Audio Video News

DVD: City by the Sea—Warner Brothers
Audio: 3
Video: 3
Extras: 2
Uniformly strong performances by the leads, notably Robert De Niro and James Franco, highlight and give added cache to a gritty drama that often looks and feels like an independent production. De Niro is a veteran New York detective who learns that his estranged, drug-addicted son is a murder suspect. Himself the son of a man who was executed for a botched kidnapping decades before, De Niro's Vincent La Marca is determined to save his child from prison and, later, "suicide by cop." But he must first reconstitute his relationship with the teenager in order to help him.

DVD: Femme Fatale—Warner Brothers
Audio: 3
Video: 3
Extras: 2
The good news is that the lovely Rebecca Romjin-Stamos has now removed all doubt that she can act well enough to anchor a major motion picture. The sad part of the story is that Femme Fatale is a strange blend of Run Lola Run and the worst of filmmaker Brian De Palma's own canon that made me repeatedly ask both, "What the hell is going on?" and "Why does any studio finance ridiculous De Palma movies like this?" Brunette doppelgangers, double-crosses, alternate realities: You figure it out, if you have two hours to kill.

DVD-Audio: Joey Ramone, Don't Worry About Me (Silverline)
A friend of mine once said about the Ramones, "They're stupid, but they'll never lie to you." He was wrong about the stupidity but right about the sincerity. Who but Joey Ramone could do such a convincing cover of "What a Wonderful World"? In his hands, the song made famous by Louis Armstrong becomes a buzz-saw vision of a better world. With his death from leukemia not far off, the former lead singer of the Ramones wasn't in the mood for irony.

DVD: The Transporter—20th Century Fox
Audio 4
Video 4
Extras 3
In this film's transport to DVD, 20th Century Fox was able to keep the enthralling lack of plot and the eye-bleeding action scenes intact. The stone-faced Jason Statham plays a driver that transports stuff. I really mean stuff; he'll drive anything anywhere. Carrying the entire movie on about 100 lines of dialogue, Statham mostly just runs around punching, kicking, and shooting. At one point, he even puts his shirt on. This isn't to say that the movie isn't entertaining; it's just as intelligent as the banjo player from Deliverance.

DVD: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral—Paramount
Video: 2
Audio: 2
Extras: 1
This 1957 version of the famous gunfight that pitted Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday against the Clanton gang rides on the performances of its stars, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. The pair's grudging respect for each other, their relationships with women, and the events that lead to the conflagration at Tombstone (which occupies about six minutes of the 122-minute running time) is at the core of this film, which meanders like a lazy creek in a dusty town. The film doesn't age well, primarily because it seems so cliche-ridden today. Viewers should remind themselves that this movie actually invented many of the Old West cliches we take for granted now, such as the outlaw firing shots at the saloon piano player to inspire him to play.

DVD: 25th Hour—Buena Vista
Audio: 3
Video: 4
Extras: 3
I'll admit that 25th Hour seemed slow at first. Yet, as it went on, I noticed that, instead of Hollywood's usual mind-numbing blizzard of special effects, this film has something much rarer: a great script. Edward Norton plays Monty, a drug dealer who gets picked up by the cops and sentenced to seven years in prison. The film follows Monty for the 24 hours before he has to go in, raising many interesting questions, the most simple of which is: What do people think about right before they're locked up? Through strikingly realistic dialogue and a refusal to sugarcoat any issue, 25th Hour allows you a fascinating look into the mind of an ex-criminal, ending in a satisfying twist.