A handful of eerily staged scenes and a surfeit of passably evocative production design can’t save the otherwise muddled, new-to-DVD Passengers, in which recent Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway stars as a grief counselor assigned to help survivors of a fiery plane crash. In trying willfully to tick such a wide variety of genre boxes, though, the gauzy melodrama ends up servicing none that credibly.

Assigned by her boss (Andre Braugher) to
help walk a quintet of airplane crash survivors through their shock and
grief, psychologist Claire Summers (Hathaway) encounters particular
difficulties with one of them, Eric (Patrick Wilson). While others display
behavior more consistent with massive trauma, Eric is bouncy and charged by a newfound energy, but also secretive. He flirts with Claire and asks her out
on dates, which strikes her as odd. As her other clients begin
to disappear, though, Claire finds herself swimming in paranoia,
suspecting a strange airline employee (David Morse) of having a hand in their
disappearance, possibly to cover up the real reasons for the crash.

Narratively, Passengers marks a departure from the past films of Colombian-born director Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives), whose recent small screen work on HBO’s In Treatment showcased a level of psychological engagement not on display here. Passengers‘ mystery never takes hold, mainly because Ronnie Christensen’s script
is a thinly sketched mood-piece of appropriated motifs and
characterizations. Almost a decade on, the huge success of M. Night
Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense is still spawning mystery-thrillers
that seem chiefly backwards-plotted, with gimmicky point-of-view pivots
that are meant to draw appreciative audience reactions out of a
re-framing of the narrative. Given the loose, unrealistically pitched nature of some of the characters in Passengers,
though, it’s quickly apparent that the movie isn’t a straight dramatic
telling, and only a small handful of scenarios seem plausible. Rodrigo,
accordingly, is left to try to imprint and impress a unifying visual
strategy on this forestalled revelation, with only fitful success.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Passengers comes presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English and French language Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks, and complementary English, French and Spanish subtitles to boot. Three deleted scenes run under eight minutes, while a 24-minute making-of featurette includes boilerplate interviews with cast and crew. More specific is a 16-minute featurette focusing on the special effects and stunt work used to capture the movie’s emotional centerpiece, its plane crash. The heftiest supplemental feature, though, is a feature-length audio commentary track with Garcia and Wilson; the pair ladle praise on the absent Hathaway, and generally strike a nice balance between production anecdotes and thematic discussion. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B (Disc)

On the verge of losing his job, rundown New Yorker jingle writer Harvey
Shine (Dustin Hoffman) flies to London for a weekend to attend his
daughter’s wedding, but promises to be back on Monday morning to make
an important meeting. He arrives to learn his daughter has chosen her
stepfather to walk her down the aisle instead of him. Devastated,
Harvey leaves the wedding before the reception, misses his plane and
ends up drowning his sorrows at the airport bar, where he
strikes up a conversation with Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), a slightly
prickly, 40-something singleton whose life is limited to work, the
occasional humiliating blind date and endless phone calls from her
smothering, quasi-delusional mother, Maggie (Eileen Atkins). The growing
connection between the pair energizes and inspires both of them, even
as they grapple with difficulties of adult-onset romance.

Not yet 40, British-born writer-director Joel Hopkins (Jump Tomorrow) perhaps doesn’t have the necessary life experience to pull off the
injection of a credible depth of feeling into this sort of autumnal tale, and so the presence of a pair of two-time Academy Award winners is more or less fumbled away, in shrugging fashion. The resultant
harmless inconsequentiality is a lumpy, sentimental mass that clumsily strikes many of the familiar surface keys of melancholic regret.
But there’s a crinkle-eyed mischievousness that pokes through in
Hoffman’s performance, and that robs the character — and thus the movie as a
whole — of a chance at developing into something darker, and more arresting. (As
Harvey’s grown but still wounded and emotionally distant daughter
Susan, it’s Liane Balaban who makes a lasting impression.)

Hopkins
doesn’t necessarily want to play on that field, with real adult pain and regret, but he should, honestly, since
his film doesn’t have the wit to compete with Something’s Gotta Give,
the movie that it most clearly wants to emulate. Ergo, when the goofy
musical montage of Kate trying on dresses inevitably arrives, you don’t forgive
it and just go with the flow of the movie, you don’t give it another chance. No, instead, you turn on Last Chance Harvey, and
actually start to hold a grudge.

Housed in a regular Amaray case with an accompanying cardboard slipcover, Last Chance Harvey comes presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a lively English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and complementary English and Spanish subtitles. Supplemental features are anchored by a winning audio commentary track with Hopkins and his two respected stars; Hoffman’s thoughts are separately recorded, but generally well integrated, and overall the feature-length chat oscillates nicely between anecdotal remembrances, thematic analysis and other observations. A 17-minute making-of featurette mixes film clips, on-set footage and sit-down interview chats with the film’s actors; rounding out matters is the movie’s theatrical trailer. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B (Disc)

A minor chord social rage riff, Leslie Cardé’s America Betrayed takes a crack at exposing the dirty little secrets behind our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, in particular the complicity between the Army Corps of Engineers — designers of the levees that failed during Hurricane Katrina — and the United States Congress, which funds the group, nominally tasks it in a manner that includes plenty of inessential or less important public works projects, and then provides little to no oversight, allowing some jobs to run over schedule by decades.

As a sociopolitical documentary, the film slots in decently alongside recent similar cage-rattling product like I.O.U.S.A. and The Ascent of Money — movies that cast long, deep shadows of doubt over governmental competence and fiscal responsibility, and the ability of even honest politicians, public servants and activists to affect change both quick and substantive. And with our bridges, dams, levees and highways collectively crumbling, toppling, being washed away and putting American citizens and cities at risk, the issue of infrastructure reinforcement and reinvestment is an undeniably important one. But America Betrayed isn’t the film to galvanize public opinion, or even clearly impart a message of how things stand.

Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, America Betrayed bills itself as “a cautionary tale for Americans everywhere,” but it’s far too messy to connect on any sort of lasting emotional level. Featuring scores of interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists,
noted scientists, politicians from both sides of the aisle (including
free-use clips from Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton), and whistleblowers who risked their lives and careers to
speak out, the movie is literally aflood with information. (Yeah: pun.) It’s just that it’s poorly organized, structured and delineated.

America Betrayed begins with an exploration of the little-known causes behind the Katrina levee
failures, ostensibly using this as a springboard to expose the
rampant collusion, corruption and cronyism within the government
agencies whose very purpose it is to protect us. Between failing to provide proper historical framing for 1965’s Hurricane Betsy and not clearly establishing the expert credentials of many of her subjects, however, Cardé repeatedly shows herself to have no objective sense of aerial docu-storytelling. (At one point, she’s even heard out-of-frame, peppering an interviewee with the penetrating query, “Yeah, what was that about?”) What we have here are loose ends and passionate rants, taped and tied together in whimsical fashion. It’s more than an hour into things before the real underlying point of the film — a call for a fundamental reforming of the manner in which the United States funds water projects — is even directly addressed.

There’s no doubt that the rebuilding of New Orleans, and an overhaul of the Corps of Engineers, remains frustratingly low on the country’s to-do list, even 100 days into the new Obama administration. But Cardé doesn’t have the chops to sustain viewer outrage over this monumental moral failing, and then tie it into the grander issues at play. As a skipped-stone, scatterbrained portrait of how the top leadership of the
Army Corps of Engineers is more concerned with self-serving transitions
into corporate America, how we’ve wasted taxpayer dollars building
other nations’ infrastructures instead of our own, how
lobbyists and politicians funnel money to pet projects, and how
those sent to investigate financial misappropriation are bribed into
silence or simply don’t do their jobs, this documentary more or less works, in air-quote fashion. But any frothy rage or eagerness to make a change dissipates on contact, as soon as the credits roll. And that’s a shame, honestly, because truth be told, we should be pissed off.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, America Betrayed is presented in an enhanced 16×9 aspect ratio, and includes a nine-minute interview with Cardé, seven-and-a-half minutes of bonus
interviews, a filmmaker biography, film resource guide and trailers for three other First Run titles, including the superb Constantine’s Sword. To purchase the DVD, click here. C- (Movie) B- (Disc)

With James Toback’s Mike Tyson documentary hitting screens and Fighting in theaters this weekend, it seems something pugilistic is in the air, so it’s as good a time as any to assay Fight Night, a new straight-to-video release that’s part con man roadshow, part femme-centric, bloodied-lip Never Back Down-type programmer, and part unlikely bonding tale. All in all, though quite obviously cramped by limited production means, this movie connects as at least a solid indie jab, courtesy of some effectively engaging performances, smarter-than-average plotting and fun dialogue.

