The original Phantasm, released in 1979, broke new ground in horror filmmaking, instantly marking Libyan-born writer-director Don Coscarelli as one of his generation’s masters of the genre. After two sequels filled with zombies, dwarves and slicing spheres, this wild, gory desert-set flick delivers perhaps the most bizarre installment of Phantasm yet.

For years, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) has waged a gruesome war against humanity, slowly populating the world with his undead legions. To stop the horrifying onslaught, two determined heroes, Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister) hurtle themselves through a gateway in the time/space continuum to unearth a vital clue that may just put an end to the horror. Along with Jody (Bill Thornbury), Mike and Reggie come to understand the terrifying birthright of the Tall Man, as well as the origins of the infamous and lethal sphere. As the Tall Man prepares his final assault with his dark army, the future of the human race hangs in the balance.

“Phans” of this series waited years for this installment, making their wishes known at horror conventions all over the world. And Anchor Bay Entertainment, the leader in cult and classic horror DVDs, does the series proud with its release of the uncut
version of Phantasm IV: Oblivion — reinstating scenes that were deleted prior to its
original 1998 North American theatrical release — as part of its prestigious “Anchor Bay
Collection” banner. Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and boasting both a brand new video transfer and fiery new cover art, the DVD also features
a number of supplemental extras that vastly boost its value when compared to the bare-bones 2001 DVD version. The crown jewel of the set is undeniably a newly recorded
audio commentary track with writer-director Coscarelli, Reggie Bannister and the Tall Man himself, Scrimm; in it, Coscarelli talks some about the genesis of the series and the fact that Roger Avary penned a concluding chapter for the Phantasm series that was prohibitively expensive, leading him to pen this as an alternate, and not mutually exclusive wrap-up. A short retrospective featurette is also provided, built around some never-before-seen production footage. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

As the originator of the beloved Chicken Soup for the Soul
series of books, author and professional speaker Jack Canfield has personally taught millions of individuals his
unique and modernized formulas for success, and The Secret Law of Attraction, a direct-address lecture in front of an engaged, all-walks-of-life audience, gives viewers an enlightening new look at how to achieve happier and healthier personal and professional lives. At a time when uncertainty and unhappiness are bubbling up and threatening to boil over in the world, it’s a welcome, streamlined piece of positive visualization and goal-oriented self-betterment.

An internationally
recognized leader in peak performance strategies, Canfield’s solutions are less rah-rah motivational coaching of uplift than source- and process-based advice. For him, it doesn’t matter if your goal is to be the top sales person in your company, become a leading architect, lose weight, become a better parent, increase confidence and self-esteem, buy your dream home or just make more money — Canfield aims to help you develop a clear, personal plan of action that will shatter stasis and transform your life into exactly what you want it to be.

For more than 30 years, Canfield
has been coaching individuals, entrepreneurs, educators and corporate
leaders to accelerate the achievement of their personal and
professional goals, live their dreams and create more joy in their
life every day. These decades of experience show. Canfield is a solid speaker, and communicates clearly — in concise and understandable language that also manages to avoid cornball platitudes. Peddling affirmation through vision boards and the like, he makes a compelling case for order and clarity of purpose as part of the foundation for happiness. Canfield explains how people without goals get used by people with them, but is also a big believer that if one is merely clear about what they’re pursuing, the how will “show up,” in his words, or reveal itself. Hence his behavioral advice to focus on a “vibrational match,” which is sort of the emotional equivalent of dressing for the job you want instead of the job you have.

There are anecdotes galore here, but the title’s greatest strength lies in Canfield’s pleasant, easygoing manner, which lends him believability as a potential guide to help you get from where you are to where you want to
be. The only time that The Secret Law of Attraction really slips up is in dealing with a question about the issue of bad things (like cancer, and the like) happening to inherently decent people, which Canfield has trouble filtering through his prism of belief that in our lives we attract everything to ourselves. Here, an awful lot of fog gets dispensed, when you just really want him to stop talking and chalk it up to something beyond any human control.

