dvd/vod/streaming

See it: • The Darjeeling Limited [buy it]. From my review: “We haven’t located us yet.” That makes my brain giggle and my soul smart — see, “smart” is the equivalent of “pain,” sometimes — in almost exactly the same way as that line’s counterappealing opposite: Buckaroo Banzai’s “No matter where you go, there you … more…

Ask anyone of the Generation X persuasion about Joan Crawford, and there’s one image that invariably leaps to mind, and it ain’t of Joan Crawford: it’s of Faye Dunaway portraying Joan Crawford in the notorious 1981 biopic Mommie Dearest. And particularly of the clownishly madeup Dunaway Crawford screaming about wire hangers, the undesirability of. So … more…

See it: • Becoming Jane [buy it]. From my review: I love Becoming Jane even if it is almost entirely invented, because it captures both the aching romanticism and the cold, hard practicalities of Austen’s fiction. And it even, in a way, does Austen one better: it’s laden with all of the angst and heartbreak … more…

See it: • Elizabeth: The Golden Age [buy it]. From my review: Torture! Intrigue! Sex! Treachery! Holy war! Cate Blanchett in royal drag! Clive Owen in pirate drag! We are highly amused. If 10th-grade history was as much fun as this, no one would ever cut class. Seriously, though: Why don’t they teach us history … more…

Skip it: • The Invasion [buy it]. From my review: “I’m so afraid I’m gonna fall asleep,” Nicole Kidman says at one point during The Invasion, which was just about the only spooky or eerie moment I encountered in this third — and entirely unnecessary — screen mounting of Jack Finney’s classic science fiction novel … more…

Mad Money opens tomorrow, and it’s yet another heist flick, which are almost always fun — and this one is unusual in that it’s the girls getting to have all the felonious fun this time around. And so I figured I’d put together a little retrospective of great heist movies. Which I started, as I … more…

See it: • 3:10 to Yuma [buy it]. From my review: Mangold makes you feel like you’ve never seen a Western before. The stagecoach ambush and robbery that opens the movie features some pretty clichéd moments — thundering horses, good guys and bad shootin’ at one another, etc. — but Mangold finds fresh angles on … more…

See it: • Shoot ’Em Up [buy it]. From my review: When I wrote this review last week, Shoot ’Em Up was “not yet rated” by the MPAA. Possibly that august organization couldn’t decide if this gloriously deranged orgy of Bugs Bunny-style action and nonstop gunplay warranted an NC-17 — cuz honestly, no one of … more…