More Top Picks Best Kids Teepee Tents For Bedrooms
player ready...Capsule reviews of movies new to DVD/videos released Tuesday (subject to change by studios):
Focus Feature
Coach Carter
If it didn’t actually happen, the story of Ken Carter would seem contrived and schmaltzy, even by Hollywood standards. After two decades, a star athlete returns to his alma mater — a school at the bottom of California’s academic ladder — and not only turns his ragtag hoops players into on-court winners, but successful students. Along the way, he makes national news, and ticks off parents, when he locks his undefeated team out of the gym for posting sub-par grades. Samuel L. Jackson captures Carter’s intensity with pinpoint sharpness, recalling Morgan Freeman’s principal Joe Clark in “Lean on Me.” As for the special features, they captivate like a clutch three-point shot. In one, we meet the real-life Carter and some of the star players from his 1999 team, including his son. It’s not just fascinating to see the counterparts to the movie characters, but satisfying to learn their fates. Any of the six deleted scenes could’ve easily made the final film, and a behind-the-scenes look at the training and filming of the basketball sequences shows a regimen that appears more grueling than a pro camp. On many occasions, the actor-athletes played — or is that worked? — for 12-plus hours a day. (PG-13)–Louis R. Carlozo
DVD rating (star)(star)(star)1/2
Tribune movie reporter Sid Smith’s rating for “Coach Carter”: (star)(star)(star)
Also out
American Psycho (2000) (star)(star)1/2
In “American Psycho,” Patrick Bateman, the tale’s vicious protagonist (named for “Psycho’s” Norman Bates, and played shockingly well by Christian Bale), becomes more clearly a poisonous symbol of the late-’80s gold-plated, amoral, poodle-eat-poodle era and place — Manhattan and Wall Street. This isn’t enough to make this film the dark classic it wants to be — or even, probably, to mollify some audiences who will still see it as a tawdry, salacious, blood-drenched, sexist mess. They will undoubtedly still be shocked by all the violence left in the story from Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial novel. (R)–Michael Wilmington
Added features: Uncut collector’s edition includes deleted scenes; director-writer commentary; cast and crew commentary; “Postcards from the ’80s”; on-set interviews and behind-the-scenes footage.
Callas Forever (star)(star)
“Callas Forever” is based on an unrealized idea by director Franco Zeffirelli to film his close friend and colleague, legendary opera singer Maria Callas, performing her signature roles to recordings made early in her career when her voice was in its prime. It was a terrible idea back in the 1970s, and it makes for a cliched, unintentionally funny piece of unrestrained diva worship today. (PG-13)–John von Rhein
Added features: None.
Cursed (star)(star)
The latest terrorfest from Wes Craven, not at his bloody best here — even though the movie reunites him with “Scream” writer Kevin Williamson. It’s another somewhat tongue-in-cheek Hollywood horror pastiche, starring Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg as siblings faced with werewolf attacks, but the screams and laughs are fewer, less clever and less startling. (PG-13)–M.W.
Added features: DVD comes out in two versions, PG-13 and unrated. Unrated version is two minutes longer (99 minutes) and both DVDs include a making-of featurette; “The `Cursed’ Effects”; “Creature Editing 101”; a featurette on creating a werewolf; four selected scenes with commentary by actor David Mears and makeup supervisor Greg Nicotero.
Hostage (star)(star)1/2
A snazzy, full-throttle cop thriller with lots of style and energy but much less sense or impact, “Hostage” stars Bruce Willis as a burned-out ex-L.A. hostage negotiator, pulled into a perilous standoff with street thieves, gangsters and a rich accountant. It’s a mixed bag of a picture, at first entertaining, then sinking into mad implausibility. Directed by French thriller ace Florent Siri (“The Nest”). (R)–M.W.
Added features: Deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary; behind-the-scenes featurette; audio commentary by Siri.
The Jacket (star)(star)(star)
Intense psychodrama and fine performances elevate “The Jacket” from a formulaic thriller, as Adrien Brody plays a Gulf War veteran with amnesia, framed for murder. While undergoing isolation therapy in a hospital for the criminally insane, Brody’s character finds that he can see into and visit the future. He learns the day of his death, and sets out to discover how he dies. (R)–Kevin Williams
Added features: Project history and deleted scenes; “The Look of `The Jacket,’ ” a special-effects featurette.
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (star)1/2
FBI agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) gets another makeover, this time to become the new face of the bureau, traveling the country with her entourage. When old pageant pals are kidnapped in Vegas, guess which stiletto-heeled Miss FBI saves the day? (PG-13)–Allison Benedikt
Added features: Full-screen edition comes with a soundtrack CD.
More Top Picks Best Winter Boots For Men
Critic’s pick
The Complete James Dean Collection (released May 31) (star)(star)(star)(star)
In many ways, James Dean had the most extraordinary of all American movie star careers: lasting just 14 months before his car-crash death on Sept. 30, 1955, brief, mercurial and stunning in its duration, durable and legendary in its aftermath. Warner Brothers’ new boxed Dean set is a classy memorial and one of the few really essential star-tribute sets. The box contains Dean’s three major movies: all in two-disc editions with plenty of extras, commentaries, screen tests, trailers and contemporary TV reports. The movies: director Elia Kazan’s fervid, woundingly human John Steinbeck adaptation, “East of Eden” ((star)(star)(star)(star)), Nicholas Ray’s tumultuous and romantic juvenile delinquent saga, “Rebel Without a Cause” ((star)(star)(star)(star)) and George Stevens’ grand, expansive Texas epic, from Edna Ferber’s best seller, “Giant” ((star)(star)(star)(star)). The first two were released in 1955 (“Rebel” just after Dean’s death), “Giant” in 1956. Dean copped posthumous best actor Oscar nominations in both years, for “Eden” and “Giant,” although it’s “Rebel” — with its feverish symbolism, nervous poetry and amazingly iconic cast (Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Dennis Hopper, Corey Allen) — that really set his legend. “Rebel” indelibly imprints his image: “Jim Stark,” the sensitive bad boy with the red windbreaker, jeans and hurt, boyish smile on a day and night of teenage love and death just after Easter. But “Eden” and “Giant” are classics as well; every one of these three belongs in any serious movie buff’s collection. This is the best way to get them. — M. W.
FAST-FORWARD
A peek at future DVD/video releases (dates subject to change by studios):
June 28
“Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” “The Divine Bette Midler,” “Gunner Palace,” “The Pacifier,” “Shallow Ground”
———-
Compiled by Louis R. Carlozo.