As long as there are strip-mall dojos and martial arts fans who wish to see their kick-fantasy shenanigans acted out on celluloid, there will be movies like Ninja, in which a loose revenge-and-defense plot serves as a framework upon which to hang the opportunity for much balletic, foot-to-jaw action.

Naturally, the plot draws upon a certain mythology arc involving ancient samurai. The deadly weapons of the last remaining Koga ninjas, said to hold legendary powers for both good and evil (depending on the souls of the possessors, of course), are entrusted to American ninjutsu student Casey (Scott Adkins), studying in Japan. Tasked by his master to return to New York and protect at all costs the Yoroi Bitsu, an armored chest containing all the weapons, Casey crosses paths with Namiko (Mika Hijii, above left), but soon finds himself the target of skilled Yakuza assassins, including the bitter, power-hungry Masaruka (Tsuyoshi Ihara, above right), who has a past with Namiko’s father. Mayhem ensues, with a couple police officers trailing the carnage, and trying to put together all the investigatory puzzle pieces.

Adkins has an extensive list of action flick credits, including X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Bourne Ultimatum, so his physical skill set isn’t really in question. Unfortunately, he’s no great thespian, though in his defense director Isaac Florentine, working from a script by writers Michael Hurst and Boaz Davidson, shoots the action in an over-edited manner that lends credence to the worst arguments regarding martial arts movies — that they’re basically just lazy stunt reels in which discrete attacks are fended off with overly choreographed neck punches, and swords caught and held up under the armpits of flailing marauders. In the case of Ninja, check and check. It’s ultra-low-budget, yes (which explains the ascetic sets), but the characterizations and dialogue are sub-par, and it’s all rendered artlessly, without any realistic vim and vigor.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Ninja comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, divided into 12 chapters, with a motion-animated main menu. Audio comes by way of English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and stereo 2.0 mixes, and optional English and Spanish subtitles are also included. Apart from a small trailer gallery featuring previews for Lost City Raiders and four other titles, however, there are no supplemental special features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) D (Disc)

What are dreams and why do we have them? No, I’m not talking about adolescent moist ones, or adult, force-conjured reveries involving threesomes with Scarlett Johansson and Kate Beckinsale. I’m talking about the trippy, looped-logic things with melting clocks, set in a country to which you have never traveled, and involving your boss, your mom, a for-some-reason extremely important game of flag football, and that kid from fourth grade that you had all but forgotten about. What gives there?

OK, needless to say there isn’t some neat, pat answer. (Part of it is that you’re probably weird, and another part may be your roommate’s propensity for spiking the guacamole dip with mescaline.) Still, this hour-long Nova title focuses on a group of leading dream researchers as they embark on a variety of
neurological and psychological experiments to investigate the hidden world of
sleep and dreams. It’s interesting, heady stuff, delving deep into the thoughts and brains of a variety
of dreamers. The range of compressed information and sleep-related phenomena here is impressive, from
human narcoleptics and sleepwalking cats to those who can’t seem to dream at all. (Short answer: we all do, whether or not we tend to remember them.) The phenomenon of recurring
nightmares also get some inquiry and investigation (my most notable one of these as a kid involved killer Eskimos trying to disembowel me, which informs my aversion to this day to Inuit door-to-door knives salesmen), as does the subconscious mind’s ability to camouflage but still play out traumas that we try to bury. Fascinating stuff, all the way around.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, What Are Dreams? comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a simple English language stereo track, and no bonus features. To order a copy, phone (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Movie) D (Disc)

I could go the rest of my life without seeing another point-of-view shot, from the floor up, of someone receiving a massage, which is but one of several dozen reasons that Frat Party grates so. A downmarket, wildly unfunny college comedy pitched at foreign market fans of Old School, all those American Pie straight-to-DVD sequels and their countless mouth-breathing derivatives, like Dorm Daze 2, this film serves as hornball rental fodder for those who haven’t yet figured out how to use the Internet to track down pictures of boobs.

When big-man-on-campus Duffy (Randy Wayne, channeling a watered-down Matthew McConaughey) announces he’s going to be marrying Adriana (Caroline D’Amore, a Sorority Row bit player), a debutante heiress to an Italian winery, right after college graduation, he realizes his days of partying may be coming to an end. Of course, he still wants to squeeze in one final frat house kegger the night before his out-of-town wedding, so air-quote hijinks ensue. Among the obstacles along the way are a father-in-law who will stop at nothing to put the kibosh on his daughter marrying a party animal like Duffy; his minion, scheming family friend Stefano (Robert Parks-Valletta); and Duffy’s old girlfriend Kelly (new WWE ringmaster Lauren Mayhew), who wants to reacquaint herself with his jock. Along with tubby buddy Mac (Jareb Dauplaise), Duffy makes a play for fun, and then a scramble to get back in the good graces of Adriana. Will the couple live happily ever after? Will anyone remember what happened the night before? Will anyone care, in the slightest?