Housed in a regular Amray case, the DVD comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen, and includes as supplemental features a 14-minute audience Q&A with Canfield and an 18-minute “Life Purposes” bonus video in which Canfield talks more about locating and focusing on one’s chief goal in life. To order this, or any DVD or VHS release from WGBH Boston Video, call (800) 949-8670 or click here to visit their web site. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

After a protracted rights hang-up that saw its release delayed more
than a year from its Sundance 2007 bow — until after the recent Rambo sequel — the canted coming-of-age comedy Son of Rambow finally saw release earlier this spring. While it didn’t at all hook on with Stateside audiences in theaters — pulling in only $1.8 million of its $10.1 million cumulative haul — its DVD release gives fans of whimsical coming-of-age tales a chance to rediscover the movie.

Set in small town Great Britain
in the 1980s, the movie centers on floppy-armed, pint-sized, fatherless pre-teen
Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner, above right), who lives with his mother and sister as members of a puritanical
religious sect in which recorded entertainment is strictly forbidden.
When Will sees a pirated copy of First Blood, though, his imagination explodes in sugar-rush fashion.
At first blackmailed by rascally ne’er-do-well Lee Carter (Will
Poulter, above left) into helping him out on a stunt reel, Will
convinces his unlikely new pal, a wrong-side-of-the-tracks troublemaker, that they should make their own action epic. When
disenchanted French exchange student Didier (Jules Sitruk) catches wind
and demands a part in the production, suddenly everyone wants in on Will and Lee Carter’s
film.

Written and directed by Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy), Son of Rambow exudes a handcrafted feel, and is at its best
when seducing us with its
madcap, visually inventive style.
Will and Lee Carter are “types,” though, and their relationship runs a
bit hot-cold; I wished the movie showed more of them actually bickering
and working things out. I was also really intrigued and amused by
Didier, and the notion — introduced in a throwaway bit late in the
movie — that he
was a bit of a poseur, which is to say alien-cool to the Brits, but a
dork to all the rest of the French kids. Jennings unfortunately wastes
the rich comic potential of this premise. Finally, the movie too is
more than a a bit unrealistic with regards to Will’s mother’s sudden slide away from the hermetic existence which they’ve been leading; that just doesn’t pass the smell test. In fact, less is more; Son of Rambow
doesn’t earn or need the tearful scene of familial reconciliation,
centering around the return of a watch belonging to Will’s late father.
This is a extra-familial story, about finding acceptance and
brotherhood outside of conventional structures.

Still, the two lead performances here — one salty, one sweet — give this movie lift. In particular the gangly Milner is unforcedly charming, and physically
sort of a live-action version of Fievel Mouskewitz, from 1986’s An American Tail. Tonally, Son of Rambow has an undeniable pinch of that same comic-tinged nostalgia that makes 1983’s A Christmas Story the de rigueur
holiday viewing for all the alt-cool Christian families out there.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, Son of Rambow comes presented in widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with English and Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks, and optional French, English and Spanish subtitles. Jennings and producing partner Nick Goldsmith anchor a nice audio commentary track, with Milner and Poulter sitting in as well. Two DIY supplemental shorts are also included; the first is a five-minute film that was the winner of a film-sponsored web site contest, the other is Aron, Jennings’ 10-minute 1986 short that was the inspiration for Son of Rambow. Wrapping things up is a great 26-minute making-of featurette, which includes rehearsal footage and laid-back group interview bits, and also showcases the Hammer & Tongs production offices, which consists of two barge boats on Regents Canal. (“Thus we’re an armada,” says Goldsmith, cheekily.) Previews for Shine a Light, Drillbit Taylor and American Teen are also featured. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

The golden age of the Three Stooges continues with this exceptional third
release in Sony’s chronologically ordered collection. These 23 shorts, spanning from 1940-1942, are all
digitally remastered for the highest quality in sight and sound, and
this collection is even more special than its predecessors, as it features an historical
first: Moe Howard playing Hitler, in
1940’s You Nazty Spy! The film marked Howard as the first American to portray the German dictator, and it was for this reason, among others, that the short remained one of his personal favorites from the entire Stooges canon.

