Alvin, Simon and Theodore deal with the pressures of high school and fluctuations in popularity in this modest, agreeably family-friendly upgrade over the singing-and-dancing chipmunks’ muddled franchise debut. Featuring CGI critters who interact raucously with their live-action human custodians, this movie, akin to bouncy family adventures like the Stuart Little and Garfield franchises before it, heartily aims itself at and mostly successfully connects with a pre-teen demographic.

After Alvin’s overly demonstrative onstage antics land Dave Seville (Jason Lee) in a Parisian hospital, his videogame junkie cousin Toby (Zachary Levi) becomes the chipmunks’ bumbling, reluctant caretaker. Despite the fact that they’re pop music sensations, it is decided that the creatures should go to school. Toby enrolls them at his alma mater, where their principal, Dr. Rubin (Wendie Malick), nurses a peppy crush on them, even as their popularity is threatened by a group of jock bullies.

A trio of female chipmunks looking to become singers airmail themselves to the chipmunks’ disgraced former agent, Ian Hawke (David Cross), meanwhile. Sensing a way to get back into the music industry and strike back at his former charges all at once, Ian misrepresents himself to Brittany, Eleanor and Jeanette — who perfectly mirror Alvin and his fraternal counterparts, one being brash, one brainy, one short and chubby — and stokes their competitive instincts.

It’s hard to swallow some of the narrative plot points here, like the fact that hugely popular entertainers — which the chipmunks are supposed to be — could be instantaneously humbled by a couple doofus teenagers. Small swatches of dialogue, too (most notably including pointlessly empty movie references by Alvin to Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs), come across as awkward attempts at hipster posturing. Forgetting for a moment how he would even know about them, would Alvin be saying these things because he thought they were funny? And would modern teens even find them at all amusing?

The chief difference between this movie and its predecessor is the former’s unfussy confidence, though. Whereas the first film was full of pat set-ups and unimaginative staging, director Betty Thomas provides the brightly colored sequel with more zip and focus. Chase sequences or other action scenes are shorter, and more tightly choreographed. She’s aided, too, by a story that takes aim at low-hanging fruit. Pared down and mostly stripped free of clumsy attempts at exposition and emotional string-pulling, this sequel presents a story with a simple end point: a $25,000 competition to save a high school’s music program, and possibly restore the chipmunks’ luster. While it’s laughably simplistic, it also helps keep the movie on track.

Lee, the star of the first film, pops up only intermittently, and mostly via telephone calls. Levi gives a broad performance, proving an ineffectual replacement in an admittedly underwritten role. Cross’ repeat turn as the smarmy, manically self-involved Ian is a real treat, though; his chatterbox conniving, as much as any of the effects work, informs the necessary suspension of disbelief this conceit requires. Even kids, after all, want an entertaining villain to root against.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and French and Spanish Dolby digital 2.0 stereo tracks, the latter two of which probably provide much amusement when one is high. Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles are also included. Supplemental bonus features consist of a wide variety of behind-the-scenes material, including featurettes and music videos. There’s a 10-minute segment with self-promoting producer Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., whose namesake father created the Chipmunks, that gets into the history of the critters, from their 1968 song debut to an eventual animated primetime TV show. Voice talent Amy Poehler, Anna Faris and Christina Applegate sit for an eight-minute segment on the Chipettes, with producer Janice Karman providing backstory on her 1982 creation of the frisky female counterparts to the Chipmunks.

Nine minute of behind-the-scenes material finds cast members taking part in wearying, in-character interviews, in which they discuss what it’s like working with Alvin, Simon and Theodore, etcetera. This is immediately undercut, of course, by two three-minute tidbits — actually among the most interesting extra material — which get into the animation and interplay of CGI and live-action elements. Animation supervisor Chris Bailey, along with a couple propmasters, provide an overview of how the filmmakers plan and capture a “reference pass,” while a separate segment introduces the “stuffies,” or stuffed versions of chipmunks (often mounted on sticks) that the production uses to help gives actors a reference point for dialogue and reaction. Needless to say, this includes some amusing footage, particularly as it relates to a football scene.

Seven minutes of performance footage from the movie’s opening sequence, featuring Honor Society, is counterbalanced by nine minutes, billed as “music mania,” that focuses on the blowout finale, and includes the cast and producers’ thoughts on the musical segment. On the music video front, there are optional-sing-along versions of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” “We Are Family” and “Shake Your Groove Thing,” though the latter is prefaced with a disgusting belchy intro by Alvin. There are also versions of “You Really Got Me,” by Honor Society, and “The Song,” by Queensberry. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)

“I can still kick ass,” says Dolph Lundgren at the end of Command Performance, a big, dumb, sort of affably block-headed throwback to ’80s-style knuckledusters in which he plays a rock ‘n’ roll drummer caught up in a nasty hostage situation with some terrorists. With the much talked-about The Expendables looming on the horizon for Lundgren later next month — another action entry from resurgent multi-hyphenate Sylvester Stallone, co-starring Jet Li, Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke, among others — this mid-grade straight-to-video programmer is a reminder of the sort of meat-and-potatoes entertainment that Lundgren and fellow down-market action star Jean-Claude Van Damme served up so consistently more than two decades ago.