Naturally, there’s booze and babes aplenty here (Katerina Mikailenko and Erica Day provide some eye candy, along with the aforementioned masseuse scene, which attempts to spoof the legend of “happy endings” of Asian massage parlors), but Frat Party is a misguided medley of popped collars and bop-gun comedic blanks almost from frame one. Writer-director Robert Bennett never clearly settles on a strong, singular point-of-view, despite the fact that he opens the movie with a bunch of wearyingly on-the-nose direct-address material from Duffy. Large swatches of the rest of the film hinge on half-heartedly sketched scenes with seemingly improvised dialogue (“Even sometimes I even surprise myself!”). The performances are broad and cartoonish, rendering Bennett’s earnest attempts to milk honest feeling regarding Duffy and Adriana’s relationship even more painful to watch. And the requisite tentpole gross-out moments, meanwhile (including an ejaculatory release), do not inspire wide-eyed guffaws, but instead merely tired sighs.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Frat Party comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and fairly imprecise English SDH subtitles. The ample roster of bonus materials is designed to bait high school guys who have yet to ever attend a frat party into renting or purchasing Frat Party. There’s a two-minute tidbit, “How to Throw a Frat Party,” that is virtually indistinguishable from a separate three-minute behind-the-scenes tour segment; both are single-play shrugs. There’s also a three-minute featurette focusing on former adult star turned legit flick bit player Jesse Jane (who, somewhat amusingly, frets over having to learn lines at the last moment from a “new script”) and, yes, a one-minute collection of “slow-motion goodies,” which is as it sounds — most of the movie’s bared bosoms, collected for your viewing enjoyment. The only slightly amusing supplemental extra is a six-minute look at the massage scene, in which a crouching female stagehand mans the artificial semen pump, and Dauplaise gets psyched and into character by repeating over and over, “Will Ferrell would do this, Will Ferrell would do this, Will Ferrell would do this!” There’s also a feature-length audio commentary track from Bennett. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) C (Disc)

After landing a spot on Saturday Night Live in his early 20s, New Jersey-born funnyman Jay Mohr seemed to be tabbed for stardom. As his excellent memoir Gasping for Airtime detailed, though, Mohr was actually struggling with panic attacks and personal uncertainty, which derailed, or at least delayed, the trajectory of his rising star. Flash forward a couple years, and Mohr finally made a name for himself, trading up on a superlative turn as Tom Cruise‘s oily competitor in Jerry Maguire to solid bit parts in such comedic ensembles 200 Cigarettes, Playing By Heart and Go.

Mohr returns to the small screen in Gary Unmarried, a split-family laffer that recently picked up the 2009 People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy. While new, conventional sitcom hits are few and far between in this fractured media landscape, this one has a pedigree that tilts it toward success — Emmy Award-winning producer and director James Burrows. That fact, as well as some able joke-writing and Mohr’s indefatigably sunny, put-upon personality, likely spell hang-around success for Gary Unmarried.

On the heels of his recent divorce, everything seems unfamiliar for painting contractor Gary Brooks (Mohr), a suddenly single dad to 14-year-old son Tom (Ryan Malgarini) and precocious 11-year-old daughter Louise (Kathryn Newton). Trying to navigate his increasingly complex life and share the upbringing of his kids with ex-wife Allison (Paula Marshall), Gary thinks he’s ready to move on with gorgeous new girlfriend Vanessa (Jaime King) when Allison drops a bombshell on him — she’s engaged to theirformer marriage counselor, Dr. Walter Krandall (Ed Begley, Jr., evidencing a fine ability for wringing laughs without words). Angst-ridden shenanigans ensue.

A lot of the narrative set-ups and some of the characterizations are certainly familiar (Gary chafes at dealing with his brainiac, liberal-leaning, old-beyond-her-years daughter, which feels a bit Lisa Simpson-ish at times), but timing and sensible comedic underplaying can go a long way toward mitigating recognizability, and the 20 episodes here exhibit plenty of both, showcasing a series that rounds into form and finds itself after about a half dozen episodes. Mohr’s shtick may be regarded by some as a slightly thinner sort of the same fat-headed yuk-yuk asides that Jim Belushi trades in, but the writing here generally skates a fine line — edgy without being unnecessarily vulgar — and the personalities are pleasant and affable. No harm, no foul, basically; matters are helped, too, by guest stars like Cerina Vincent and Jane Curtain.