I’ve written before about the sort of direct-line connection between base-level slapstick and the the things that first tickle our funny bones,
and few acts embody that synergistic relationship with more commitment,
fervor and longevity than the Three Stooges. To that end, The Three Stooges Collection: Volume Three gathers more slap-happy
hijinks from the lovable Larry, Curly and Moe, in the form of 23 chronologically
arranged, digitally re-mastered short films. This
latest volume follows the success of the first two sets of Stooges film shorts, released over the last 11 months by Sony, and comes in advance of more like-minded releases.

The debut releases covered 1934-36 and 1937-39, respectively, and this set picks up in 1940, with the aforementioned Spy! and Rocking Thru the Rockies kicking things off. Moe is also cast as a vicious dictator in the 1941 “sequel” I’ll Never Heil Again, powered by crackerjack visual gags. A Plumbing We Will Go is touted as being Curly’s favorite, and it’s easy to understand the “wow” factor of something like the brilliant sight gag of a burst of water popping forth from a new
television set just as it’s broadcasting a live report from Niagara
Falls when filtered through the rubric of the still-nascent medium.

A couple of the shorts here — Cuckoo Cavaliers, Dutiful But Dumb — are, comparatively speaking, big-time misfires, dashed-off japes that seem like they were conceived in one morning and shot later the same afternoon, but most are surprisingly smart and satisfying marriages of concept and set piece tomfoolery. While some of the more historically-flavored entries stumble a bit overall (speaking generally, not with respect to only this set), the wildly disparate settings and the license the Stooges take with them often help breathe invigorating life into their routines. Examples of these include the slapstick-perfect “All the World’s a Stooge,” with its well-timed visual gags; “Cactus Makes Perfect,” a desert-set prospecting spoof; and “Boobs in Arms,” in which the Stooges join the Army and run into a fellow they’ve crossed. With merciless wit, a strong sense of satire and of course impeccable timing, the Three Stooges made folks of different generations laugh together and, as this set shows, gave the world
a brave new perspective on the absurdity of evil and the world powers
of the time.

As with the other releases, this third volume comes presented on two discs in slimline cases that are in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover; the unifying color scheme this time is green. The shorts themselves are shot in black-and-white and presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with Dolby digital 1.0 mono audio track. Apart from a small handful of unrelated preview trailers for other Sony releases, there is unfortunately no supplemental material, a fact established by the first two releases in the series.
This cuts two ways; the six-hour-plus running time of the celebrated material — certainly anyone’s chief measuring stick for value — makes for plenty of entertainment, and
its straightforward cataloging is invaluable. Still, and to register the same complaint again, just a brief
talking-head retrospective or two would help contextually root the
material for a lot of younger viewers for whom the term “classic
comedy” perhaps only means Eddie Murphy, circa Raw. To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. A- (Movies) B- (Disc)

An underground, DIY-type horror flick, Home Sick angles to blend the surreal, gore-drenched and terrifying, and it achieves this left-field commingling to middling effect. There’s a lot to admire about the atmosphere and mood created on a shoestring budget, if ultimately Home Sick collapses under the weight of a thin premise and too much forced quirkiness.