A lonely drifter on the run from a past best forgotten, con man Michael Dublin (Chad Ortis, smoking theatrically) works the underground fight club circuit, moving from one scam to another and leaving a trail of enemies in his wake. When he gets his ass saved one night by down-and-out Katherine Parker (Rebecca Neuenswander, above, a total ringer for The Biggest Loser‘s Jillian Michaels), a female fighter with the skills to take down a man twice her size, Dublin seizes upon his best scam scheme yet. Rigging fights in reverse, the two — uneasy partners through and through — hit the road, working fights in seedy basement bars, backwoods county fairs and rundown warehouses. Eventually, though, Dublin’s shady past catches up with them, raising the stakes higher than they’d imagined possible.

Fight Night is billed as an action flick, and understandably so — there’s a reason its title was changed from Rigged, its original moniker — but that’s not where most of its appeal lies. In truth, the fisticuffs are frequently muddled to the point of being ridiculous, boring, or both, with odd angles and botched edits betraying the logic of the action. In scenes of inaction, though, the film is actually quite nicely photographed, and powered by a snarky, Moonlighting-style rapport between its leads. On the surface, Ortis’ Dublin is too smirky by about a third, but one eventually warms to it, especially since Parker frequently gets to call him out on his behavior, generally denigrating him and cracking on “that cock-holster you call a mouth.”

If that brings a wince, yes, it’s true, Ian Shorr’s script loads up on finger-snapping dialogue (“Hey, I don’t care who you rock the casbah with, kitty cat,” says Dublin to Parker, “but we’re business partners now…”) that could — and, well, kind of does — undercut some of the heavier dramatic stuff that comes into play as the movie wears on. But Neuenswander and Ortis have a nice chemistry, and director-editor Jonathan Dillon stages the more character-centric scenes in a way that makes you lean forward a bit. The end result isn’t high art, perhaps, but it outclasses the baser solicitations of its cover box art, shows all-for-one spirit and effort on the part of its makers, and is certainly better than it has a right to be, given the budget and other means.

Presented in a 16×9 widescreen aspect ratio, along with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, Fight Night comes housed in a regular plastic Amaray case. English and Spanish subtitles are also included. Despite the touted press release inclusion of a production featurette, digital copy of the movie and an accompanying photo gallery, there aren’t such inclusions on the DVD. Special features instead include five-plus minutes of deleted scenes, the movie’s trailer and an audio commentary track with Dillon, cinematographer Hanuman Brown-Eagle and… gaffer/gopher Jason Cantu!

This sounds weird, I realize, but that combination works, even if Dillon misidentifies his movie right out of the gate, calling it Fight Nights, plural. Not having the two leads, and in particular Neuenswander, robs the track of any sort of serious discussion or insight about the characters, or acting on display, but this trio have a lot of anecdotes to share about the film’s November-December 2005 Kansas shoot, and the fratty but not overly self-aggrandizing warmth of their reminiscences makes even a few barbed oblique asides (“If you can afford it, get an art department that brings you some options,” Dillon says at one point) sound not really that assholish, especially since they suffered arrests and other run-ins with the police due to filming without permits. Other tidbits gleaned? An important location house was once owned by Howard Hughes, and the car used in the film was a graduation gift from Dillon’s grandfather, with its trunk doubling as the production’s wardrobe storage. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

I don’t think I had unreasonable expectations. After all, any movie that claims as its top selling point the fact that it features “top MTV reality personalities and other up-and-coming celebrities” is obviously not likely a candidate for enshrinement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Still, I humbly and sincerely submit that American High School is a movie every bit as terrible as if not worse than the single worst American high school experience of any teenager of the past quarter century. It is a war crime in celluloid form.

It’s the final week of senior year, and everything is coming to a head. Distressed SoCal high schooler Gwen (Jillian Murray, in a departure from her role in Disney Channel’s upcoming TV series Sonny with a Chance) and her exhibitionist husband (yep, you read that right) Holden Adams (Talan Torriero) are perhaps headed for divorce. Gwen’s rich and popular rival, described as “a devil with a vagina,” is Hillary Weiss (Aubrey O’Day, Danity Kane pop princess turned Playboy cover girl), a scheming manipulator who’ll do anything to both nab the prom queen crown and steal Holden away. Toss in a diminutive principal (Martin Klebba, because dwarves equal automatic laughs, right?), a vapid art teacher who inexplicably dresses in lingerie (Nikki Ziering, former Playboy Playmate and jock-warmer to Beverly Hills
90210 star Ian Ziering) and two trash-talking himbos (James Foley and Brian Drolet, of The Hills) who go by the monikers Matt Mysterio and Jonny Awesome. Then mix along with a handful of other slutty associates and students, scramble nonsensically, and serve, steaming.

I don’t at all mind “dumb” comedy, and can even forgive production values compromised by a low budget, but American High School is idiotic and infuriating because there’s absolutely no interior logic to its story, nor does it work in any way, shape or form as a series of discrete hormonal sketches. Right out of the box, Gwen is pegged as “unpopular,” when there’s hearty evidence to the contrary. The movie treats her marriage to Holden as neither legitimate and sincere, nor satirical, so it never really makes any sense that Gwen would be concerned about what peers to whom she’s tethered for only one more year claim to think of her. This fact — a huge story point — is emblematic of the lack of attention and thought given the narrative. Let’s see… what else is never adequately explained? A few parts of the movie unfold in direct-address to a webcam. Male students wander around without shirts, and sometimes run assemblies. Oh, and the principal is a hornball who plays grab-ass with an exchange student, which only seems to further turn on his secretary.

None of these bits are clever, genre-tweaking satire, though, a la Not Another Teen Movie. Sometimes the absurdity is accepted, sometimes commented upon. All the jokes and dialogue, meanwhile, are uniformly awful, and there’s simply nothing here, no overall through line or purpose. To dull the pain, about halfway through the movie I started pounding rum-and-Cokes, but it wasn’t enough to summon laughter, alas. There’s only one truly funny moment in the movie, and it comes in the first 20 minutes or so and lasts all of two seconds; it’s when Klebba’s principal allows himself a moment of quiet self-satisfaction after using the school’s P.A. system, and murmurs, “Another amazing announcement.” The single other time I laughed or cracked a smile occurred when a gummy-tacked wall poster fell down in the background of a long shot, and then immediately reappeared in the next shot. Oh, and for the record, to those in the under-17 set just looking for some cheap boobs-and-butt action, Ziering provides the movie’s only nudity (though, as mentioned,
there’s lots of shirtlessness on the guys’ parts too), but her enormous, surgically enhanced breasts are matched in their unnerving nature by her plasticized face; it’s all a non-starter, fellas.

Housed in a white, regular plastic Amaray case, American High School comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired, who’ve never had it so lucky as when missing all the lame, ADR-appended air-quote jokes crammed along this movie’s edges. The chief supplemental feature is a feature-length audio commentary track with writer-director Sean Patrick Cannon, producer Raquel Tolmaire, and actors Murray, Drolet,
Ashley Ann Cook and Nick Shakoour. Cannon repeatedly says “I like this,” scene after scene, and talks a lot about how he favors triangular composition, like he’s the next Orson Welles. Everyone else seems rather (surprisingly) genuinely stoked by the results; there’s precious little talk of budgetary compromise or production hardships, though Murray scores a few points for honesty by pointing out (the very visually obvious) microphone pack on her leg in one scene. Other bonus features consist of a TV spot and the theatrical trailer, along with 19 more excruciating minutes of deleted scenes and an alternate ending, all with optional audio commentary from Cannon and his actors. If for some reason you still feel the need to purchase the film on DVD, via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) C (Disc)

Part of the “American Experience” series, A Class Apart: A Mexican American Civil Rights Story runs approximately one hour, and highlights the landmark 1950s Supreme Court case that redefined civil rights for Mexican Americans in the United States. Award-winning producers Carlos Sandoval (Farmingville) and Peter Miller (Sacco and Vanzetti) tell the historic tale of how a small-town Texas murder case spurred the Mexican American civil rights movement and helped end Jim Crow-style discrimination throughout the Southwest.

In the tiny town of Edna, Texas, in 1951, field hand Pete Hernandez killed tenant farmer Joe Espinosa after exchanging words in a gritty cantina. From this seemingly unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans. This film tells the little-known story of a band of underdog Mexican American lawyers who took their case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court. In the unprecedented case, the attorneys forged a daring legal strategy, arguing that Mexican Americans were essentially “a class apart,” and therefore did not neatly fit into a legal structure that heretofore recognized only blacks and whites. As various legal skirmishes played out, the lawyers emerged as brilliant, dedicated and humorous men, although A Class Apart doesn’t shy away from showing their flaws as well.