Housed in a regular, clear plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Gary Unmarried comes to DVD spread out over three discs, presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional French and Spanish subtitles. A nice slate of never-before-seen bonus features complements the show itself, including a behind-the-scenes visit with executive producer Burrows. “The Chemistry of Comedy” is a fairly straightforward making-of featurette, built around interviews with cast and crew in which they discuss their chemistry and penchant for improvisation. Writer-producer Ric Swartzlander also props Mohr’s ability to punch up a line, while Mohr confesses he likes and feels most at ease with the easy set-’em-up-knock-’em-down rhythms and demands of multi-camera comedy. A bit more specifically canted, and thus interesting, are featurettes centering around Begley, Jr. and Mohr himself, the latter of which tracks him around the set over the course of a single day. There’s also a hefty collection of bloopers and flubbed lines. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Show) B+ (Disc)

Coco Before Chanel tells the story of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who beganher life as a headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary personal journeyovercame her impoverished childhood and defied societal convention to become a legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and becamea timeless symbol of success, freedom and style. The problem, though, is that there’s not an ounce of honest dynamism in this stuffy biopic, and so it plays out on a purely textual level, as a yawning exercise in heritage cinema, with a slight spritz of self-congratulatory, up-with-gender promotion.

Audrey Tautou stars as Coco, who as a designer ahead of her time eschewed corsets and derided the fashionable “meringues” of women’s headwear as akin to “being in a pastry shop.” She journeys from amundane seamstress job to boisterous cabarets to the opulent Frenchcountryside, possessing little more than her unwavering determination,unique style and visionary talent. Her headstrong nature eventually puts her somewhat at odds with her more pragmatic sister Adrienne (Marie Gillain), and also causes complications with a pair of would-be suitors, Etienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde) and Arthur Capel (Alessandro Nivola).

Coco Before Chanel is directed by Anne Fontaine (The Girl From Monaco, In His Hands), from ascreenplay by she and Camille Fontaine, with the collaboration ofDangerous Liaisons scribe Christopher Hampton. It’s based loosely on the book Chanel and Her World: Friends, Fashion and Fame by author Edmonde Charles-Roux, the former editor-in-chief of French Vogue, so there’s plenty of an exhaustive sense of the background fashion detail. The movie was also selected to close the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, which is partially a case of boosterism, to be sure, but also an indication of just how innately nationalistic this story is, despite Chanel’s stature in the fashion world.

Part of the chief problem is evident in the title, which tips the hand of the film’s area of focus. In portraying theformative years of Chanel’s life, only the years Chanel spent discoveringand inventing herself before she became the most famous fashion designer of the 20th century, the movie robs itself of any real, legitimate chance at connecting with audiences for whom her name means nothing — or at least nothing outside of the vague recollection of some perfume ad postcards tumbling out of a magazine at a newsstand. All the accouterments are just so — from a lush score by two-time Academy Award nominee Alexandre Desplat and gauzy yet involving cinematography from Christophe Beaucarne to equally detailed production design work from Olivier Radot and exacting costumes by Catherine Leterrier — yet the screenplay is awfully academic, and formal. There is the sense that Coco uses fashion as an emotional shield, but Fontaine constructs a wall that treats personal desire and professional ambition as separate, discrete things.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Coco Before Chanel comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a static menu screen divided into 28 chapters. An audio commentary track with Fontaine anchors the bonus materials, but a superlative, seven-part, subtitled making-of documentary, running 46 minutes, is like manna from heaven for those who want to soak up all the details surrounding in particular the movie’s sumptuous costumes and production design. A separate 18-minute featurette, subtitled “La Rencontre (The Meeting),” includes chats with Tautou, her director, and her costars; Fontaine places Chanel tied alongside Edith Piaf in the canon of famous Frenchwomen, while Poelvoorde says she made huge contributions to “the well-being of generations of French [females].” Somewhat appropriately for such a fashion-centric title, there’s also an eight-minute featurette which tracks the movie’s red carpet premieres, from Los Angeles to New York and in between. Rounding things out are a gallery of preview trailers for Paris 36, I’ve Loved You So Long, Every Little Step, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and other Sony home video titles. To purchase DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)

FlashForward (one word, that — the two-word spelling must be tied up already, copyrighted as some big screen Flash sequel) is the latest serial drama to try to capture the same lightning in a bottle that Lost did, with its survivalist blend of mythology, sci-fi elements and base-level humanistic drama. No tropic polar bears here (there is a kangaroo, however), but instead there’s a somewhat template-familiar grand, mysterious event, some knowing exploitation of temporal shifts and of course an injection of law-enforcement muscle, the better to make bait a primetime audience looking for something other than (at the time) Jay Leno’s same old shtick. Co-creator David Goyer will shortly be leaving show-running duties, busy on a quiet little project for Warner Bros., it seems. But after an interrupted run, the series returns to ABC on March 18; this DVD release is timed to drum up support for that marketplace reentry.