Recently, if unhappily, back from Hollywood, Claire (Lindley Evans) submits to a small town homecoming get-together with Robert (Will Akers), Mark (Forrest Pitts), Candice (Nightmare Man‘s Tiffany Shepis) and others. The social awkwardness is back-burnered when a grinning idiot who calls himself “Mr. Suitcase” (Bill Moseley) crashes the party with a briefcase full of razorblades, and starts passive-aggressively forcing the partygoers to identify people they hate, all while slashing his own arms. Soon, a black-hooded supernatural killer is loose, killing each person identified by the teens. The terrified friends realize they may also be viciously murdered because Tim (Matt Lero) awkwardly joked that he hated everyone at the party, too. As the corpses pile up and the body parts fly, the surviving kids enlist the help of Uncle Johnny (Tom Towles, of Grindhouse and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), a crazed, chili-loving militiaman who has a stockpile of weapons that might help them stay alive.

While the slasher-gore quotient is straight out of an early Peter Jackson playbook, writer Evan Katz tries to fold in some of the off-kilter tonal quirks of David Lynch, which mainly seems to mean oddball, stilted dialogue and set-ups which lend themselves to artificially long pauses. As directed by Adam Wingard, though, some of this emphasis on atmospheric tension gets traded in for excessively bloody effects, which admittedly are fairly nicely rendered, except for too-red blood. The acting on display here runs the gamut, too. Moseley (Rob Zombie’s Halloween, The Devil’s Rejects) has a certain unhinged, manic energy, and his brief appearance is jolting and effective. Evans, in her debut, is also fairly engaging. Unfortunately, other actors seem to be very consciously channeling better known performers (Steve Buscemi is an influence), which gets irksome after a while. While we’re nitpicking, there’s a lot of willfully pallid, over-exagerrated eye make-up, too — a couple actors look like zombies pulling exam season all-nighters.

Attractively packaged in a regular Amray case with gold foil title lettering, Home Sick is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo surround audio track. Director Wingard and writer Katz, longtime collaborators, sit for a nervous, chatty audio commentary track, and a menu screen with a background full of razor blades gives way to a slate of special features that include a deleted opening sequence and a trio of short film projects from the aforementioned pair — the seven-minute 1,000 Year Sleep, the 32-minute The Girlfriend and the three-minute Laura Panic, a nice, evocatively photographed mood piece in which a girl muses, via voiceover narration, that her murder of her boyfriend is but a “bump in the road” in their relationship.

There’s also an affected, experimental, very slickly (over-)produced 13-minute making-of featurette, starring Wingard, in which the director hyperactively recounts and acts out certain anecdotes from pre-production and production. Finally, Moseley sits for a six-minute interview in which he rather charmingly cops to the insecurities of an actor when, just prior to filming, a (supposed) friend asks him while running some lines if he’s going to give a performance based on such clichés. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. For further information on Home Sick, as well as other Synapse titles, visit their website by clicking here. C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Watching Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert 3-D, and looking into the faces of thousands of screaming pre-teens, I feel a strange kinship with the citizenry of sacked civilizations throughout time and the world. Seeing something at once so foreign to your being and day-to-day existence, and so full of force, vigor and furious noise — oh, the noise! — is partly how I imagine the Romans felt in 410, when the Visigoths came a-knockin’.

I don’t necessarily want to give the impression that Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds, a nice, three-dimensional concert film stunt spun off from a road tour from the hit Disney Channel series that stars the daughter of former mulleted, “Achy Breaky Heart” country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus, is bad, per se. Or that it will rape, pillage and plunder. It’s actually quite impressive. It’s just that it’s also such a fiercely indefatigable, in-your-face thing that it kind of takes one’s breath away.

Well staged by director Bruce Hendricks, the briskly paced concert features Cyrus belting out a bunch of tunes, and frequently waving her arm in triumphant declaration. I’m not super-familiar with her as a performer, but Cyrus certainly knows how to pull all the strings of an audience. She throws in plenty of friendly winks and waves to all the kids, works both sides of the stage, and, from the outset, says “I just have one rule — no sitting down!” Cue approving tween shrieks.