Lundgren plays Joe, a drummer and a former member of a biker gang. He and his band are about to make it big as the Moscow opening act for Venus (Melissa Ann Smith), America’s hottest pop star. Impending glory quickly turn into chaos, however, as an armed gang of political fanatics storm the arena, capturing the pop star and her even more important guests of honor — Russian President Dmitri Petrov (Hristo Shopov) and his two teenage daughters. With the death toll rising and the hostages’ lives on the line, it’s up to one non-plumbing Joe to come to their rescue and save the day.

Directed by Lundgren, and co-written with Steve Latshaw, Command Performance doesn’t boast the most stellar production design, nor does its execution leave one thunderstruck. Does it tick the boxes, though? Does Lundgren get to stab a guy in the head, you might wonder? Yes, yes he does. But what about play a riff on an electric guitar, and then smash the bejesus out of another baddie with said instrument? Why yes, he gets to do that too. Command Performance is a rather appropriate title for this flick, as it is the definition of playing to one’s base. The conflict is generic, and much of its dialogue purely functional, but there’s a streamlined, unfussy uniformity of purpose that, on a certain level, one has to appreciate. Well, if they happen to like copious amounts of emptied automatic weapon clips and springboard-powered stuntmen flying 10 feet up into air.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Command Performance comes to DVD divided into a dozen chapters, presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio mixes, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Although the back cover touts an interview with Lundgren and and behind-the-scenes fight footage, there are actually no supplemental features, save complementary red-band and all-ages trailers for the movie, along with a trio of other First Look previews. Big thumbs down on the bait-and-switch, First Look. Still, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D- (Disc)

It seems hard to believe that there exists a movie with Jason Mewes, Scottie Pippen, Gary Coleman and Ron Jeremy, but that’s just what competitive mockumentary Midgets vs. Mascots is. Self-billed as a cross between Jackass and Borat, director Ron Carlson’s movie pits five little people against five costumed mascots, battling for a $1 million payday in more than two dozen competitions, like drinking a gallon milk the fastest, alligator wrestling and seeing how few insults it takes to get punched in a bar.

And yes, as it sounds, Midgets vs. Mascots is pretty much an undiluted raunch-and-yuk-fest, designed to strike the basest chords of huh-huh amusement with the 18-34-year-old male demographic at which the film is… well, pitched is perhaps too active a word. Lobbed, let’s say. Or for whom the movie is set on a tee? In fact, accompanying press release material touts that in test screenings, the Midgets vs. Mascots‘ scores came back “20 percent higher than the average studio comedy,” and in head-to-head comparative testing it also bested what were deemed seven of 10 “relevant comedies,” including Jackass, Reno 911, Napoleon Dynamite, Bad Santa, Pineapple Express, Clerks and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. Not sure about how that air-quote science necessarily holds up in real-world conditions, but with unsuspecting bystanders providing realistically baffled reactions when the contestants crash small-fry restaurants, bars and suburban neighborhoods during outrageous
competitions, this guerilla-style title is likely to at least find welcome reception amongst inebriated frat house party audiences, which I suppose says something about fulfilling its reason for being.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Midgets vs. Mascots comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Bonus materials include a clutch of deleted scenes, character featurettes and previews for other First Look Studios straight-to-video titles. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Like fellow Tegn import In the Sign of the Virgin, 1974’s In the Sign of the Taurus blends good-natured, silicone-free sexuality with a rib-nudging story that puts moral hypocrisy in its cross hairs and amusingly advocates for personal freedom, sexual and otherwise. Written and directed by Werner Hedman, the film tells the tale of a small Danish town whose way of life is apparently sustained by the lavish tax payments of single benefactor. When he dies, it’s revealed that his will stipulates in order for the town to receive the bulk of his estate, a child must be born out of wedlock in, yes, the sign of Taurus. Both debauchery and political talking out of the sides of one’s mouth ensue.

A whole slate of these astrologically-tinged films were produced in Denmark in the 1970s, and while they don’t overwhelm with originality of plotting (they basically all offer up noodling variations on the issue of sexual repression versus a healthy embrace of libidinal pleasure), their production value, ribald energy and airy sense of streamlined purpose go a long way toward making them enjoyable genre entries, easy to be appreciated for what they are. While it’s true there is a pinch of hardcore action (far less than even 20 or 30 seconds worth, I’d say), this film and the rest of its brethren are softcore skin flicks at heart — goofy, grounded movies where the narrative actually drives all the sexual acting out.

