire Armstrong) and vice versa. Don't ask. There's a moral to the story, but it's mostly an excuse to get inside communal showers and locker rooms. Sharon Osbourne plays the boy's mom. -- Gary Dretzka

Otis Funny Games The Tattooist Tony Krantz' bloody pseudo-psychodrama Otis can be taken two ways. One, it's a parody of the subgenre of horror films loosely categorized as torture porn or, two, it was an attempt to produce a classic, using established actors and higher-than-normal production values. Stunningly, while it never threatens to transcend genre conventions, Otis is a stomach-churning thriller that is capable of inspiring great spasms of laughter while also triggering the gag reflex. Otis is an overweight pervert and surveillance junkie, who, when he isn't torturing cheerleaders, delivers pizzas to suburban families (before stealing their lawn trolls). After accidentally electrocuting one unfortunate girl, Otis kidnaps another who looks very much like her. Apparently, Otis (Bostin Christopher) is playing out a fantasy that wormed its way into his brain in high school, perhaps after being rejected by the varsity football coach or homecoming queen. Or, perhaps, he's acting out a scenario similar to the one described to him by his sadistic brother (Kevin Pollack). The new victim, Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson), is shrewd enough to realize that she'll live longer by playing along with Otis' fantasies - which aren't immediately sexual - and be allowed more time to devise an escape. We know Otis is capable of inflicting great pain, but also understand that teenage girls can be every bit as dangerous as deranged pizza deliverers. That ever-snarky actor Jere Burns plays a police detective cut from the same cloth as Columbo, albeit minus Peter Falk's ability to solve crimes. He manages to unsettle the girl's already frantic family, as portrayed by lleana Douglas, Daniel Stern and newcomer Jared Kusnitz. Even after Riley escapes from her dungeon cell, the Lawsons remain convinced that the detective will screw up the investigation and the villain will elude justice. It is at this point that Krantz turns the table on Otis and the audience, by investing in the suburbanites a blood lust so maniacal it is at once frightening and hilarious. Unfortunately, their vigilantism is no more effective than the detective's Columbo act. Otis exists in the netherworld between arthouse and grindhouse, and, as such, the Raw Feed product might have been better placed on a cable-to-DVD anthology series, such as the excellent Masters of Horror. The much-celebrated Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke probably wouldn't appreciate having a review of his psychological thriller Funny Games sandwiched between those for genre entries Otis and The Tattooist. He has won and/or been nominated for nine major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and has worked extensively in the European theater. Funny Games U.S. is a word-for-word, scene-for-scene remake of his 1997 German-language psycho-thriller of the same name. In it, two creepy young men in tennis whites take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation home and force them to play sadistic games with one another for their own amusement. Haneke is a master at instilling fear, bordering on hysteria in his helpless characters, and, until the interjection of two Brechtian devices, the audience also is incapable of diverting its attention from the horror transpiring on the screen. And that seems to be Haneke's point: viewers have become so anesthetized to fictional violence that they might not be able to recognize the real thing when they see it. In fact, though, most fans of horror and slasher movies have no trouble separating cinematic violence from real violence. Otherwise, our streets would be dyed crimson with the blood of innocent victims. The violence in Funny Games - as rendered by pretty boys Michael Pitt and Brady Corbin, and endured by Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Devon Gearhart - easily qualifies as torture-porn, in that only a true perv could find therapeutic value in the transference of sadism from his twisted brain to the characters on screen. And, yet, there's an undeniably devious appeal to proceedings. Wes Craven has pulled off the same thing, with much less apparent effort, while Hitchcock's Rope managed to make its points within the confines of the Production Code. The spine-tingling French home-invasion thriller, Ils (Them), demonstrated why we should fear some of the things that go bump in the night, while last month's The Strangers accentuated the randomness of hideous criminality and victimhood. This isn't to argue against the validity of Funny Games - it's nothing, if not hypnotic - but who in their right mind thought the world needed a verbatim English-language remake of the original? Hadn't anyone learned a lesson from Gus Van Sant's completely redundant remake of Psycho? Every so often a movie that doesn't involve hobbits and rings manages to escape from New Zealand, and, for the most part, they're pretty good. I was expecting The Tattooist to make something thrilling out of the rituals of those Maori, Tahitian and Samoan skin painters who demand something more significant from their art than tramp stamps and barb-wire bracelets. Peter Burger's film starts promisingly enough, at a international gathering of tattoo artists in Singapore. An American tattooist interested in the curative powers of certain symbols finds himself entranced by a beautiful young woman, and makes the mistake of stealing an implement from her tent. He lands a job in Auckland at a friend's parlor, where he foolishly uses the tool to create tattoos whose spiritual powers he can't comprehend. Soon, the symbols begin taking on a life of their own, sprouting inky tentacles and slowly poisoning their hosts, one of whom is the girl from Singapore. Somehow, Burger fails to make anything more of this promising premise than to turn horror into a mystery in which all the clues reveal themselves in the first act. What's left is a wasted opportunity. -- Gary Dretzka