Documentaries like A Class Apart are eye-opening not the least because they exist on the edges of any sort of polite distillation of social upheaval one might typically find in regular middle and high school textbooks. With clarity, heartrending humanity and even mordant wit, when appropriate, this film dramatically interweaves the disparate stories of its central characters
— activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens,
murderer and victim — within the broader history of Latinos in the United States. At a time when immigrants are again being vilified in some corners of public discourse, it’s an important reminder that efforts to ensure America’s actions match its rich, inspiring rhetoric must never cease.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, A Class Apart is presented in 16×9 widescreen, and comes with a superb slate of supplemental features, anchored by a making-of featurette that includes interviews, photographs and behind-the-scenes footage. In addition to special material for educators and a clutch of bonus scenes, there’s also a slideshow of photographer Russell Lee’s iconic images of Mexican American life in the late 1940s. Naturally, Spanish subtitles and a Spanish language audio track are also included as well. To order A Class Apart, or any DVD release from PBS Home Video, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Over the last five years or so, while still occasionally taking the skulking, low-key, payday gig (Quarantine, Prom Night), actor Johnathon Schaech has quietly branched out into screenwriting, setting himself up for a chance, at least, at a successful second act in Hollywood as a reliable, single-stop peddler of low-budget, direct-to-video genre fare. I say single-stop because in his latest movie, The Poker Club, Schaech assumes multiple roles, nabbing a prominent on-screen role as well as several behind-the-scenes credits.

Directed by Tim McCann (Nowhere Man, Runaway), The Poker Club centers around secrets lies, and ill-advised decision-making. For years, Aaron Tyler (Schaech) has been getting together on Monday evenings with his three best friends to play poker. One night, though, everything changes forever; a burglar breaks into Aaron’s house, and the men accidentally kill him. Fearing the consequences, Aaron and his pals dispose of the corpse and agree to take the secret to their graves. Soon, however, they discover that someone else knows what they’ve done, and is now playing a murderous game of revenge with them.

Johnny Messner, Loren Dean, Michael Risley, Scrubs‘ Judy Reyes, Lori Heuring (with whom Schaech has a naked history), and Jana Kramer all co-star in this streamlined flick, which obviously cops moves from panic-infused cover-up tales like I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequels, as well as Very Bad Things. In fact, The Poker Club could use a little of that latter film’s wild, trippy energy, because too frequently the plotting here feels like laid track, and the twists and turns thus little but pulled levers. Perhaps there was a more acutely sketched sense of betrayal and intrigue in Ed Gorman’s popular horror novel, from which the movie is adapted. The writing team of Schaech and Richard Chizmar (who penned the sequel to Roadhouse, in which Schaech also starred) comes up with some nice wheel-spinning dialogue for when the bitterness and recrimination between friends really comes to a boil, but McCann — while piecing things together nicely in a few charged what-do-we-do scenes, and generally making effective use of music — is overall unable to come up with a compelling, unifying visual scheme for the film.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Poker Club comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track and optional subtitles in only English, French and Chinese, which runs somewhat counter to both the title’s easily translated genre thrills and poker’s reputation as a burgeoning worldwide hobby. The sole supplemental feature is a feature-length audio commentary track with Schaech and director McCann, but the pair have an easy rapport that makes their chat go down fairly smoothly. It’s also an instructive listen for would-be filmmakers and on-the-rise line producers, as various means of cost-effectiveness are frequently addressed. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

A pants-crappingly important documentary about the monstrous problem of the United States’ national debt, director Patrick Creadon’s I.O.U.S.A. takes as its two crusading, point-of-entry subjects Concord Coalition executive director Bob Bixby and former U.S. Comptroller David Walker, both level-headed, entirely cool and collected Poindexter-types who could pass for affable branch managers at your local savings and loan. That’s important, and underscores the rational appeal of this alarm-bell non-fictioner: while it undeniably elicits temple rubbing and teeth gnashing in extra servings, I.O.U.S.A. doesn’t go for cheap partisan provocation.

As superbly elucidated in the bird’s-eye financial history documentary The Ascent of Money, also recently released to DVD, debt in and of itself is not necessarily a problem. But I.O.U.S.A., inspired by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin’s Empire of Debt, tells the story of a country, collectively, living a wildly unsustainable lifestyle. Faced with key deficits in budget, savings, trade and leadership, the federal government is critically overextended in many areas; increased foreign competition in the form of emerging economic markets only deepens our challenges. With the American economy already in shambles, 78 million baby boomers are expecting retirement benefits from their indebted federal government, and it’s these massive liabilities (approximately $7 trillion for social security, and another $34 trillion for combined Medicare commitments, including President Bush‘s prescription drug giveaway) that dwarf the actual debt, and push it to a staggering total of around $54 trillion.

Weaving together archival footage, economic data and candid interviews with Walker, Bixby, Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul O’Neill, Robert Rubin, Alice Rivlin, Paul Volcker and other titans of currency, I.O.U.S.A. offers a vivid and alarming profile of America’s financial status, a surefire path toward foreign policy being dictated solely by banking considerations. An effectively stitched together opening montage comprised of various State of the Union speech clips makes sure the audience immediately grasps that this isn’t a partisan hatchet job, despite the indisputable fact that Bush inherited a projection of increasing budget surpluses along with a $5.6 trillion debt in 2000, and took it to around a $10 trillion debt, and growing, at the beginning of this year.

Creaden (Wordplay) is skilled at being able to craft a compelling narrative from and around wonkish details, but he isn’t afraid to interject both real-world irreverence and anxiety into his work– in the form of interview snippets with average retirement-age Americans, heading back to work or fretting about their kids and grandkids — which helps humanize the movie, and make its seemingly too-big-to-tackle problem something relatable, if no less unnerving. Smartly, Creaden also contrasts consumer behaviors (as encouraged by governments); America’s conspicuous consumption is contrasted with a Chinese couple who work together in a factory and earn the collective equivalent of around $20 a day, yet save more than half of that income. As much as the widening manufacturer’s gap, it’s that difference in mindset that helps explain the $260 billion trade deficit with China in 2007.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, I.O.U.S.A. includes a slew of supplemental material, starting with a five-minute, direct-address update from Walker, recorded in early January 2009. An hour-long panel discussion from after the film’s premiere includes Walker, Buffet, Bill Niskanen, Bill Novelli and Peter Peterson, and Buffet and Greenspan also pop up in a separate “economic experts” section explaining why deficits matter. (Here’s a partial hint: the massive debt accrued after World War II, when it swelled to 122 percent of the gross domestic product, was owed to ourselves, courtesy of war bonds.) A special classroom-friendly section provides viewers with Volcker’s reading list. Five minutes of on-the-street interviews with ordinary Americans are counterbalanced by  fiscal update information, a three-minute, data-laden slideshow, and the movie’s trailer. To order any DVD release from PBS Home Video, including this title or The Ascent of Money, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the I.O.U.S.A. DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

With financial and credit markets in ruin, consumer confidence massively eroded, and the unquestioned belief in age-old economic precepts fundamentally shaken, the demand for basic, understandable answers about money, banking, lending and their relationships, both individually and collectively, to jobs and well-being in small cities and towns far-flung from world power centers is at an all-time high. Enter into the breach, then, the superb new documentary The Ascent of Money.

Based on the New York Times’ bestselling book of British-born Harvard professor Niall Ferguson (above), The Ascent of Money, produced last year, takes a prescient look at how money has evolved — from the concept of credit and debt in ancient times (Ferguson spends some time with Mesopotamian clay tablets noting grain and barley repayments) to the emergence of a global economy and the subprime crisis we face today. It’s a massive, overarching financial history tour, which I realize sounds drab and perhaps breathtakingly boring, but is in actuality just the opposite. An engaging host, Ferguson knows how to sprinkle in quick-hook linguistic asides (the root of credit is credo, the Latin word for “I believe”) and social-artistic parallels (he uses The Merchant of Venice‘s Shylock as an important example, noting how Christian laws against usury led to an understandable, correlative rise in the Jewish business class) with modern-day examples of economic strife, weaving a clear, sensible tapestry between past and present.

Running approximately two hours, the title finds Ferguson traveling from the Far East to Italy and even America’s Deep South — historic hot spots that gave rise to the evolution of money — to illuminate fundamental economic concepts such as banking, insurance, inflation and interest. As he traverses the world of money, Ferguson speaks with leading experts — including financier George Soros, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, financier Evelyn de Rothschild and World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick, among others — about the state of the world, both for established countries and emerging powers. From the rise of the stocks and bonds markets to sub-prime mortgages, from the housing bubble to the globalization of money and the concept of “Chimerica” — how the United States has, since 1981, gone from the world’s largest creditor to its largest debtor — Ferguson demonstrates that financial history is the essential backstory behind all writ-large history. It’s all enthralling… and a bit depressing, honestly. Particularly of note is information that underlines how bankruptcies, both corporate and personal, have become the defining characteristic of American capitalism.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Ascent of Money is presented in close-captioned full screen. Unfortunately, there aren’t any supplemental bonus features… or a secret cache of pre-bust Yahoo stock. C’est la vie, I guess. To order any DVD release from PBS Home Video, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A (Movie) C- (Disc)

Draped in the rich colors of African cloth, his trademark staff in hand and his dreadlocks wrapped regally around his head, Anthony B embodies all that it is spiritual and socially proactive about reggae music. For pushing two decades, this heartfelt dancehall artist has been steadfast in his mission to represent the poor and oppressed, using sharp lyrics to confront sociopolitical injustices and shine a spotlight on underclass issues and concerns. With 10 albums of his own, and guest appearances on a staggering amount more (almost 100) in the last dozen years, Anthony B has displayed a tireless work ethic matched only by his zeal for life.