And, like other entrants in the series, In the Sign of the Taurus puts its strength in its female characters, here most embodied in the form of brothel owner Carola (Lone Helmer), who expresses no small amount of bemusement at seeing her burgh’s moral beacons, with whom she’s already very familiar, tripping over themselves to “take one for the town.” Anne Bie Warburg, Kate Mundt, Bent Warburg and Ole Soltoft also appear.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a sapphic, screen-captured cover that certainly (if less than crisply) sells the salacious nature of the material, In the Sign of the Taurus comes to DVD on a region-free disc in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a native language Dolby digital soundtrack, removable English subtitles, and an animated top menu screen with additionally animated dozen chapter selections. The video transfer is remarkably free from grain, other debris, or any edge enhancement, but there are of course some minor issues with color consistency; while flesh tones look healthy and the focus details are solid, saturation tends to ebb and flow a bit. The only bonus feature, alas, is a two-and-a-half-minute image gallery slide show of stills from the movie — some of which are behind-the-scenes material, but most of which are not. If the effort were made, one would think some of the players would be available and interested in talking for some sort of retrospective overview. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

I couldn’t sleep a couple nights ago, so I dug up a screener from the gi-normous “pleasure pile” instead of something more pressing, and fired up Late Night Shopping, an entirely enjoyable British import of chatty twentysomething angst from 2001. Good call, it was; product fit mood nicely.

Directed by Saul Metzstein, from a script by Jack Lothian, the film self-identifies on its cover box as “in the tradition of Slackers [sic] and Swingers,” which is a bit misleading. It’s loose-limbed, character-focused and dialogue-driven, sure, but also much more conventionally structured than the former film, from Richard Linklater. Its story centers around a quartet of loose, vagabond acquaintances drawn together by their night-shift occupations and sardonic dispositions. Phone bank operator Lenny (Enzo Cilenti) is haunted by a past spent penning steamy letters for a Penthouse Forum-type magazine, which has rendered him unable to connect to women, including the gal in his office on whom he has his eye. Consummate ladies man Vincent (James Lance) is on the prowl for anything with a vagina, and operates on a strict, three-encounters-only policy of rationed coitus. The gal of the bunch, acerbic Jody (Kate Ashfield), hates her techo-manufacturing job most of all. Hospital orderly Sean (Luke de Woolfson), meanwhile, is uncertain whether a fight with his live-in girlfriend, Madeline (Heike Makatsch), has dissolved their relationship for good; since their schedules don’t align, he’s been examining the soap and sheets in an attempt to see if she’s still around.

Late Night Shopping grades out quite high on dialogue and character relatability, so the utter contrivance of a third act seaside escape/road trip — which pulls the movie out of its interesting, pop-gloomy twilight world — is only moderately irksome, all things considered. It’s meant to give the movie a rear-end slap of downhill momentum, this injected aspect of romantic “questing,” but in reality its shopworn conventionality bleeds the movie of a good bit of its rough-around-the-edges charm. Still, of special note is Lance’s performance — he gives good lothario, making Vincent both scummy and funny, thoughtful and thoughtless all at once.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Late Night Shopping comes presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. In addition to liner notes by British film critic Jason Solomons and a feature-length audio commentary track with writer Lothian and director Metzstein, there’s the movie’s theatrical trailer, a single deleted scene and a couple of featurettes in which Lance and Cilenti showcase two respective bits of sleight-of-hand that their characters employ. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)

The DVD cover, with a fanged, bulbous-nosed ghoul (evoking either memories of Stephen King’s It or perhaps former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, depending on how you passed your time in the 1980s) superimposed over a rickety mansion, doesn’t necessarily do wonders for one’s expectations regarding low-budget horror flick House of Fears. And the inferred shortcomings come to fruition, don’t you know, unfolding almost in lockstep with a familiar trapped-kids-being-tormented-by-their-fears plot that sadly does not feature the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

After a brief framing preamble, House of Fears unfolds in present day Salem,
Oregon, where a group of friends ditch a party and head over to a
haunted house the night before it opens for the Halloween season,
sneaking in for a fun night of scaring their dates. There’s Hailey (Sandra McCoy) and the guy she’s crushing on, Carter (Corey Sevier), as well as the former’s tag-along stepsister, Samantha (Corri English). And there’s Candice (Alice Greczyn, the randy Amish babe from Sex Drive), who invites along her ex-boyfriend Devon (Michael Pagan), much to the consternation of Zane (Eliot Benjamin), the group’s inside hook-up to the venue.

