Unless she’s one of the boys (or just really likes Brad Pitt), she probably won’t derive much pleasure from watching a couple of guys beat the living shit out of each other. Sweaty, macho porn is on the menu for FIGHT CLUB ($39.95; $28.96), with this release being dubbed the “YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL” 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. Ah, just like dad used to scream at the boys.
…But end with the classics
Want to show ’em a barometer of just how special Blu-ray can be? Give them one or more of the following films from Hollywood’s Golden Era. From the 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ ($84.99; $69.92), to the 50th Anniversary Edition of Alfred Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST ($84.99; $69.92), they likely never knew old films could ever look or sound as good as these perennial holiday classics: 1947’s MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET ($84.99; $69.92), starring an impossibly young Natalie Wood (back when she was miraculously still breathing); the quintessential, 1951 A CHRISTMAS CAROL ($29.99; $19.99), with the sublime Alastair Sim as the all-time greatest Scrooge. (Jim Carrey should be ashamed.) Do they want the moon? Throw a lasso around IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE ($29.99; $24.99).
Put any one of these gifts under their tree, and they’re sure to agree.
Related:
Review: The House of the Devil, Review: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Review: Defamation, More
- Review: The House of the Devil
Have you walked near a college campus lately? You might notice that the ’80s are creeping into fashion, the way the ’70s did a few years back, and with the same lack of irony. It’s happening in cinemas, too — something that’s not entirely unwelcome when it comes to the horror genre.
- Review: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
In this soupy 1951 romantic melodrama, Ava Gardner plays Pandora, a self-loathing vixen who toys with the affections of sundry panting males while waiting without hope for her real love to appear.
- Review: Defamation
Yoav Shamir, a young Israeli documentarian, goes off to America and Eastern Europe with a camera and a question: is anti-Semitism an important concern today for Jews, or are those anxious about it being unduly paranoid?
- Review: Strongman
Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun is a lumbering, mumbling tree of a man.
- Review: Brothers
Operation Enduring Freedom seems to have replaced Vietnam as Hollywood's go-to military quagmire from which to dredge gut-wrenching meditations on the psychological carnage of war.
- Review: La Danse: Le Ballet de L'Opéra de Paris
Frederick Wiseman's documentary is a love letter to Paris, to the Palais Garnier opera house (the Bastille gets a cameo), and the Paris Opera Ballet.
- Review: Irene in Time
Luckless in love, Irene (Tanna Frederick) wants to "find a guy like my daddy." Her father, she says (over and over and over), "was really magical." Truth be told, her absent dad doesn't seem like that great a guy.
- Review: The Slammin' Salmon
Here's how the shit version of Waiting likely came to be: the Broken Lizard boys (David Heffernan directs) thought the concept of a boxing-champ-turned-Miami-restaurateur was funny, and they wrote and shot a major motion picture without bothering to design a plot.
- Review: Invictus
Poetry, muses Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) in a reflective moment in Invictus , consists only of words, yet it can inspire perseverance and greatness beyond our own expectations of ourselves. Sport, similarly, consists of oversized, overpaid athletes pounding one another in simulated combat, but it's also a form of poetry.
- Review: Armored
In view of its credentials, Armored should be a lay-up.
- Review: Me and Orson Welles
With Orson Welles, it's all in the voice — which over the course of four decades could sell anything from a Martian invasion to Paul Masson wine.
- Less
Topics:
Features
, Entertainment, Entertainment, DVDs, More
, Entertainment, Entertainment, DVDs, Bruno Ganz, Mira Nair, Carol Reed, Catherine Hardwicke, Chris Hegedus, Albert Maysles, Robert Mitchum, Less