Based loosely on a novel by Robert Sawyer, FlashForward unfolds in Los Angeles, in the aftermath of a bizarre phenomenon which causes everyone in the world to lose consciousness at exactly the same moment — blacking out for 137 seconds on April 30, 2010, at 1:00 a.m. Eastern time, and glimpsing a series of events from their own future. Naturally, some events are mundane, but positive, others are terrible, and others simply strange and unknowable. Uncertain as to whether the incident was a freak act of nature or something man-made gone wrong, an elite law enforcement team, including FBI agents Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Demetri Noh (John Cho), jumps into investigatory mode, trying to make sense of a security camera surveillance video from the blackout in which a conscious man is seen wandering about. Most of the rest of the world’s population, meanwhile, wrestles with end-time possibilities and more personal dilemmas, including the choice of whether to embrace the fates they’ve seen, or fight to change the future.

The show’s pilot episode is superb, with Goyer getting lots of mileage out of the admittedly cool, breezily seductive premise; it certainly helps that he concretely establishes a world with consequences, as mass casualties resulted from those flying planes, driving cars or performing operations suddenly blacking out, along with those in their care or stead. This tells us the show isn’t going to be some massive, pointless jack-off. But as it unfolds, some of the plot contrivances wear a bit thin relatively quickly, certain portions of the narrative friction seem stock (do we really need to delve into the head-drama of another alcoholic law enforcement officer?), and the dialogue comes off as a bit hokey at times. All 10 episodes of the show’s debut run are included here, and there’s a decent blend of mystery, menace and bear-baiting excitement. It’s the future bends of the road that will determine the final grade for this exercise in genre mash-up, however.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray two-disc case that in turn slots in a glossy cardboard slipcover, FlashForward comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, and its transfer, free of digital artifacting but marked by a bit of grain, is fairly solid, preserving a visual scheme that is heavy on gritty, depressive hues of blue and green. Audio arrives in clear, nicely balanced Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound tracks, with optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Special features consist of a seven-minute look at the special effects work involved in creating the series’ catastrophic leaping-off point; on-set interviews with Goyer and crew members showcase the exacting mix of practical effects and CG elements utilized. Also included are a pair of brief preview featurettes, one narrated by Dominic Monaghan, that tout and tease the rest of the first season. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Show) B- (Disc)

A bittersweet, sensitively told remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s same-named 1991 Italian film, Everybody’s Fine slots in respectably as a fairly straightforwardly commercial drama of familial reconciliation, something for casual fans of About Schmidt and The Bucket List.

Robert De Niro stars as Frank Goode, a blue-collar retiree and recent widower from a small, south-central suburban New York burgh who, in the wake of a sudden rash of visit cancellations by his adult children, embarks on an impromptu road trip to individually reconnect with his four kids. Repeatedly unable to link up with his youngest son Robert, a painter, Frank then cycles through advertising executive Amy (Kate Beckinsale) and her family, orchestral percussionist Robert (Sam Rockwell) and Las Vegas dancer Rosie (Drew Barrymore). As they pass him off and make excuses for being unable to visit, Frank slowly comes to realize there may be significant elements of their lives to which he is not privy.

A straightforward description of the movie’s plot is fairly pedestrian, and there exists the possibility of it slipping into something much more maudlin in the wrong hands. But the material benefits greatly from the elevating direction of adapter Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine), who imbues the film with the rootedness of smart, small details (Frank’s brown Member’s Only jacket and 35mm camera, a wine stocker’s cheery ignorance about product) and winning supporting characters. If the metaphorical subtext is sometimes writ large, one doesn’t hold it against the film too heartily.