The set-up of the house involves passing through various levels of “fear.” Soon upon entering, however, the sextet find themselves trapped, with no way to exit. Their planned evening of fun devolves into a nightmare, as they lose their guide Zane and begin to disappear and die in a variety of freakish ways. With every avenue of escape blocked, and it becoming increasingly difficult to discern what’s real and what’s perhaps fake, the dwindling survivors must try to trust one another and negotiate a path out.

There’s a little bit of pop to some of the dialogue early on (“My insurance doesn’t cover hormones,” Hailey’s protective dad spits when he catches her trying to sneak out), but it’s almost immediately too great of a hurdle and suspension of disbelief for McCoy (now 30, though younger when it was shot) and many of her costars to pass as teenagers, and the party-hearty set-up and kids-acclimating-themselves-to-the-house material that precedes the not-terribly-gory bloodletting is all nondescript filler. Working from a script by Steven Lee and John Lyde, director Ryan Little (who also shot the movie himself) leans heavily on overly familiar gimmicks (in-camera flash cuts, close-ups to mask a lack of set dressing) that rob the film of tension. And, as mentioned, House of Fears isn’t a buckets-of-blood-type movie. Hardcore horror aficionados won’t spark to the gore, of which there is very little; there aren’t enough genuine thrills, meanwhile, for the sort of teen audiences who are less wedded to the genre, and just like to be emotionally goosed by movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Grudge. The movie essentially plays like an average Scooby-Doo episode if made by a guy who’d seen some early, low-rent Tobe Hooper flicks.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, House of Fears comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a motion-animated menu screen, and an English language 2.0 stereo audio track. Divided into 14 chapters, its air-quote special features consist only of a photo gallery montage which intercuts between film stills and behind-the-scenes pictures, as well as the movie’s preview trailer. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Following Iran’s disputed presidential election this past summer, Neda Soltani was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran — an awful incident captured on a 90-second cell phone camera video that ripped across the blogosphere over the next 24 hours. In an instant, she became the face of a powerful protest movement that threatened President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the hard-line theocratic government’s hold on power. While the revolution unfolded on Twitter and the Internet, and a fuller portrait of the young woman came into focus relatively quickly, in Polaroid-like fashion, it’s still worth revisiting her story — especially for those not plugged into the sort of exhaustive coverage that Andrew Sullivan and other writers labored to provide in real time.

In affecting fashion, this short-form title, part of PBS’ Frontline investigative series, explores the death of Soltani, and in doing so also delves into a number of broader, unanswered questions in the aftermath of the greatest upheaval in Iran since the 1979 revolution. While giving ample voice to one of Soltani’s best friends, Delbar Tavakoli, as well as former prime minister Mohsen Sazegara — no fan of Ahmadinejad — A Death in Tehran isn’t merely subjective, some exercise in liberal grief mop-up. A columnist for an Iranian paper that supports the current government provides editorial balance to Christian Science Monitor‘s Scott Peterson and others, who talk about an interesting rumor that sprouted up just before June’s voting — about two million pens with disappearing ink being imported, to help vanish the votes for challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

By far the most engrossing material, however, concentrates more directly on Soltani; there’s a phone interview with her Turkish boyfriend, prior to his arrest on trumped-up charges of somehow having had something to do with her shooting, and a sit-down chat with the doctor (who has since fled the country) who tried to save her life. The picture that emerges is of a simple young woman, hardly radicalized, who merely wanted better things for her country — more transparency, and openness to the rest of the world. While 11 protester deaths were ultimately confirmed by the Iranian government (hospital records indicate at least three times that amount, with dozens of others missing, and said to have been “disappeared”), the saddest specter looms in the movie’s final moments, when Soltani’s art instructor — in whose arms she expired — is forced to recant on state television her shooting at the hands of rogue security forces. An evenhanded contradiction of Iran’s official narrative, this title provides evidence to the contrary. It’s a shame those responsible do not have to answer for their crimes.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, A Death in Tehran, originally broadcast on television in November of last year, comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a simple English stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. There are unfortunately no related supplemental bonus features, though a 15-minute Frontline segment from Uganda, highlighting the challenges facing the world’s largest population of mountain gorillas, rounds out the hour-long title. It’s a weird fit with the Iranian material, no doubt, but certainly not uninteresting. To purchase A Death in Tehran or any other PBS Frontline title, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to instead purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Fifteen years ago, Val Kilmer was Batman, and costarred in Michael Mann’s Heat, one of the decade’s top crime dramas. This is worth pointing out because of the nature of work that Kilmer is now doing, which seems to consist solely of supporting roles and bit parts in films for somewhat wonked-out directors (Oliver Stone, Tony Scott, Werner Herzog), and lead roles in fairly undemanding dramas and thrillers — movies that as often as not seem to be cobbled together as some sort of tax shelter for Eastern European businessmen. (I didn’t see his turn as Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Musical, alas.) Decidedly of the latter category, Double Identity has an utterly anonymous title that can’t hold a candle to the strange name of its director (that would be Dennis Dimster-Denk). It also, somewhat unsurprisingly, has a rather silly plot and haphazard execution.

