Susan Granger’s DVD UPDATE for week of Friday, July 1:
Set in the 14th century, “Season of the Witch” is a stale, supernatural thriller that can’t decide whether it’s a quasi-religious journey or campy nonsense, leaving Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman cursed in a medieval muddle.
“Beastly” is a shallow, contemporary spin on “Beauty and the Beast” with arrogant Alex Pettyfer running for student council at a elite Manhattan prep school. He gets his comeuppance when he mocks a Goth-like misfit (Mary-Kate Olsen) who turns him into a disfigured ‘beast’ on a quest to find someone to love him – and that turns out to be an earnest scholarship student played by Vanessa Hudgens.
“The Warrior’s Way” is a chop suey Western, beginning in Korea, where the Greatest Swordsman in the History of Mankind (Dong-gun Jang) saves a baby girl and flees with her from the Far East to the Old West, where he’s befriended by a flirtatious woman (Kate Bosworth) with a tortured past and comes up against a savage pervert (Danny Huston) who terrorizes the townfolk.
Far better is “Max Manus,” a rousing historical epic, recounting the remarkable, true story of Norway’s most celebrated resistance fighter and one of the most brilliant saboteurs of WWII, whose damaging and sinking German ships has become legend.
Filmed last year in Dublin and London, Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance” captures the energetic, celebratory excitement of iconic Irish folklore.
“Timmy Time: Picture Day” follows a day in the life of a preschooler, learning lessons about friendship and trial and error to which every child can relate, while “I’m Dirty & I Stink!” are terrific stories by Kate and Jim McMullan, involving trucks and trash, boats and bikes. And “Good Night, Gorilla” is a wacky adventure collection about creatures great and small from Storybook Treasures.
PICKS OF THE WEEK: In “Barney’s Version,” Paul Giamatti plays a boozing, curmudgeonly TV producer telling a poignant, melancholy morality tale after the publication of a tell-all book that dredges up his “wasted life,” spanning two continents over four decades with three wives (Rachelle Lefevre, Minnie Driver, Rosamund Pike). And on Blu-ray, the highly anticipated “The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy: Extended Edition” has amplified versions of all three films on 15 discs with more than 26 hours of special features, including the Costa Botes documentaries.