Né Keith Anthony Blair in small town Jamaica, Anthony B grew up immersed in the thunderous chants and rhythms of the Seventh Day Adventist church, where he honed his soon-to-be signature vocals under the watchful eyes and ears of revivalist preachers and choral conductors. In his formative years, the artist also cleaved to the music of Otis Redding and the incomparable Peter Tosh, influences he would eventually fold into his own performance style. Eschewing glossy pop lyrics and empty braggadocio, Anthony B instead remained musically faithful to his roots, with songs built of spiritual consciousness and social conviction. And now he’s on DVD.

Captured using eight HD cameras and 48 tracks of audio, Anthony B: Live chronicles a stunning performance at the first annual Reggae Rising Music Festival in Humboldt County, California. Despite its somewhat chintzy cover art, the disc serves as both a wonderful keepsake for longtime fans and easy, engaging introduction to reggae newcomers. “Hurt Mi Heart” kicks things off, followed by “God Above Everything,”
“Fire Pon Rome” and “Row Mr. Fisherman.” The middle portion of the show
consists of “Trigger Happy Cowboys,” “Good Cop,” “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us
Now,” the forthrightly titled “Smoke Weed Every Day,” “Higher
Meditation” and “Water Pumpee.” Closing things out are the emotional
trifecta of “Tease Her,” “Raid Di Barn” and “In Time of Trouble.”

Superbly directed by Luke
Archer, the concert performance material — an evening set amidst the
legendary California Redwood Forest — is top-shelf, but what really helps give the DVD extra accessibility is the fact that it’s masterfully woven together with exclusive interview
footage of Anthony B discussing the backgrounds and inceptions of all the songs. Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Anthony B: Live comes remastered in
stunning Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound. B+ (Concert) B (Disc)

The first ever DVD release from the six-time Grammy Award-winning guitar great, José Feliciano: The Paris Concert spotlights the versatility of the Latin crossover sensation’s instrument of truth, and his skill at evoking new feeling from familiar old tunes.

Filmed in high definition at the New Morning club on August 5 of last year, José Feliciano: The Paris Concert has the ability to woo fans both old and new — those familiar with Feliciano, and those who perhaps don’t yet know him but still appreciate honest musical craftsmanship. Backed by his solid five-piece band, Feliciano kicks things off with “Chico and the Man,” followed by “Crazy Heart” and a smooth version of “Billie Jean.” The rest of the set list is comprised of: “Como Fue,” “I Got a Woman,” “Rain,” “Bamboleo,” “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” “Higher Ground,” “Oye Guitarra Mia,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Affirmation,” “Cherry, Cherry,” “Porque Te Tengo Que Olvidar,” “Money,” “Oye Como Va,” “Purple Haze,” “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Que Sera” and “Light my Fire.” As one can surmise from that track listing, Feliciano dabbles effortlessly
in different genres, mixing flamenco, pop, blues and bossa nova with hearty fistfuls of jazzy undertones. The most interesting thing is that none of these inclusions feels particularly far afield, like a naked stab at relevance. Almost all the songs are engaging interpretations, with “Higher Ground” and “Oye Como Va” serving as particular standouts.

Housed in a clear Amaray case that helps spotlight a two-sided, full-color sleeve, and presented on a region-free disc in 16×9 aspect ratio, José Feliciano: The Paris Concert comes with English language stereo PCM, Dolby digital 5.1 and DTS audio tracks. The video transfer is superb, and crisp throughout, but there are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A (Concert) C- (Disc)

Casting about late one night a couple weeks ago for a DVD which possessed some human substance but was also not imperative that I review immediately, I popped in John Sayles’ 1980 directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus 7, and found myself transported back to a time of considerably more hair, as well as discerning and engaging judgments about what it meant to be a childless thirtysomething couple — or, egads, even single — at the close of the 1970s.

Sayles, the writer-director behind such films as Passion Fish, Lone Star and Sunshine State, has been at the forefront of the independent film movement for almost a quarter-century — so long that it’s easy to forget that at the time of this release, there wasn’t actually much of a theatrical market for indie films, apart from a handful of four-walled special screenings. Predating The Big Chill by several years, Return of the Secaucus 7 covers some of the same terrain — old friends getting back together and all that — but is a more hopeful and in many ways honest portrayal of young adults grappling with the real world, and the changes it inherently brings for themselves and their relationships.

In the film, seven old friends (Mark Arnott, Karen Trott, Jean Passanante, Maggie Cousineau, Bruce McDonald, Adam Lefevre and Maggie Renzi) reunite a decade after their radical college days for a dramatic, poignant and revelatory weekend. It’s not necessarily pitched as a big-deal, capital-R reunion, though; they’ve been getting together, in various combinations, with new lovers and the like, each summer at the same cramped, small town New Hampshire house for the past several years. This time, though, there’s been a break-up by a longtime couple, which means the possibility of fresh romance for one guy, a would-be singer-songwriter. There’s also a couple of high school teachers, longtime steadies; a nurse; and a Senator’s speechwriter worried about how her pals, including an ex-flame, will respond to her slightly stuffy new boyfriend (Gordon Clapp).

Conversational charms abound, but Return of the Secaucus 7 scores — however fashion-dated and cramped its setting — mostly because it’s honest about friends’ judgments of one another (e.g., “I love him, but he’s a fuck-up”) while also nailing the tinged but not always emotionally overblown differences in communication between men and women, and the slight manifestations of classism present in the way young parents interact with singletons, and townies with those who’ve moved away to bigger cities. Mostly, watching the movie, one gets a sense of Sayles’ affection for the commingling of careful planning and found, on-the-fly delights. While some story strands are more interesting than others, and the performances range from amateurish to engagingly naturalistic (an almost comically younger-looking David Strathairn pops up, proving definitively that he wasn’t cultivated in arrested middle-age from Sam Waterston’s rib), Return of the Secaucus 7 grows on you as an ensemble piece because of the recognizability and relatability of its subjects.

Housed in a regular Amaray case, Return of the Secaucus 7 is presented in 1.33:1 full screen (more on this in a moment), with a Dolby digital soundtrack and a feature-length audio commentary track from Sayles. Anyone who’s ever talked to, read or listened to an interview with Sayles knows that the guy is erudite, knows his shit, but is also — with just a little proper coaxing — an affable “guy’s guy,” and that combination makes this commentary track among the most informative that I’ve listened to recently. He talks a lot about the movie’s five-week, 16mm 1979 location shoot, but also finds a way to interweave specific anecdotal details (horses in the background of one shot, for instance) into broader points that inform the body of his work — like how to take advantage of “production design already done for you,” as he puts it, or avoid ADR looping, especially with children or actors working with an accent.

Without seeming to work from notes, Sayles’ memory is sharp. He explains in reasonable fashion how — at a time before the Sundance Film Festival — he felt it was inconceivable that Return of the Secaucus 7 would be seen by a wide audience in theaters, so it was composed for television, which leads to plenty of pan-and-scan scars in its DVD presentation. He also gives good anecdotes; a dead deer that appears roadside in the film is made up of a mounted deer head and a duffle bag stuffed full of clothes. At around the one-hour mark, Sayles finally touches on explicit comparisons to The Big Chill, but for most of the time he talks generously and intelligently about his collaborators (including composer Mason Daring), his own small supporting role, the film’s themes, its production, and how it fits in with his other work. Oh! He also talks about the copious male asses on display in the movie’s skinny-dipping sequence (a tweaking of female-nudity conventions, he argues, but one that doesn’t entirely hold water, within the narrative), noting, tongue-in-cheek, “I believe this was the last time I appeared naked in one of my own films.” Finally, there’s also a trailer for Sayles’ Casa de los Babys and a 12-minute featurette which cross-cuts film clips with addtional sit-down reminiscences from Sayles and his longtime partner, actress-producer Renzi. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)

An actor and comedian given to shrewdly observant romanticizations of laziness and over-indulgence, both personally and societally, Jim Gaffigan has a keen sense of and appeciation for language, which helps him flirt around the edges of a joke, so that he’s never really dependent on pure repetition to milk a laugh. The highly anticipated follow-up to his platinum-selling Beyond the Pale, Jim Gaffigan: King Baby finds the Indiana-born comedian wrapping up his 2008 tour with a final night in Austin.