Kilmer stars as Dr. Nicholas Pinter, a physician working for Doctors Beyond Borders who is mistakenly identified as a secret agent by the Russian mafia. After a brush with death and a violent pursuit by a couple of ham-headed thugs, Nicholas is rescued by the British Secret Service and the mysterious and beautiful Katrine (Izabella Miko). The requisite “deadly web of murder of lies” ensues, don’tcha know.

Working from a screenplay co-written by Dimster-Denk and Zvia Dimbort (never thought I’d type that combination), Double Identity (original title… Fake Identity!) unfolds as a sort of wearyingly unselfconscious cross between your standard late-’80s-era straight-to-video actioner (goateed henchmen unloading clips from automatic weapons, while occasionally making accidental eye contact with camera) and a bloated version of NBC’s Chuck. Dimster-Denk doesn’t seem to have much experience filming and cutting together action, and his editing choices only underline the somewhat threadbare production value. Kilmer, meanwhile, floats through this thing pretty much on autopilot; if one was expecting a fascinatingly bewildered and panicky iteration of Gay Perry or, I don’t know, Doc Holliday, this isn’t it. He isn’t particularly believable as either a doctor or someone coming to terms with the crazy new circumstances into which he is thrust.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Double Identity comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of preview trailers for other First Look home video releases, there are unfortunately no supplemental extras — not even a small clutch of EPK-style on-set interviews, or a chat with Dimster-Denk about how the hell he got that name. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D- (Disc)

Melissa George had but a small role in Mulholland Dr., but David Lynch’s lauded film shares a certain tangentially related, woozy mind-fuck quality with Triangle, a doom-loop genre nightmare which finds a woman fighting for both her sanity and life aboard a mysterious ocean liner.

George stars as Jess, a waitress and the single mother of an autistic little boy. When Jess accepts a sailing invitation on the boat of a friendly customer, Greg (Michael Dorman), along with a group of his friends, she can’t quite shake the feeling that something is wrong. Her suspicions are realized when the yacht encounters a sudden, raging storm near the Bermuda Triangle, and the entire group — which includes Sally (Rachel Carpani) and her husband Downey (Henry Nixon), their tag-alonggal pal Heather (Emma Lung), and Victor (Liam Hemsworth) — is forced to board a passing ocean liner, the Aeolus, in an effort to secure safety.

At first glance the new ship appears deserted, but Jess is convinced she’s been on board before, even though no one believes her. They soon realize they’re not alone, however, as a masked figure starts hunting them down, one by one. Jess survives and comes face to face with this apparent killer, only to confront a grander mystery that puts her back near the midpoint of her very unpleasant day. Will she be able save others on the ship, or even herself?

The movie’s Bermuda Triangle angle is fortunately just a throwaway bit of packaging — a sop to marketers. There’s not a lot of investment in the mythology of the area, in other words. Instead, Triangle is essentially a robust genre exercise studded with identity-crisis issues. I really give away very little when I say that the film toys with perceptions of reality, presenting events that may be manifestly “true” alongside things that may exist inside the mind of one or more characters. For a thriller, it’s a conceit which reaches a bit of a natural point of diminishing (or at least deflating) return when it dips back into the well in its second and third acts, replaying portions of its action from a different perspective. George’s involvement and performance, though, help mitigate this slack; she’s engaging, and eminently watchable.

The execution here, though, is what mainly gives this movie a kick in the pants. Writer-director Christopher Smith (Severance) showcases superb editorial instincts, and Triangle is engagingly photographed to boot. Lesser versions of this story would have dawdled on gore, or amped up the bickering and character histrionics, in naked attempts to inject drama, but Smith seems to have a smart sense of how to feed the action beast while also allowing for a few slower moments of confusion and dread to play out. This keeps one involved in the story, leaning forward a bit in their seat. Triangle stumbles a bit in the end; its ending doesn’t completely come together, and while that’s no grand sin considering what Smith is reaching for, the movie seems to be both willfully ambiguous while also reaching back for a knockout haymaker that exceeds its grasp. Still, there’s moderate, to-scale enjoyment to be had here, especially by thriller fans who enjoy a good puzzler more than affected shock.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcase with a lenticular cover that differs from the main case’s photo art, Triangle comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, divided into a dozen chapters, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of preview trailers, there is no supplemental bonus material, save a six-minute featurette which choppily cuts together interview material from writer-director Smith — who recounts the genesis of the project, sparked in on-the-fly fashion from spotting an ocean liner while at Cannes pitching another project — producer Jason Newmark, George, and the rest of the cast. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C (Disc)

