House of Flying Daggers (review)

It’s impossible not to compare Zhang Yimou’s *House of Flying Daggers* with *Hero,* his previous film, because although two years separate them, we got them in a one-two punch here in the States. And I was still reeling from *Hero* when I sat down to watch this new one, and although I kinda didn’t think it would be possible, *House of Flying Daggers* is even more beautiful and more romantic and more exciting and more spectacular and more *everything.* I’m almost afraid to know what Zhang will conjure up for his next film — I might explode out of sheer delight.

Zelary (review)

If it was an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film — as this one was last year — then it must have Nazis in it. Sure enough, here they are, swarming all over Prague, forcing cosmopolitan medical student/resistance member Eliska (Ana Geislerova) to run for the hills, literally. Hiding out in the titular Czech … more…

Who the Hell Is Bobby Roos? (review)

There’s no question that Roger Kabler is a startlingly gifted impersonator, with a repertoire that runs from John Travolta and Robert DeNiro to Robin Williams and Richard Dreyfuss, but this independently produced film is little more than an excuse to string together Kabler’s routines. The fictional story, “based on” Kabler’s “experiences,” follows the breakdown of … more…

21 Jump Street: The Complete First Season (review)

Oh my goodness, it’s one of my fantasies: Johnny Depp in a policeman’s uniform. He doesn’t last in the blues much beyond the opening minutes of the pilot of this powerfully influential 80s TV series — with that baby-face, he’s a joke on the streets but a hit in the undercover squad headquartered at the … more…

Tru Calling: The Complete First Season (review)

Tru Davies works at the morgue — graveyard shift, of course — where the dead people talk to her. Not all of them, just the “unnaturally” dead ones, the ones that she can jump back in time and save from their fate worse than… well, exactly as bad as death. It’s The Sixth Sense meets … more…

Prisoner: Cell Block H: 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

This women-behind-bars serial drama, a cult favorite around the world, arrives finally on DVD, but the package is more constrained than the show’s characters. The series, which originally ran in Australia from 1979 to 1986, was shot on video and has held up remarkably well… from a technical standpoint, at least. While the picture remains … more…

Pollyanna (review)

The beloved children’s book by Eleanor H. Porter gets a transplant from early-20th-century Vermont to Edwardian England in this British production, and that’s just fine: the indefatigable cheerfulness of its young heroine remains intact, and that’s all that matters. When the newly orphaned Pollyanna (delightful newcomer Georgina Terry) goes to live with her dour aunt, … more…

The O.C.: The Complete First Season (review)

So far, no gorgeous amnesiac who just blew back into town has turned out to be someone’s long-lost spouse/child/evil twin, but there’s little else that could make this hit Fox series any sudsier than it already is. Mere months after the final episode of its debut season was broadcast, it arrives on DVD, a hedonistic, … more…

I Am David (review)

Writer/director Paul Feig, the Emmy-nominated creator of TV’s Freaks and Geeks, brings us a different kind of outcast kid in David, a 12-year-old orphan escapee from a post-WWII Bulgarian labor camp journeying across Europe alone. In the best tradition of old-fashioned family films — the kind without fart jokes and precocious gradeschoolers, the kind that … more…