A portion of King Baby, which runs around 70 minutes, takes aim at food, from the spelling of bologna (and inclusion of olives in some varieties) to mood dining and the plasticine decor of fast food restaurants. Bowling also gets quite a bit of run (“No one’s ever jealous when they find out you went bowling…”), though clearly from an affectionate place. But Gaffigan is just as also likely to pivot from a seemingly rich topical stomping ground and take it in an unexpected direction. A run on camping (“If it’s so great, why are bugs trying to get into my house?”) gives way to an extended bit about bears, and the ludicrous advice of playing dead if attacked by one (“As if bears have some ethical code!”). Gaffigan also riffs memorably on hammocks (“Ever get in a hammock with someone else? You’d better be dating them, because it looks like you’re trying to start a family…”); while delivered at a comfortably conversational pace, other observational jokes are nicely sprinkled throughout, and seem like quick-hit cousins of some stand-alone, deadpan Mitch Hedberg lines.

Holding this all together is Gaffigan’s tremendously sympathetic nature and demeanor. Scattering his set with whispery, high-pitched asides that serve as self-effacing buoys, Gaffigan comes across, in the very best sense of the phrase, as workman-like. This means the jokes at his own expense (“Look at him — his head is huge! It could be a mascot… for Mormons!”) aren’t desperate or keening — sad attempts to win over audience sympathy and cheap yuks. No, instead, they flow freely, and sincerely, from his own sense of humor and laidback personality. Watching Gaffigan’s set, he seems to retain a (Midwestern?) core decency born of the principal that reward deserves to be met with continued effort, and opportunity with appreciation. That he’s funny is indisputably a given; he also seems like a fundamentally good guy, too, which makes him even more endearing.

Housed in a white, regular Amaray case, King Baby is presented in widescreen format, with English language stereo and 5.1 surround audio tracks. Unlike many other stand-up comedy titles, King Baby comes a solid slate of supplemental bonus features, including a never-before-aired British interview, meet-and-greet footage from Atlanta, extra material from the Beyond the Pale tour, an XM/Sirius interview and all sorts of extra material, which targets neighbors, Gaffigan’s inner monologue and the Transportation Security Administration. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. A- (Concert) A- (Disc)

The Best Picture Oscar victory of Slumdog Millionaire, along with the surprise commercial success of director Danny Boyle‘s film, only serve to underscore the reality of India’s emergence on the world stage. Now, in the form of the superlative, gorgeously photographed six-part documentary The Story of India, there’s a deeper exploration of the country’s rich culture and history to further contextualize that ascendancy.

Hosted by acclaimed British historian-filmmaker Michael Wood (Conquistadors, In Search of Myths and Heroes, Legacy: The Origins of Civilization), and neatly segmented into six hour-long episodes that stretch back 50,000 years, this title is a fascinating and surprisingly intellectually spry exploration of India, from the country’s historical roots and its culture, customs and people to its present-day status as a rising
economic leader in the global marketplace. A complex and at times contradictory land of history and myth, opulence and poverty, spiritualism and science, India is now recognized as the world’s largest democracy. Yet it also remains a place barely known to many Westerners, only 60 years removed from winning its independence from Great Britain.

Even though this ancient civilization is poised at the precipice of an immense economic expansion — with its computer
technology, industrial production and the professional acumen of an
educated, upwardly mobile middle class powering exponential growth even in the face of recession elsewhere — India’s real fortune has always been its wondrous culture, and the astounding diversity of its people. From the deserts of Turkmenistan to the Khyber Pass, from war-torn Iraq to the palm-fringed shores of Kerala, personable multi-hyphenate Wood journeys across the Indian subcontinent and beyond to uncover the fabulous sights, dramatic history and dazzling achievements of the world’s oldest and most influential civilization.

One of the more interesting portions of the film is its opener, “Beginnings,” which covers 50,000 to 1,000 B.C. All non-Africans can trace their lineage back to India, and Madurai Kamaraj University Professor R.M. Pitchappan’s research in Tamil Nadu offers up a fascinating confirmation of this; geneticists testing the DNA of remote tribal villagers confirm migrational history when they discover a genetic marker identical to that of the earliest known man. Equally interesting is a portion of the movie that examines the Brahmin religious chants. Dating back tens of thousands of years, before human speech, they do not conform to any human language, and are thus unable to be transcribed; instead, they’re passed down only orally, and featured in a ritualistic 12-day ceremony that concludes with the burning down of the very huts in which the celebration is held.

As one might surmise, The Story of India touches on Hinduism significantly throughout, but also somewhat lightly at times. It highlights dharma, or virtue; artha, or wealth and success; kama, or pleasure; and moksha, or enlightenment, but at times reduces creation myth to ham-fisted voicover (“The first humans came from a golden egg laid by the king of the gods in the churning of the cosmic ocean”). Furthermore, the religion’s mutually sustaining caste system is given somewhat of a free pass, reduced to a colorful symbiotic quirk which will strike some Christians (or even agnostics) as cruelly hegemonic. That said, this is still an engrossing portrait of a country on the rise — and a place that Americans should definitely want to learn more about.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a snap-in tray, The Story of India comes spread out over two discs. Presented in widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, the program comes with 5.1 surround sound and closed captions and audio descriptions for the visually impaired. Its sole supplemental bonus feature comes in the form of nine minutes of “sights and sounds” footage, some replicated in the program’s credits, which spotlights arty, time-lapse photography as well as portraits of Indians from all walks of life. It’s a double-edged sword; a title this rich and in-depth packs a lot into its massive running time, alleviating the real need for any further non-fiction featurettes. Still, a brief making-of featurette or some other behind-the-scenes material would be nice, given the quality of what else is here. To order any DVD release directly from PBS Home Video, click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. For those interested, The Story of India is also available on Blu-ray. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Written by Allan Loeb and directed by Susanne Bier, Things We Lost in the Fire centers on Audrey Burke (Halle Berry), who, after her husband Brian (David Duchovny) dies unexpectedly, develops and nurtures a symbiotic relationship of need and guilt with an old childhood friend of Brian’s, a recovering drug addict named Jerry Sunborne (Benico Del Toro).
For reasons even she can’t fully articulate, Audrey invites Jerry to
move out of the flophouse in which he’s staying, and come live with she
and her two children. Still wounded by their dad’s sudden departure,
10-year-old Harper (Alexis Llewellyn) and 6-year-old Dory (Micah Berry)
latch onto Jerry, and he to them. Jerry even gets help and a job offer
from one of Brian’s friends (John  Carroll Lynch), and strikes up a
casual acquaintanceship with a fellow recovering addict (Alison Lohman)
with whom he crosses paths in a 12-step meeting. And then… other
stuff happens — big, yes, but mostly small. That logline suffices,
since Things We Lost in the Fire is chiefly about coming back to life after loss, and the unlikely blooms that develop after fields have been burned low.

It sounds weird, I realize, but one tangential, if esoteric, way to analyze/praise Things We Lost in the Fire is to say that it feels like an adaptation of one of Bier’s superlative Danish films (Family Matters, Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding).
It’s a movie that has the same intimacy and disarming honesty as much
of her previous work, and that’s how easy and form-fitting the union of
material and helmer feels.

The fractured structure of the film
works to its advantage in that we don’t see “user Jerry” early in the
movie; when he inevitably backslides (this is what addicts do, after
all), it’s almost more of a shock than it should be. There’s not much here narratively that’s formally shocking,
though it is intriguing to witness the movie indulge Audrey’s
foregrounded resentment and anger toward Jerry to the hearty degree
that it does. This is a bit of a change-up from the films of weepy,
lean-on-me reconciliation that we’ve come to expect from Hollywood, and
something I appreciated even if I found the character of Audrey still a
bit of a cipher. Chiefly, though, Bier has the great benefit of Del Toro, whose eyes convey the force of an inner turmoil.
There’s a whole other off-screen story in those eyes, and Jerry’s tale,
while an uncomplicated one (a smart guy who dabbled in drugs and
quickly got in over his head), is what gives this movie its pull. We
witness how fragile and slippery the nature of recovery truly is, as
well as how helping others heals ourselves.