In 1974, some of the most celebrated American R&B acts of the day came together with a collection of the most renowned musical groups in Africa for a three-day outdoor concert held in Kinshasa, Zaire. A longtime dream of South African bandleader Hugh Masekela and concert promoter and record producer Stewart Levine, the finally festival became a reality when they convinced boxing promoter Don King to try to combine the event with “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the epic boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, previously chronicled in the 1997 Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings. It would eventually be cleaved from the fight itself, but the show, dubbed “Zaire ’74,” brought together musical luminaries such as James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers and Celia Cruz, among a host of others. At the peak of their talents and the height of their careers, these artists were inspired by a return to their African roots, as well as the enthusiasm of the Zairian audience, to give some of the best performances of their lives.

A mess of captured material from this event is what forms Soul Power, an aurally engaging but sort of intellectually halfhearted concert
documentary that presupposes its audience agrees with the innate genius
and watchability of its unvarnished footage. Soul Power is a gift
to boomer-generation R&B fans, as well as a celebratory snapshot of
an era in which artists and entertainers were if not radical agents of
social change then at least more frequently and decidedly part of the
outside world around them — a world experiencing and grappling with
genuine upheavals in social justice and gender equality. But director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte never imposes some sort of overarching
voiceover narration or interwoven present-day reminiscences from either
participating artists or concertgoers, so Soul Power
never achieves significant standalone form. The
fitful, fleeting nature of its emotional connection serves as a reminder
that the choice of compelling subject matter alone does not necessarily
make for a good nonfiction film offering.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Soul Power comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional French subtitles. Supplemental features include an audio commentary track with Levy-Hinte and aforementioned producer Stewart Levine, as well as a clutch of deleted scenes. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

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)

An intimately scaled, well acted little frontier drama based on a true story, The Donner Party examines one of the more oft-cited history book anecdotes of the great American spread to the west from the 1840s. Ignoring some of the limits of its own production means, and the fact that its three stars (Crispin Glover, Christian Kane and Clayne Crawford) taken in sum represent a righteous tongue-twister, the movie is a solid, crisply shot and engaging period piece morality play — ready-made for high school classroom viewing and subsequent discussion about group-benefit analysis in grim life-and-death situations.

In April of 1846, a group of settlers left Independence, Missouri, heading west to California in nine covered wagons. On the insistent advice of their leader, William Hastings, they tried a new route through the Sierra Nevada mountains, which they hoped would offer shorter passage to Sutter Fort. Whoops… not so much. The film picks up in December of the same year, with rations running low and no game left to hunt. After several early snowstorms, the group and its remaining at-odds leaders, William Foster (Glover) and William Eddy (Crawford, who comes across as Josh Duhamel, except with gravitas), find themselves lost, freezing and without any source of food. Sent west to rally a rescue party, Charles Stanton (Kane) returns and urges the group on, but when they do not come across a promised cache of food and supplies, all hell breaks loose. As snow falls, the threat of death and imminent starvation dissolves whatever remaining camaraderie between Foster, Eddy, Franklin Graves (Mark Boone Junior) and the rest of the group might remain, and they’re forced to entertain the notion of sacrificing one another as a source of nourishment.

Written and directed by T.J. Martin, The Donner Party benefits from some nice location filming, but is obviously shot on a shoestring, which handicaps a few scenes. Still, apart from some awkward and unnecessary voiceover narration that mars its opening, the plainness and straightforwardness of its narrative most benefits the film. This story is about individuals’ moral compasses and how extreme duress warps those — about weighing one’s conscience against a will to survive. Heady, complicated, gritty stuff, really, with no single, simple answer. So it helps that the performances — starting with Glover’s quivering turn, in which delicateness morphs into effete bravado and then something more animalistic — are for the most part smartly modulated things. With all the overemphasized talk of meat, one sort of starts to wonder where the veggies are, or at least some dug-up roots or tree bark; there’s a spoof lurking just off-frame here. Still, the story is inherently a dramatic one, and it’s capably rendered here.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Donner Party comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track and optional, lazy English and Spanish subtitles that leave more than a bit to be desired in their translations. Apart from chapter-stop selection and a gallery of start-up trailers for other First Look DVD titles, like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Lost City Raiders, there are no supplemental features included herein. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) D- (Disc)

As far as mockumentaries go, Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney has a great set-up, or hook — one that would in theory allow for an exploration of the navel-gazing boomer generation, and how a kissed, chance moment of celebrity interaction can turn one’s world into a hermetically sealed diorama. Unfortunately, however, it never really coalesces in a meaningful way that elevates the movie into something more than a fleeting curio for Beatles-obsessed completists.