Californication: Season One Evening Shade: Season One Early Edition: The First Season The Big Easy: The Complete First Season Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out Even if the title of Showtime's sexy relationship series was borrowed from a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a bumper-sticker slogan popular in the Pacific Northwest, it still manages to explain what made Californication a hit show. Try as they might, few writers have been able to invent a better Sodom than the one that already exists on the west side of Los Angeles. What ugly people exist there are prohibited from public displays of affection, while the beautiful ones are required to be perpetually on the make or fornicating. Children, the accidental byproducts of unbridled lust, are allowed to exist as so long as they don't infringe on their parents' right to behave as if they were 17 years old. In Californication, David Duchovny plays a narcissistic novelist with one best-seller under his belt and a bad case of writer's block. After enjoying meaningless sex with nearly available supermodel, ingénue and bored housewife in Malibu, he realizes that the only woman he really loves is his ex-wife (Natascha McElhone), who is in the process of getting re-married to a rather decent chap with a horny teenage daughter. The protagonists, too, have a daughter in common: an aspiring goth musician (Madeleine Martin), with deep identity fissures of her own. Toss in an ensemble of supporting characters (played by Evan Handler, Pamela Adlon, Rachel Miner, Madeline Zima) with similarly perverse maladies, and you've got a wonderfully wicked adult entertainment that makes no apologies for their excessively lascivious behavior. Californication makes Sex and the City look like a stroll through Central Park. Evening Shade holds a unique place in American political history, in that it helped change the image of rural Arkansas from one dominated by toothless hillbillies and closeted klansmen to that of a bucolic haven for mildly eccentric rustics and refugees from the urban jungles. Among the writers, producers and directors of the series - and the Atlanta-based Designing Women - were Harry and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, close friends of and advisers to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Because of their success in the sitcom world, the Arkansas-based couple was able to open doors in Hollywood for the Clintons where none previously existed. This turned out to be a mixed blessing for all involved. The show centered around good-ol'-boy Wood Newton (Burt Reynolds), a retired professional football player who returned to his childhood home to coach the local high school team. His easy-going charm was complemented to various degrees by characters played by Marilu Henner, Michael Jeter, Elizabeth Ashley, Ossie Davis, Charles Durning, Hal Halbrook and Ann Wedgeworth, all of whom looked as if they had been working together forever. On Early Edition, a struggling Chicago commodities trader subscribes to a newspaper that actually does manage to deliver tomorrow's news today. The man's dilemma comes in deciding whose advice he should take, that of the devil sitting on his right shoulder or the angel perched on his left. It's the same problem that vexed recipients of a million-dollar check from John Beresford Tipton in The Millionaire. In real life, of course, a commodities trader would immediately turn to the paper's stock tables and make transactions accordingly. I'd forgotten that the series lasted four seasons. It took 10 years before a TV series was spun off Jim McBride's sultry police thriller, The Big Easy, and it had to come to the USA network by way England's ITC. The movie pretty much set the table for the show, which incorporated many of the same characters and settings, and built on its solid musical foundation. Katrina hasn't devastated the city, yet, so the producers had a full retinue of criminal flotsam and jetsam at their disposal for inspiration. Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out continues the legacy of the almighty toy army, focusing on how a ragtag group of Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, make their way to back to Earth from Cybertron to escape the evil Decepticons. The lads have stumbled upon an Allspark device, which, for some reason, is hugely valuable to the future of the metallic species. The Autobots escape to the American Midwest, where they submerge themselves in Lake Eire for 50 years, until they're ready to share their secret. Are those Transformers nuts, or what? Also coming to a TV-to-DVD aisle near you, are Jericho: The Second Season, Dogfights: The Complete Season 2, Dynasty: Season Three, Vol. 1, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries: Set 3, The Vice: The Complete Second Season and Criss Angel: Mindfreak: Best of Seasons 1 and 2. -- Gary Dretzka