Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, Oct. 30:
‘Tis the weekend for thrills, chills and spooky scares. In addition to the usual “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “Friday the 13th” and “The Wolf Man,” there are plenty of dvds guaranteed to make your heart pound a little faster. Among my favorites are Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” with Jack Nicholson; Sam Raimi’s “The Evil dead;” Brian DePalma’s “Dressed to Kill” with Michael Caine; Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion;” David Lynch’s “Eraserhead;” and Robin Hardy’s original “The Wicker Man,” starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, not the dreadful Nicolas Cage remake.
As a tantalizing teaser for Roland Emmerich’s upcoming “2012,” “The Nostradamus Files” is A&E’s new doomsday-themed collection exploring apocalyptic visions and other ancient prophecies that point to catastrophic changes in the coming two years. Also from A&E, “Haunted Histories: America’s Most Haunted Places” and “Monsterquest” Movie Monsters.” And from IFC, there’s “Fear(s) of the Dark,” an anthology of dark, unsettling animated shorts from graphic artists/cartoonists Blutch (Christian Hincker), Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Richard McGuire, Pierre di Sciullo and Lorenzo Mattotti.
But don’t be fooled by the prestigious cast in “Afterwards.” Despite featuring John Malkovich, Romain Duris and Evangeline Lilly, this silly, supernatural story about people who see about-to-be-dead people comes up short on suspense, characterization, pace and pay-off which is why it never got a theatrical release.
For the kids, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” finds Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) feeling abandoned by his friends. So he swipes three huge eggs he finds under the ice and ‘adopts’ the newly hatched dinosaurs, infuriating their mother who kidnaps him and takes him beneath the frozen tundra into a perilous subterranean world filled with T-Rexes, raptors, flying pterodactyls and carnivorous plants.
PICK OF THE WEEK: The evil child thriller “Orphan” combines psychological elements from “The Bad Seed,” “The Omen” and “The Good Son” – with a weird plot twist. After their third child is stillborn, a troubled Connecticut couple (Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt. Inexplicably, they choose a mysteriously prim-and-proper nine year-old Russian émigré (Isabelle Fuhrman), who turns out to be a malevolent menace.