Things We Lost in the Fire
comes to Blu-ray presented in superb 1080p high definition, in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen
with a crisp English language
5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio track. Other audio options includes French and
Spanish language 5.1
Dolby digital surround sound tracks; optional English SDH, French,
Spanish and Portuguese subtitles are also included. Imported from its previous DVD release, the bonus material kicks off with a collection of seven deleted scenes, running about nine-and-a-half minutes in total. Most are understandable snips, but one big sequence
feels like it should’ve been left in — a scene where Audrey gives
Jerry a cabinet she was working on before her husband’s death, and
confesses an argument in which she believed him to have stolen money
out of her car. The only other supplemental feature is a 20-minute, thematically-oriented featurette about the movie with interview snippets from all of its principal players,
including Berry, Duchovny, Del Toro and Bier, as well as writer Loeb
and producers Sam Mercer and Sam Mendes. There are plenty of insights
and interesting tidbits herein (Berry talks about trying to find
“different levels of shock” for her character, for instance, which I’d argue that
perhaps she doesn’t fully do), but the Achilles heel of this piece is that
too many clips from the movie — far more than necessary for
illustrative purposes — are interspersed between the interviews,
ruining any delicate sense of flow or momentum. Also included is a high-definition version of the movie’s theatrical trailer, and 12 minutes of previews for other Paramount titles, including Margot at the Wedding, Into the Wild, Beowulf and The Kite Runner. To purchase the Blu-ray via
Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Bunnytown: Hello Bunnies! is not the sort of “as-seen-on-TV!” title advertised on Comedy Central at 2 a.m. (In other words, no, it’s not these sorts of Bunnies, or any of their brethren.) So it’s not necessarily in my personal wheelhouse. Yet empirical research, in the form of forced viewings with two target-demo kids, confirms that the DVD is a pleasing mix of color and sound for the pre-adolescent mind.

A hit Playhouse Disney series, Bunnytown is a collection of
colorful puppet characters, silly skits and groovy, original music combined
with lessons about sharing, teamwork and perseverance. This DVD compiles four episodes of the show: “Hello Bunnies,” “Bunny-a-Go-Go,” “Bumblin’ Bunnies” and “G’Day Bunnies.” This allows tyke viewers to sail the seas with Pirate Bunnies, watch Super Bunny save the “Crunchy Carrot Festival” from the unibrowed Lil’ Bad Bunny and his Carrot Picker 3.0, and soar through the galaxy with Space Bunny as they go about their musical day. Pleasingly, for both kids as well as parents who might not have the same tolerance for the repeat viewings bound to ensue upon purchase, the musical numbers run the gamut with respect to genre, touching on rock ‘n’ roll, country, bluegrass and even disco music. The puppet characters are fuzzy and appealing and the voicework is all chipper and peppy, which mitigates the telegraphed moralizing of the age-appropriate dialogue. For colorful entertainment with a solid message, Bunnytown: Hello Bunnies! makes the solid Easter gift.

Housed in a regular Amaray plastic case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Bunnytown: Hello Bunnies! is presented in a 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio, with Dolby digital sound tracks in both English and Spanish. DVD bonus features consist of an interactive ”Bunny Dance” segment, in which residents of Bunnytown and the Bunny Band use silhouetted dance moves to teach viewers how to dance; a multiple-choice-style game, entitled “It’s That Time Again,” which spotlights segments with King Fluffy the Forth and Jester Bunny; and an exclusive sneak peek of the all-new Disney Mickey Mouse Clubhouse movie Mickey’s Adventure in Wonderland. For what it’s worth, there’s also an outside cover sticker good for a free plush bunny (minus only a
$2.49 shipping and handling charge) with the purchase of the DVD. So be ready to surreptitiously remove that notice if you’ve already reached your household limit on stuffed animals. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Show) B- (Disc)

A carefully observed autumnal character study loosely in the vein of 2007’s Starting Out in the Evening, Elegy is based on a novel by Philip Roth, and directed by Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me). The film charts the relationship between a celebrated, notably indepedent and emotionally distant college professor, David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley), and Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz),
a gorgeous student who punctures his wry, protective veneer. As their
affair ignites, frays and recommences, Kepesh must come to grips with
the possibility of a deeper love — something with which he’s never felt comfortable.

I initially felt that Elegy, as adapted by The Human Stain screenwriter Nicholas Meyer, with undulating rhythms that alternate between gallop and yawn, wasn’t quite built to cover as much narrative ground as it does, even at 112 minutes. Upon a second viewing, though, the ambition of its narrative roots feels much more firmly anchored and deeply etched; this is an intimate and quietly engaging film, and one perhaps made for the confines of a small, dimly lit den, with a glass of wine. The major leg up that Elegy has on
a lot of thematically similar tales of power-imbalanced romance is that
Kepesh is of course a very literate and self-aware figure, so we enjoy
an articulated sense of inner turmoil, of how one no-strings-attached lover (Patricia
Clarkson) is merely a comfortable point of carnal contact with past
self-confidence, while a similar arrangement with Consuela scares him
so. In fact, despite the fact that he’s had more than 50 lovers to her five, Kepesh becomes preoccupied with her sexual past.

Even as he takes the advice of a fellow ladies man and colleague (Dennis Hopper), and pushes Consuela away, Kepesh can’t locate peace, or centeredness. Part of the reason stems from his estranged
relationship with his married son (Peter Sarsgaard), who feels
compelled to act out in the same ways that his father did years before.
The performances here are committed and quietly engaging
(Cruz does wonders with her eyes), and Coixet, serving as her own camera operator, beautifully captures
the lingering, jangled spaces between all parties, and how even the
most intelligent among us can build up a justification for walls of
isolation.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Elegy comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English subtitles that can of course be utilized in conjunction with the disc’s audio commentary track with screenwriter Meyer. Though marked by long passages of silence, Meyer is a smart guy and his commentary showcases his thoughtfulness, especially when he discusses how he picked a title to capture “the movie version of the novel,” and how it grapples with coming to terms with age. Meyer also confesses he’s not typically interested in traditional plot hooks so much as “people trying to figure out which way is up, and how to just live.”

The only other bonus supplement is a five-minute making-of featurette comprised of brief interview clips with Coixet and the stars, with Kingsley solemnly intoning, “Love, loss, age, jealousy — we’re here to define words that get very lazily used.” This is a half-notch above your typical EPK-type featurette, mainly due to the insightfulness of its contributors, but overall there’s still more disc input needed from Kingsley, Cruz and Coixet. Rounding things out are previews for Volver, Breaking Bad, I’ve Loved You So Long, The Lodger, Fragments, What Doesn’t Kill You and other Sony home video titles. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)

One of the most celebrated 19th century romance novels of all time,
and still a staple of many high school reading curricula, Wuthering Heights — or Withering Heights, as a kid in my class once knew it — is also frequently tackled for adaptation on stage and screen, in ways that often don’t do much justice to the original source material. New to DVD, Masterpiece Theatre’s presentation thankfully gets right Emily Brontë’s classic love story, in ways both large and small.

Starring Tom Hardy (The Virgin Queen, RocknRolla) as Heathcliff and newcomer Charlotte Riley as Cathy, this intense, two-and-a-half-hour production will have romantics swooning. As adapted by Peter Bowker and directed by Coky Giedroyc, it’s a nicely mounted, attractively costumed and photographed production, and the lead performances both adequately capture the all-consuming nature of commingled lust and love. Set against the stark beauty of the English moor, the story, of course, centers around mysterious gypsy boy Heathcliff, who’s adopted by the well-to-do Earnshaw family. There, Heathcliff discovers his soulmate in the form of his stepsister, Cathy. She returns his passion, but Cathy also frets and fears over his future (the modern phrase would be “earnings potential,” I reckon), so much so that she marries another man for his wealth. Unable to have the love of his life, Heathcliff sets out to amass his own fortune, seeking to reclaim Cathy or bring vengeance and misery against anyone who comes between them. His actions eventually drive a heartbroken Cathy to an early grave, only further shattering Heathcliff’s heart.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Wuthering Heights comes to DVD on a region-one disc, presented in anamorphic widescreen. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features included here, which is a shame — even a brief, quickly slapped together talking-head-type biographical featurette on Brontë would have further shined a light on the material, and probably helped save at least one little kid out there somewhere from mangling the title. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. To order the DVD directly from WGBH Boston Video, meanwhile, phone (800) 949-8670 or click here. B+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Happy-Go-Lucky, from writer-director Mike Leigh, unfolds in the British director’s signature improvisational style, whereby the script is whittled down into naturalistic shape via several weeks of intensive rehearsal, and collaboration between the actors and filmmaker. For some of Leigh’s movies that works well (Secrets and Lies), for others (Topsy-Turvy) not so much. Happy-Go-Lucky, thankfully, is much more a case of the former. An effervescent comedy that finds delightful friction in its indulgence of polar opposite personalities, the movie serves as a star-making vehicle for Sally Hawkins, who earned a Best Actress Golden Globe
Award for her joyful star turn as Poppy, a peppy,
irrepressibly free-spirited teacher with an infectious laugh and an
unshakably positive outlook on life.