The background here is rooted in fact. Ruth Anson, a fresh-faced reporter for ABC television covering teen issues and the entertainment beat in the 1960s, got a chance in August of 1965 to stick a microphone in the face of Beatle Paul McCartney, who jokingly responded to her question about marriage plans by saying he intended to wed only if she would get hitched with him, “right now.” The film replays footage of this moment over and over (and over), but uses it as a launching point for the sunny Anson’s journey of self-discovery. Claiming she’s looking for “closure,” Anson attends a Hollywood pitch session where she talks up a possible film project built around her suddenly awakened desire to track down McCartney and ask him whether or not he was serious — a quixotic quest flick loosely in the vein of Brian Herzlinger’s My Date with Drew, in other words. Director Marc Cushman (who also appears onscreen, playing himself) takes to Anson’s idea, but finds that he and his production team keep hitting brick walls as they try to track McCartney down. Desperate to keep moving forward, he re-contextualizes Anson’s yearning, positioning her at the center of a reality show in which even her friends and family start to think maybe she’s a bit of a nutter.

There’s potential here, and by Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney by and large plays things fairly dry and tongue-in-cheek. Gratefully, it doesn’t tip over into histrionics (even though Anson gets all teary when she’s goaded into visiting a therapist, at Cushman’s insistence), but instead just follows around Cushman’s production team as they try to go about constructing embarrassing and/or air-quote dramatic scenarios for their unaware star. The chief problem is that the viewer gets out in front of the movie. It’s too slow-moving; its conflicts and jokes take too long to develop and then tend to drag on, and certain bits (like a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy-style makeover for Anson, as she preps to try to crash the Grammys with a set of phony IDs cooked up by Cushman) fall flat entirely. There isn’t enough rangy shock value or psychological insight to match the topic, so when the whole thing ends with an interview with porn star Ron Jeremy (since he was putatively able to gain access to the Grammys, and Anson wasn’t), well… one just has to shrug.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio mixes. Bonus features consist of some touted “Beatles-type songs,” which is almost precisely as painful as that sounds. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

Based on the bestselling children’s book by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is one of those movies that leaves you wanting to break out the thesaurus, because the phrase “sheer, unadulterated pleasure” has been sullied by the likes of Joel Siegel’s overuse. Yet that’s what it is, simply and most directly — an engaging, funny and warmly designed animated flick that doesn’t pander to kids or pull a muscle trying to unnecessarily reach up and out to older audiences.

Co-directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the film tells the story of an affable outcast inventor who creates a machine that rains down food on his hungry island town. Ever since he was a kid, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) has felt out of step and out of sorts with the world around him, and the inability of his emotionally withholding father (voiced by James Caan), a taciturn bait-and-tackle shop owner, to connect has only served to heighten his isolation. Every invention that seems like a breakthrough eventually — and sooner rather than later — comes crashing down around Flint, so when his latest contraption accidentally destroys the town square and rockets up into the clouds, he thinks his inventing career is over.

Then something amazing happens: delicious cheeseburgers start raining from the sky — a godsend to the populace of Swallow Falls, who have subsisted for years on nothing but sardines, and various (unsavory) iterations thereof. With visiting cable weather intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) on hand to report Flint’s triumph, the town’s ambitious, appetite-driven mayor (voiced by Bruce Campbell) both sees and seizes on a once-in-a-lifetime tourism opportunity, re-branding his island “Chews and Swallows,” a sort of foodie paradise getaway. When greed gets the best of people, though, the machine starts to run amok, unleashing spaghetti tornadoes and giant meatballs that threaten the world. Flint and Sam must swing into action, to try to find some way to shut down the machine before the world is overrun by giant food raining from the sky.

Hader gives a solid vocal turn as Flint, laced with his characteristic dryness, but also infused with heart. Faris, a delightful comedienne most recently seen to winning effect in The House Bunny, is also pitch-perfect; there’s fun had as well with the character of “Baby Brent” (voiced by Andy Samberg), a now-grown air-quote celebrity from Swallow Falls’ sardine days who’s wrecked by his sudden obsolescence. The writing here is all smart but not showy (there’s a joke that employs “amuse-bouche,” while also acknowledging its throwaway status), and a good bit of delight can be found in keeping an ear pricked for sotto voce or off-camera asides. In the broadest strokes, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs holds allegorical value as a cautionary tale against unchecked rapaciousness. Mostly, though, this is just a well-made movie, with plenty of heart, energy and fun characters.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs comes to DVD in a two-disc version housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a snap-in tray, and an accompanying cardboard slipcover. In addition to a feature-length audio commentary track with the
co-directors and Hader, there’s also a pair of making-of featurettes
detailing the animation, voiceover work and other behind-the-scenes
aspects of production, plus a clutch of interesting progression reels/deleted scenes with
introductions by visual effects supervisor Rob Bredow. Also included
are a music video and interactive sing-a-long for Miranda Cosgrove’s “Raining Sunshine,” and an amusing “Food
Fight” game where players can help Flint battle against rogue edibles by
navigating his spaceship and avoiding hits from flying pizzas, gummy
bears, ice cream scoops and the like. All in all, a winning film with a great collection of supplemental material. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

