HT Staff

DVD: Ararat—Buena Vista
Video: 2
Audio: 3
Extras: 4
An overlooked historical tragedy—Turkey's genocide of its Armenian population during World War I—is at the heart of this drama by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter). The atrocities that occurred take on new resonance for members of a contemporary Armenian-Canadian family involved in the filming of a movie about the holocaust, as each grasps for meaning in the events that lead to the deaths of their ancestors and, indirectly, their own fathers. The film-within-a-film structure, combined with a plot device in which one character explains the genocide to a jaded customs agent sniffing for smuggled heroin, creates a complex but oddly dispassionate canvas for this powerful story. Expect to think, even if you can't fully relate to the second-hand oppression these people feel.

DVD: The Great Gatsby—Paramount
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 1
A great book does not necessarily make a great movie, as anyone who ever seen Demi Moore's version of The Scarlet Letter will certainly attest to. There have been three big-screen adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby since 1926; if any of them had the most potential, it was the 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. The script was written by Francis Ford Coppola (fresh off The Godfather), and the studio spared no expense on the budget required to reproduce the lavish Roaring 20s Long Island lifestyle. Unfortunately, this version of The Great Gatsby is pretentious, boring, and utterly lifeless—in other words, it's a lot like the elite socialites who make up most of the cast of characters.

DVD: Scarface Two-Disc Anniversary Edition—Universal
Video: 3
Audio: 2
Extras: 2
Don't be fooled by the silver packaging. Scarface is still five years shy of its quarter-century anniversary, but it remains one of the most unsettling crime dramas ever—the rise and fall of iconic tough guy Tony Montana, played with mucho gusto by Al Pacino.

DVD: Solaris—20th Century Fox
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
"This isn't your father's science fiction," says James Cameron, who produced this dream-like adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel and who's suddenly showing up more frequently on commentary tracks. He's right. There are no aliens in makeup. There's not even a proffered explanation of the strange happenings on a space station orbiting the pulsing, gaseous world Solaris. It's left for viewers to decide whether the planet's ability to create, in corporeal form, loved ones from a person's past, including the suicidal wife of investigating psychiatrist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney), is a blessing or a curse.