Performing for the first time ever as her pop star alter ego, Hannah Montana, Cyrus kicks off the show in high-energy fashion with “Rock Star,” and the production continues to pulls out all the stops, with solid sets, production design and dancing choreographed by Kenny Ortega, of the High School Musical franchise. There’s lots of colorful, cute, accessorized outfits that are a bit glammed-up (like this one), but not too slutty, a la Britney Spears’ cringe-inducing cock-tease years. Segueing into her own persona, Cyrus lets loose with “Start All Over,” the Jonas brothers also come out for a few tunes — “We Got the Party With Us” and “Year 3,000.” Little anecdotal behind-the-scenes bits and crowd interviews from the road tour are also interspersed throughout.

A to-scale smash at the box office this February, where it opened to over $30 million and went on to gross $65 million domestically, this is sunny, feel-good family entertainment… basically a Twinkie. But adults often forget that most tweens and teenagers have the metabolism to handle such artificially processed sugary delights, and in massive quantities too. Ergo, no harm, no foul — for its base constituency, at least. Others may be rightfully a bit bewildered.

The DVD benefits from superlative packaging and message control, too. Spread out on two discs — one of which contains the movie in regular form, and the other of which features the concert in 3-D, which can be enjoyed with the four pairs of 3-D glasses that accompany the release — the DVD is housed in a regular Amray case with a snap-in tray, and it comes with sturdy cardboard, holographic slipcover that, well, underscores the title, showing Cyrus in both brunette and blonde, in-character form.

A solid slate of bonus features includes a sing-along mode, additional songs not seen in the theatrical cut of the concert film (“Good and Broken,” “SOS”), and an 11-minute personal backstage tour from the very personable Cyrus that gives viewers a look at her costume-change area and the trap door she uses to pop up on the stage. I place the over/under on the number of times Cyrus playfully sticks out her tongue somewhere in the mid-40s, but she still seems a pretty grounded, friendly, reasonably normal young woman in her interview tidbits. The best chats come from supporting players and audience members. “It’s like standing behind a jet engine when it revs up, actually worse” says a sound tech of when Cyrus first appears on stage. Then there’s a weary, bewigged father, standing between his two beaming girls, decked out in Hannah Montana merchandise: “You know, I didn’t expect so much screaming.” You’re telling me! To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Based on the novel by Sarah Waters, Affinity is a tale of power and possession set in the late 19th century — part gothic-tinged doomed romance, part supernatural mystery. For forgiving fans of sapphic-flavored period pieces (perhaps that most niche of niche sub-genres), this film will undeniably delight, but others most have trouble with its disjointed pacing.

The film unfolds in Great Britain in the 1870s, where a London socialite, Margaret Prior (Anna Madeley, an ethereal beauty), finds escape and
purpose in a world in which she is not able to be with her lover, Helen (Ferelith Young), by becoming a mentor who brings hope and comfort to the female inmates
at Millbank Prison. It’s there that Margaret, thwarting the advances of Theophilus (Vincent Leclerc), becomes infatuated with Selina Dawes
(Zoe Tapper), a medium who was incarcerated after a séance gone horribly awry. As the story unfolds, Margaret, who is at first
skeptical of Selina’s gifts, soon discovers a world of secrets and
shadows, heightened passions, and the allure of the supernatural.

The melodramatic plottings here are fairly familiar, but, as with a lot of modestly budgeted, flip-side Victorian tales, there’s a certain indulgence one must embrace — namely a concession for all the dialogue that tells us how things are, rather than showing us. That, and the purely utilitarian nature of many of its supporting characters, mark Affinity as fairly predictable, mood-dipped entertainment. On the other hand, its solid acting and production value help elevate the material, so one certainly doesn’t grow too weary of watching.

Though the movie just recently premiered on the Logo cable channel, this DVD bills itself as featuring an extended version
of the Victorian-era suspense thriller. Housed in a regular Amray case, the DVD is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo track. Bonus features consist of a brief making-of featurette, a single deleted scene and candid one-on-one interviews with
award-winning novelist Waters (Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith) as well as Madeley, Tapper and the movie’s screenwriter, Andrew Bate. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B (Disc)