Leigh’s Oscar-nominated screenplay centers around London school teacher Poppy, who approaches every day with an optimism and bubbly, rib-nudging joy that is absolutely unshakable… and also can be a bit annoying. When the bicycle she commutes to work on is stolen, Poppy simply signs up for driving lessons. Her squat, East End-bred teacher, Scott (Eddie Marsan), is a fuming, uptight cynic whose swallowed anger and simmering exasperation comes to a boil in a series of clench-jawed tutorials and hilariously inappropriate episodes of road rage. They are a terrible match, in every sense of the word, and the divide only deepens when Scott comes to bitterly regard a potential suitor in Poppy’s life. Is solemness a requisite for emotional maturation, a necessary component of functional adulthood? Poppy’s disdainful, pregnant sister seems to think so, but neither she, Scott, a fiery flamenco instructor nor a classroom bully can seemingly change this happy-go-lucky gal’s glass-half-full worldview.

While Poppy perhaps skirts the edge of annoyance as a character that we would want a part of our everyday lives in the real world, she’s also entirely recognizable, and real — her behavior stems and flows from rooted emotions, and makes sense scene to scene. In that regard, it doesn’t matter whether one really “likes” Poppy, only that they recognize in her struggles the very personal and proactive application of joy as a weapon — something to keep the weight of negative emotions at bay — as well as something that keeps her in a state of arrested development. As counterbalance, Marsan gives good, sputtering rage. And, thankfully, Leigh doesn’t push down hard on the life-affirming stuff. Joy may not be able to be contrived, but at the same time it’s true that mood influences surroundings, and Happy-Go-Lucky winningly showcases both maxims.

Housed on a single disc in a regular plastic Amaray case, Happy-Go-Lucky is presented in 2:35:1 widescreen with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. The DVD’s bonus features are anchored by a feature-length audio commentary track from Leigh, who is amiable and chatty, but not a prisoner to over-explanation. The vast majority of his thoughts are confined to the world of the film rather than its production, but Leigh also isn’t afraid to take a knee and let some silence speak for him, or simply pose questions as to possible different meanings/motivations of what’s unfolding on screen. Those who know and appreciate the filmmaker’s work will especially find reward in this track.

Running roughly 30 minutes, “Happy in Character” charts the making of the movie in more explicitly anecdotal, nuts-and-bolts fashion, with Leigh and the cast discussing the characters and story, and creation and winnowing process of the film; Leigh is his usual hyper-articulate self, and Hawkins especially comes off as a charmer here. There’s also a shorter, behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the film’s “studio on wheels,” since so many of Happy-Go-Lucky‘s crucial scenes take place in a car, and in actual London traffic. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; for an interview with Leigh, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

The sequel to the hit live-action supernatural movie Death Note, based
on the 15-million-selling manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and
illustrated by Takeshi Obata, Death Note II: The Last Name is once again directed by renowned
monster filmmaker Shusuke Kaneko, and focuses on the conclusion of the
titanic struggle between two geniuses trying to win ultimate control of a book that brings death to those whose names are written in it.

After quickly re-establishing some of the parameters of the film’s universe, and rules for the use of the special notebook with the power to kill — the death must happen within 23 days; if no
specific cause of death is noted in the notebook, the victim will suffer a heart
attack; and users have six minutes and 40 seconds (?!) to pen details
after first naming their victim, among others — Death Note II picks up with Light Yagami (Tatsuya Fujiwara) joining an investigative team in pursuit of the serial killer known as Kira. While L (Kenichi Matsuyama) still strongly suspects that Light is in fact Kira, Light continues to seek out the real name of L so that he can kill him with his Death Note. Making things even more unpredictable are the “Eyes of Death” that the second Kira possesses, enabling the owner to know the true identity and lifespan of any person. Light soon learns the identity of the other Kira, and wants to join forces to get rid of L. Will L be able to catch “Kira” before he gets killed? Who will be the last name written in the Death Note?

The Death Note manga and TV series are sensations in their Japanese homeland; the 37-episode animated cable series is seen by
millions each week, and also
distributed on DVD Stateside by VIZ Media, the releaser of this film. Even without a connection to the hardwired cultural mores and customs that ground the spookier elements of this material, it’s easy to grasp its popularity. Death Note II uses some canted stylistic tricks, but not to an obnoxious or wearying degree. Overall, there’s a nice mix of special effects work and real, match-cut hallucinatory images; the film’s mood is nicely sustained. Somewhat interestingly, the Red Hot Chili Peppers again contribute the movie’s opening theme song, “Dani California,” as well as other tunes.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Death Note II comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with superlative English language Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 sound mixes dubbed by the outstanding voice cast of the animated series. The original Japanese version of the movie is also included, obviously with English subtitles. The only problem here is that the subtitles don’t completely match the dubbed version of the movie; one assumes the latter is more accurate, but can’t be entirely certain. DVD bonus features consist of a special 21-minute making-of featurette (also set to tunes from the Red Hot Chili Peppers), in which cast and crew all sit for subtitled interviews. Also included are the original Japanese theatrical trailer for the film, as well as an English language version. For more information on both of the Death Note live action films, as well as other VIZ Pictures films, click here, or visit the film series’ namesake web site. For more information on the Death Note manga and animated series, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

Adapted from John Boyne’s award-winning novel of the same name, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas opens with a quote that characterizes childhood as being a carefree period before “the dark hour of reason grows.”
While generally true, there’s not much of that apple-cheeked optimism
in this well-crafted World War II drama, told from a child’s-eye view.
The quote, rather, serves as counterpoint for a prism through which
prejudice, dehumanization and corrupted innocence are all assayed in
quasi-fabulistic fashion.

The film unfolds through the eyes of eight-year-old Bruno (Asa
Butterfield, above), son of Nazi commandant Ralf (David Thewlis) and
Elsa (Vera Farmiga), a stay-at-home mother who embraces willful
obliviousness with regards to her husband’s soldierly duties. Largely
shielded from the realities of war, and certainly his father’s
complicity in its grim prosecution, Bruno grumbles at having to move
away from his friends and out to the country, where his family settles
into a large house with a distant view of a commune-style barn where all the “farmers” wear strange pajamas.
With no children with which to play, Bruno befriends a kitchen worker
named Pavel (David Hayman), a pitiful, shuffling older man who in
another life was a doctor.

After a week of hanging around the
house, Bruno sneaks out through the back garden in search of adventure.
He finally stumbles across Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a mousy Jewish boy at
the nearby fence-ringed farm — which is of course plainly evident to
the audience a concentration camp under Ralf’s newly expanded oversight
— and a forbidden friendship develops between the pair. A visiting
tutor hired by his father lectures him that all Jews are evil, and his
older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) eagerly drinks the nationalistic propagandistic Kool-Aid,
but Bruno is conflicted. As he steals food for his new friend, and plays games with him, his bond with Shmuel grows deeper, awakening
senses of moral impulse that Bruno didn’t even know he had. How will this
secret friendship play out?

Photographed by Benoit Delhomme (The Proposition), The Boy in the Striped Pajamas isn’t designed in as crushingly bleak a fashion as something like Lajos Koltai’s monochromatic Fateless,
a fellow Holocaust tale told from the perspective of a young boy. With
wide angles and uncluttered frames, screenwriter-director Mark Herman (Little Voice) aims for a more naturalistic palette, to underscore the movie’s humanistic tone. What most helps the film, though, is the wide-eyed Butterfield. Physically resembling a cross between a young Elijah Wood and Son of Rambow‘s
Bill Milner, Butterfield wonderfully captures Bruno’s naivete without ever
tipping over into affected cuteness. The rest of the performances are
nicely modulated as well. The pitfall of many World War II films is
that they try to retell a grand story on a cramped canvas, but The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells a discrete, moving, standalone tale from a specific point-of-view, and just tells it quite well.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with an accompanying cardboard slipcover, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas comes presented in 1:85:1 widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. An audio commentary track with Herman and author Boyne anchors the supplemental bonus features, and the two are quite complimentary of the other’s work. The same pair also offer brief, optional interjections over a small clutch of deleted scenes, most of which expand upon the movie’s set-apart rural setting and young Bruno’s increasing boredom in only rudimentary ways. Finally, there’s a 20-minute behind-the-scenes featurette which intercuts cast and crew interviews about the production, and shows how Herman, in tweaking the perspective of the novel, balanced the personal tale of Bruno and the sensitive reality of one of the darkest periods in world history. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

What do movie special effects, the stock market, heart attacks and the
rings of Saturn have in common? They all consist of fractals — irregular
repeating shapes found in cloud formations and tree limbs, stalks of broccoli and craggy mountain ranges, and even in the rhythm
of the human heart. With its latest superlative hour-long documentary release, NOVA takes viewers on an intriguing scientific exploration of this radical new branch of geometry, shining a spotlight on the man who pioneered the field.

For thousands of years, classical math was used in the cause of human creation and advancement, whether to build the pyramids or study the Parthenon. The patterns of nature, however, proved more elusive to distill to numbers. Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension looks at a group of pioneering mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry. At the center is Benoit Mandelbrot, a Yale professor who grew up as a hunted Jewish civilian in Nazi-occupied France, and hooked on with IBM in 1958, tackling myriad problems associated with data transfer during the early stages of the development of computers. His groundbreaking work on the 1960s and ’70s, building on Georg Koch’s namesake curve — used to describe the “finer indentations” of national coastlines, and how smaller units of measurement yielded ever larger estimates — opened up important new threads of discussion and thought about longstanding “mathematical monsters.”

