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Video: 4
Audio: 5
Extras: 5
I was so unimpressed with the first two Harry Potter movies that I didn’t bother to see the third or this one in theaters. Boy, did I miss out. This and Prisoner of Azkaban are excellent. In this episode of the Harry Potter serials, Hogwarts is playing host to the Triwizard Tournament. Somehow, Harry’s name gets entered, even though he’s too young. From the little touches of the teenagers’ growing pains to the significant plot developments in the Potter canon, you shouldn’t miss this one. Oh, and there’s a bunch of action, too.

Video: 4
Audio: 2
Extras: 5
Married yuppies Jane (Ta Leoni) and Dick (Jim Carrey) try to keep up appearances after Dick’s fraudulent company implodes in this frequently hilarious romp. Laced with underlying righteous anger at the corporate shenanigans of recent years, the film still holds plenty of laughs in the physical comedy and strong rapport between Carrey and Leoni. The two characters become partners in crime to pay the bills and hold onto their house. Watching Carrey try and fail repeatedly to draw his gun while robbing a convenience store will have you in stitches, and Leoni more than holds her own with scenes like the one where she bluffs her way through teaching a gymnastic-fighting class.

Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
Suburban angst and dysfunction are prime fodder for films and TV, whether it be housewives that seem desperate or disaffected teens too heavily medicated to even communicate with each other. The Chumscrubber falls into the latter category and presents a world all too familiar, while retaining its individuality in the genre.

Video: 4
Audio: 5
Extras: 3
The hardest decision a filmmaker has when creating a biopic is deciding what events to include. It may be easy to pare down the sum of my existence into a tidy, two-hour package, but I’m no Gandhi…or Richard Nixon or William Wallace or Mozart. These men led complicated, dense lives, and their biopics reflect that complexity with running times of three hours or more. In Walk the Line, director and cowriter James Mangold shows remarkable restraint in telling the story of his idol, Johnny Cash, in just over two hours. Cash’s life was no less dense, no less complicated. But Mangold chose to focus on the events leading up to 1968, a pivotal year in which Cash recorded At Folsom Prison, kicked his decade-long drug habit, and married June Carter. Up to that point, Cash lived a troubled, haunted existence, but, in 1968, he found redemption. That, for Mangold, was the story to tell, and he tells it very well.