DVD might awaken new audiences to sleeper hit 'The Notebook'
"The Notebook"
Rated PG-13; 2004
In one of 2004's sleeper hits, James Garner reads to Alzheimer's patient Gena Rowlands a journal she kept of her youthful romances in the 1940s.
Most of the film is consumed with flashbacks to the days when she was a girl, played by Rachel McAdams, having problems with parents and boys.
You can't for a minute believe one of the important casting choices (young version vs. older version), which is why you can't be sure until the end who turns out to be whom, but the scenes involving the geriatrics are touching. Had they only consumed more of the running time.
The DVD contains commentaries by director Nick Cassavetes (Rowlands' son) and novelist Nicholas Sparks, plus a featurette on the Cassavetes family.
"Shark Tale"
Rated PG; 2004
Oscar-nominated as best animated film, "Shark Tale" has what sells - solid animation along with a screenplay designed to keep adults chuckling more than the children.
It's all about mob turf in the surf. Will Smith voices the role of Oscar, a whale who stumbles into taking credit for the rubout of a shark named Frankie (Michael Imperioli).
When godfather Don Lino (Robert De Niro) learns his own son has been off'd, the hit is on.
The many jokes based on other movies made "Shark Tale" a blockbuster by pollinating different audience segments. The DVD includes a featurette on bloopers.
"Howards End"
Rated PG; 1992
James Ivory's exquisite film is based on E.M. Forster's novel about educated siblings (Helena Bonham Carter and Academy Award winner Emma Thompson) who become involved with a wealthy family headed by Anthony Hopkins.
A major Oscar contender 12 years ago, "Howards End" is available on a new double-disc DVD that includes new interviews with producer Ismail Merchant, Ivory, Bonham Carter and others, a 48-minute documentary on Merchant Ivory Productions and a featurette on the production design and costumes.
"Get Shorty"
Rated R; 1995
A recent box-office flop called "The Last Shot" was a likable attempt to mix moviemaking and the mob in a manner like "Get Shorty."
The real McCoy is back in a new double-disc DVD that includes a commentary by director Barry Sonnenfeld, outtakes, a deleted scene and several featurettes.
The memorably named loan shark Chili Palmer (John Travolta) heads for Hollywood to collect a debt only to get involved with a self-centered star (Danny De Vito), a B-movie queen (Rene Russo) and a hack filmmaker (Gene Hackman).
A deft, daft mix of intimidation, vanity and schmoozing skills.
"Rocky Marciano"
Rated R; 1999
Made for but never released to theaters, "Rocky Marciano" is one of several films about the charismatic heavyweight boxing champ who didn't believe in banks, insisted on being paid in cash and stashed that cash in mattresses.
This version concentrates mainly on the buildup to the fight that was hardest psychologically on Marciano (Jon Favreau). It was with one of his heroes, former champ Joe Louis, who by then had become unstable.
Judd Hirsch acts Marciano's manager. George C. Scott is the father who wants something better for his son; watch Scott turn a hamburger part into filet.
A bit of stunt casting: Tony Lo Bianco, who played Marciano in a 1979 TV movie, here plays a fight promoter who keeps the aspiring boxer off-balance.
"The Motorcycle Diaries"
Rated R; 2004
St. Che Guevara. What a guy. You'd never guess who and what he became from this reverential reverie set during the first eight months of 1952.
Known in his pre-revolution days as Fuser and Ernesto (Gael Garcia Bernal), the future Che is 23 when he and 29-year-old Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna) ride a terminally sputtering 1939 Norton 500 motorcycle through South America, pausing for the former to work with lepers.
The DVD contains deleted scenes, two features on Bernal and one on the real Granado, who recalls Guevara.
"Around the Bend"
Rated R; 2004
You have to get past the heavyhanded whimsy and the sledgehammer product placement to get to the heart of "Around the Bend."
Eccentric patriarch Michael Caine dies near the beginning, sending three generations of male descendants off on a sentimental sojourn to dispose of his remains.
The journey is shared by Caine's prodigal son Christopher Walken, grandson Josh Lucas and great-grandson Jonah Bobo, who use their time together to bond over fried chicken in fast-food emporiums.
The DVD includes deleted scenes, a making-of featurette and a commentary by writer-director Jordan Roberts.
"Vanity Fair"
Rated PG-13; 2004
Game, but not great, the latest film of William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" catches Reese Witherspoon imbuing the character Becky Sharp with perkiness aplenty as she marries her way up a few rungs in the social ladder.
Mira Nair's movie isn't equal to the task of distilling quite coherently enough a classic satire of social mores.
But Bob Hoskins and Eileen Atkins, playing the sort of eccentric sibling roles that Hugh Griffith and Edith Evans had in "Tom Jones," are so much fun you forget for minutes at a time that most of the other relationships lack believability.
The DVD includes deleted scenes and a commentary by Nair.
"I Heart Huckabees"
Rated R; 2004
Like "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zassou," "I Heart Huckabees" stacked high a star cast in a comedy too offbeat and off the mark to succeed.
Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin act existential detectives working on a case for environmental activist Jason Schwartzman.
The film attempts to satirize deceitful capitalists (Jude Law), supermodels (Naomi Watts), philosophers (Isabelle Adjani) and squares (Mark Wahlberg), but each element plays like a textbook of miscalculation by co-writer-director David O. Russell.
One of the DVD's commentaries is by Russell alone. He shares a second commentary with Schwartzman, Watts and Wahlberg.
"Bitter Victory"
Unrated but PG in nature; 1957
From the time Richard Burton became an Oscar-nominated star in 1952, the one film of his to pass wholly without notice was "Bitter Victory," which opened here on the bottom of a double bill and never surfaced on V.
The DVD hints at the problem. Not quite dull, it's dryly British - a film that seems to catch everyone marking time, as if to finish out contracts.
Burton plays an intellectual assigned to join officer Curt Jurgens on a desert trek to surprise the Germans at Benghazi and swipe a document during World War II. Jurgens suspects that his wife, Ruth Roman, had had an affair with Burton, which adds a weak personal dynamic.
Their talk includes war and euthanasia, but it isn't enough to sustain an awfully long walk.