Though Mandlebrot’s theories were met with predictable scorn at first, the remarkable and interesting thing is how these findings about fractals — in addition to deepening our understanding of nature — are also shown to have stimulated a new wave of scientific, medical and artistic innovation stretching from the ecology of the rainforest to Jhane Barnes’ fashion design. Industrial Light & Magic’s Willi Geiger even demonstrates the importance of fractals in a scene from Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. Other lively interview subjects like UC-Santa Cruz professor Ralph Abraham, as well as Mandlebrot himself, make this title an engaging treat.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension is presented in anamorphic widescreen with a static menu screen, its picture suitably clear and its English 5.1 stereo audio mix crisp and free from any background buzz or hiccups. It includes English SDH subtitles and described video for the visually impaired, along with a spare collection of DVD-ROM materials and activities for educators, and a reference link to the NOVA web site. The title is also available on Blu-ray, a first for any home video release from WGBH Boston Video. To purchase any DVD release from WGBH, including Fractals, phone (800) 949-8670, or click here. A- (Movie) C (Disc)

I’ve Loved You So Long centers around recent parolee Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas), who has for 15 years been estranged from
what remains of her family, and has a drab wardrobe of
browns and greys to match her battered psyche. Lea (Elsa Zylberstein, below left),
her younger sister, picks up Juliette at the airport and subsequently
takes her into her Parisian home, which she shares with her husband
Luc (Serge Hazanavicius), his mute father, and their two adopted little Vietnamese girls. As
Juliette is slowly reintegrated into society both at large — she even bags a one-afternoon stand — and in miniature, a slow thaw occurs, with unanticipated consequences for all
involved.

There’s a pinch of self-conscious
Franco-genuflection to the directorial debut of novelist and literature
professor Philippe Claudel, most particularly in the form of a dinner scene in which the assembled parties debate and praise filmmaker Eric Rohmer.
For those who’ve sampled even a bit of French cinema, the emotional
contours of this tale are familiar, and in that regard the movie feels
a bit like a stacked deck, daring one to rebel against its
slow-developing appraisal of confinement and regret. The studied warmth and unfussy sincerity of its superb, aching telling, though, wins out; I’ve Loved You So Long
is a movie about familial silences and the great, tilled-earth spaces
in between, both in relationships and in one’s head. The slow reveal of
the full reason behind Juliette’s incarceration gives the film some
extra emotional heft (doleful drags on cigarettes don’t hurt, either), but this is
first and foremost an Oscar-level showcase for Thomas, as a woman who
learns to purge herself of the swallowed self-loathing that has soured
her soul. Think of it as a French, secular rebirth drama, about
self-forgiveness and learning to walk looking at least partially
forward, and not always backwards.

Housed in an Amaray plastic case, I’ve Loved You So Long comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with melancholic motion menus and complementary French and English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround audio tracks; Thomas even provides the alternate dubbed voiceover for the latter track. Somewhat interestingly, the case itself features a hollowed-out spindle roughly the size of the DVD itself on each side, meaning that much less plastic is used to produce the case. The only downside of this otherwise laudable environmental consciousness is that the disc is a bit harder than normal to affix on its stabilizing button.

Apart from these cosmetic issues, I’ve Loved You So Long is unfortunately otherwise largely a case of a great but small film getting the bum’s rush DVD treatment from studio powers-that-be much more concerned with padding out that double-disc version of Hancock or Ghost Rider. Seven deleted scenes with optional subtitled French commentary from Claudel — who does speak English, it must be noted — run about five-and-a-half minutes. Many of the scenes, Claudel notes, including one of Juliette sitting next to an old woman at the police station, were trimmed because of what he deems his own poor on-set composition or blocking decisions, leaving him unsatisfied with editing bay choices. In another sequence, Luc observes Juliette; Claudel characterizes this scene, and a separate chat between Luc and Lea, as showing Luc being too forceful about his sister-in-law’s presence. Unfortunately, apart from these scenes, there are no other supplemental features of note, save the requisite theatrical trailer and previews for Blu-ray technology and a dozen other Sony home video releases. Given how much of an awards push this film was (rightly) given for its leading lady, it’s shocking that there isn’t at least some sort of interview material with Thomas. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

The third installment in one of the more bizarre and improbable adventure series out there
arrives on DVD just in time to give Noah Wyle fans some double-feature fodder, something
to counterbalance his return to the small screen for an arc on the final season
of ER.

The TBS-incubated Librarian series began in 2004 with The Librarian: Quest of
the Spear, followed by The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines. They’re sort of like The Da Vinci Code crossed with Indiana Jones, if that movie (or series) were to star Brendan Fraser, be written by a very enthusiastic community college instructor with only a single credit of Xena fan-fiction to his name, and then overseen by a very budget-conscious producer. It’s all air-quote tongue-in-cheek, in other words, meaning that its very chintziness is held up as a baked-in self-defense, and example of why it doesn’t aspire to more.

The movie’s stories revolve around Flynn Carsen (Wyle), a bookish chap drafted into archeological adventures, via his employer, as part of a larger battle between good and evil. This time it’s a deadly mission to recover the Judas Chalice; in tracking it down, Carsen is saved by, and falls in love with, a mysterious French woman, Simone Renoir (Stana Katic), who hides a terrifying past. When double-crossed by the respected Professor Lazio (Bruce Davison) and ambushed by a ruthless gang, Flynn realizes Simone’s secret, his true mission and a shocking discovery are all lying within a decaying New Orleans crypt — a crypt that may be holding Count Vlad Dracula, whom the world has feared for centuries.

The film benefits, one supposes, from some surrounding consistency off-screen. Director Jonathan Frakes is back at the helm, along with much of the same production team of the series, and reprising their supporting roles from the second film are also Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin (3rd Rock from the Sun). Series writer Marco Schnabel, though, isn’t able to till much clever ground in the dialogue department, and the crimped production means undercut what are supposed to be some of the film’s more cathartic, involving adventure sequences. A simple rule that The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice forgets: if you can’t afford it, don’t write it, write around it.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio mix and, somewhat curiously, optional subtitles in English only. (One presumes, given the swashbuckling nature of the material, that there would be a slightly bigger international audience for this type of programmer, but the narrow range of its language options seems to be a silent concession of its cheesy narrative faults.) Bonus features arrive in the form of some behind-the-scenes footage and three deleted scenes, running just over seven minutes. The biggest of the excised scenes is an extended sword fight, rightly snipped because of its awkward blocking and pacing, in which Carson gets his rented tuxedo slashed, and parries around and through sculpture and paintings. An additional seven minutes on the movie’s visual effects showcases tweaked material (it’s mostly background material) via comparative split-screen wipes. Finally, there’s 150 seconds of edited together rehearsal footage from a monastery scene within the movie. Rounding things out are previews for Termination Point and a handful of other Sony home entertainment releases. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)

The Bible’s Buried Secrets is a landmark two-hour NOVA special taking viewers on a fascinating scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues to this day. The film presents the results of more than 100 years of excavation and centuries of biblical scholarship, digging deep into the origins of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

A reasoned, well mannered archeological detective story, the documentary tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies. Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one god — the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam — actually emerge over polytheism? The film’s roster of interviewees is wide and varied, including The Gift of the Jews
author Thomas Cahill and academicians like P. Kyle McCarter of John
Hopkins University, Michael Coogan of Stonehill College and Manfred
Bietak of the Austian Academy of Sciences. The result is a powerful intersection of science, scholarship, and scripture; The Bible’s Buried Secrets provides unique insight into the deeper meaning of the biblical texts and their continuing resonance through the centuries.

Perhaps most interesting are the movie’s clear contextual framings. Several other films, including Walking the Bible, have delved into the archeological history of the Bible, but The Bible’s Buried Secrets is upfront about the lack of historical reference and support, for instance, for the Israelites’ desert wandering, which would have had to have been sometime between 1275 and 1208 B.C. Side-by-side discrepancies between accounts of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark are also spotlighted (“40 days and 40 nights” is the most popularly recited length, but the Bible also tabs the event as lasting 150 days), and linguistic analysis supports the argument that the first five books of the Bible, also known as The Torah, was written not by Moses, but many generations of scribes, spanning 100 or more years.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Bible’s Buried Secrets comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with optional closed captions and described video for the visually impaired. Unlike most other WGBH Boston Video titles, there are bonus features included — this time in the form of a half hour of extra scenes/excised material. Materials and activities for educators are also spotlighted via a link to the NOVA web site. To order any DVD or VHS release from WGBH Boston Video, including the aforementioned Walking the Bible, phone (800) 949-8670 or click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)