Mostly vacuumed free of agitation, De Niro also gets a chance to work in a more purely reactive mode than he has in a long time. There’s a quiet patina of regret to the proceedings, particularly in a notable, reflective conversation with Rosie, and a more mannered dream sequence in which Frank queries his children about their dissembling as he remembers them — as shifty elementary school age kids. The themes of empty nest parental disconnection totally mark this as a boomer-specific story, but Everybody’s Fine is also about the secrets we keep in families — sometimes unwittingly at first, to safeguard delicate or overly fretful loved ones — that then snowball into bigger and bigger deals. That’s a common and emotionally resonant area of focus for many audience members — perhaps too much so.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Everybody’s Fine comes to DVD on a dual-layer disc, presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English and French language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. In addition to a clutch of excised scenes, there’s also a brief featurette look at Paul McCartney’s original song contribution for the movie, “(I Want To) Come Home” (shockingly not Oscar-nominated), as well as a gallery of trailers upon start-up. One doesn’t rent or purchase a DVD expecting insights from De Niro, really, but something more with Jones would have been a nice inclusion. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C (Disc)

Another iteration of the Robin Hood story lurks on the summer movie horizon, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott. For those who like a little sci-fi injected with their period piece action, however, there’s the new-to-DVD Syfy Channel movie Beyond Sherwood Forest.

Starring Robin Dunne and Erica Durance, the film touts itself as offering up a story of danger and derring-do, of fantasy and phantasms. Twelfth century England is the backdrop, and the narrative focuses on a fairly typical, broadly defined mixture of heroism and villainy. The Sheriff of Nottingham has unleashed a hideous winged monster, a tortured forest spirit, to destroy the gentle towns and woods of England, massacre outlaw archer Robin’s men and capture his Maid Marian (Durance). The question, then, is whether the so-called Prince of Thieves (Dunne) and his gallant crew can defeat this nasty beast from another world, and save all the nearby innocent men and women.

Directed by Peter DeLuise, Beyond Sherwood Forest features the sort of special effects one would expect from a cable production, and rather clumsily presses the keys and levers of tyranny, black magic and in particular romance — the latter of which plays rather like an ironed-on patch. A capable band of supporting players (including Julian Sands, Katharine Isabelle and David Richmond-Peck) inject some underlined emotion into the proceedings, but the movie’s combination of myth and realism never really coalesces in a meaningful or clever way, or transcends its genre roots; this is basically a piece of clamorous entertainment pitched at fourth- and fifth-graders, and even then it only provides desultory, momentary, diversionary delights.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Beyond Sherwood Forest comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH subtitles. Bonus features include a brief behind-the-scenes featurette and the movie’s theatrical trailer. More talk about the reason for this sort of twist on the age-old story (if any, really) would have been a welcome inclusion. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D (Disc)

For humans, really nothing is more fascinating to us than, well, us. By which I mean vapid celebrities, certainly, but also our own mundane existences. We are all the stars in our own stories (hence the depth of feeling for moments that are ethereal and fleeting, and of no real significance), and even the least among us have at least a vague sense of metaphorical kinship to the sun — a fixed point around which all else rotates.

How did our biology round into shape, though, and how does our collective and individual knowledge (or lack thereof) of that process inform and relate to our relationships with each other, and other animals? NOVA’s engrossing
documentary Becoming Human gets at this nut, bit by bit, exploring how new scientific and geological discoveries are transforming views of
our earliest ancestors. Featuring interviews with renowned scientists,
footage shot as fossils as unearthed and interesting computer-generated
animation, this
meaty nonfiction special brings early hominids to life in a most engaging fashion, examining how
they lived and how we became the creative, adaptable (and self-centered) modern humans
of today.

Comprised of three hour-long sections, writer-director Graham Townsley’s Becoming Human doles out a lot of university-stamped research, certainly — the type of stuff that Sarah Palin would not want to sit and absorb. Pitched somewhere between a general high school-level class and college lecture, this is come-along, heavy-lifting viewing to a certain degree, but not unduly so. If the facts swim together a bit, what will no doubt most connect with viewers are the computerized recreations of hominid life millions of years ago, which do a good job of charting and underscoring individual development as it relates to group social behavior.

Becoming Human‘s first “episode” centers around the amazingly complete fossilized remains of a three-million-year-old female — nicknamed Selam, but also frequently known as “Lucy’s baby” — packed with clues as to why we split from the apes, came down from the trees and started walking upright. Working forward in time, Townsley looks at what forces led to a great African exodus and why certain ancestral cousins (like a three-foot-tall “hobbit” that never migrated from Indonesia) died out, before eventually, in the final hour, getting into humans’ capacities for survival, competition, invention and artistic expression. No word on where Andy Milonakis fits into all of this, though.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Becoming Human comes to DVD presented crisply and cleanly in widescreen, free of any edge enhancement or artifacting. An English language simple stereo audio track more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus materials. To order a copy of Becoming Human, or other NOVA programs, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here. B (Movie) D+ (Disc)