A campy, sci-fi, gleefully gross-out adventure loosely in the vein of fellow budget-challenged romps like Feast or Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Infestation is written and directed by Kyle Rankin, one of the co-directors behind The Battle of Shaker Heights — the final Project Greenlight flick, which whiffed commercially but helped put Shia LaBeouf on the path toward big screen domination on which he now seems to be. It’s not a movie that reinvents the wheel (or in any way, shape or form really desires to), but it is fun, and well done, benefiting from the jocular presence of Christopher Marquette. Genre fans will assuredly dig it.

A mundane office workday takes a sudden turn for the worse when twentysomething chronic underachiever Cooper is rendered unconscious by an earsplitting noise. He wakes up several days later, in a massive cocoon spun by mutant, flesh-eating insects. Upon hooking up with Sara (Brooke Nevin), the daughter of his deceased boss, Cooper unwraps a couple more coworkers at the downtown office park around him, forming a team of strangers to eventually strike out into the great unknown, and fight off the infestation. In addition to gruff, tough-talking Sara, there’s Cindy (Kinsey Packard), plus Al (Wesley Thompson) and his deaf son, a hulking man-child named Hugo (Quincy Sloan). A plan is forged to check on a select handful of loved ones and then work toward safety; Cooper eventually crosses paths with emotionally withholding dad Ethan (Ray Wise), who can’t even sincerely compliment his son for making it across the city, and back to his house.

In movies like Fanboys and the underrated The Girl Next Door, Marquette has provided solid comic relief, but here he anchors the entire film, in winning fashion. Rankin also plays with audience expectation and genre convention in fresh, slightly amusing ways. Sometimes the manner in which he leapfrogs story hurdles is funny right through the fog of shrugs (a character, playing a massage therapy student, uses a home pregnancy test to determine the venomous nature of a captured spider), but a couple times Rankin requires characters to nakedly intuit things that don’t entirely make sense. Efram Potelle, Rankin’s Shaker Heights co-director, scores a visual effects supervisor credit here (a big part of the duo’s short film work, for those who remember), and it’s undeniably true that Infestation‘s giant bugs — a smart, seamless mixture of practical and CGI effects — go a long way toward making one believe enough in the conceit of the film to lie back and just have a good time.

Infestation arrives on DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles. Apart from trailers for other releases, the only supplemental extra is a feature-length audio commentary track from Rankin that is fairly low-key, to the point it could be legitimately described as enervated. Rankin talks some about Wise’s penchant for improvisation, and cops to the fact that the movie’s abortive ending is a naked ploy to set up a potential sequel. In fact, he says, he has a two-film arc sketched out, if Infestation catches on as a viral DVD smash. Hey… far worse things could happen. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C (Disc)

As micro-brews continue to surge in popularity, and Americans of a certain age start to become at least a bit more invested in their ale quaffing habits (if not quite to the same degree that they typically are with wine), entertaining and informative glimpses behind the sociocultural curtain like this new-to-DVD documentary will continue to find welcome reception. Clocking in at only an hour, The American Brew doesn’t quite have the contemporary pop of Anat Baron’s Beer Wars, which examined in fascinating fashion how the three (now two) major brewer-bottlers look to trick consumers and put the squeeze on upstart competitors. Still, in exploring the rich and surprising history of beer making from colonial settlers through the present day, this movie offers up sudsy intrigue.

Writer Jesse Sweet and director Roger Sherman share the unique history of America’s favorite beverage (sorry, Coke), charting a history from the Prohibition era right on through the unending success of national breweries. The American Brew explores the evolution of beer throughout the centuries, interweaving compelling personal tales and interviews with industry experts to provide an inside look at brewing innovations, and how those changes have impacted the national palette.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The American Brew comes to DVD in widescreen, with an English language 5.1 surround sound audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. Hearteningly, the DVD also features over 45 minutes of bonus footage, including conversations with restaurateur Danny Meyer, premier beer critic Michael Jackson (no, not that guy), and the editors of All About Beer. There’s also a look inside the hidden cellar of New York City’s Prohibition-era 21 Club, Paul Brady’s breweriana collection, and a cheeky short, “Cheese Wars,” which pits wine and beer against one another in an effort to determine cheese’s perfect match. To order a copy of The American Brew directly from PBS, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)