'Monsters, Inc.' loaded with extras for kids, adults
"Monsters, Inc." (2001)
Rated G
Those of us older than, say, one generation, went to Disney movies as kids, embraced them in that special place where magical memories dwell, and looked forward to seeing them again in seven or eight years when they'd be re-released to theaters.
Now you wait a few months and buy the video or, better still, a DVD so loaded with extras that the feature film can begin to seem like a bonus.
Disney took nearly 11 months to issue its "Monster, Inc." double-disc collector's edition. The delay left plenty of time for the movie to become North America's 20th biggest grosser of all time ($256 million) and No. 20 on the planet, too ($529 million).
You can't get that rich entertaining just little children. Everyone seemed to get a hoot out of the human child Boo (voiced by Mary Gibbs) and her adventures with a couple of neutralized nocturnal creatures named Sulley Sullivan (John Goodman) and Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal).
Though trained to scare her, they settle for shielding her from the reptilian Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi).
Boo's visit to a parallel universe on the other side of her bedroom closet is imaginative in a way that would have astonished Walt Disney (1901-66) himself. And we're talking about a guy who put high heels and airs on mice.
The "Monsters, Inc." DVD includes outtakes, two animated shorts ("Mike's New Car" and the Oscar-winning "For the Birds"), an audio commentary by the filmmakers and insiders' views of the Monster World and the Human World depicted in the picture.
"Return to Never Land" (2002)
Rated G
In many respects, "Return to Never Land," which did get a theatrical run, is no better than the sequels Disney makes directly for video and DVD.
The new songs are out of period with the World War I time frame, and neither the new characters nor those from the original "Peter Pan" (1953) are amplified sufficiently to justify running essentially the same plot through the copier.
There's minimal motivation for Captain Hook to kidnap the trusting son and skeptical daughter of Pan pal Wendy, who was a child herself in the original but a young mother here.
What's quite lovely, though, are the final moments when Peter brings Wendy's kids home safely. At last the sequel taps into the heart of everyone who remembers what it was like to be a child and to believe.
The DVD includes deleted scenes and a Lost Boys Adventure game.
"The Outer Limits" (Season One, 1963-64)
Unrated but PG in nature
Then and now I love(d) Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone," which was great at 30 minutes (1959-62 and 63-64) and, as he later admitted, less effective at 60 minutes (1963), where the premises were too obviously stretched and too vulnerable to scrutiny. After a few months in '63, Serling returned to half-hours.
"The Twilight Zone" was quite obviously the inspiration for "The Outer Limits" ("There is nothing wrong with your TV set. We are controlling transmission"), whose season and a half yielded many good episodes but too few to fuel next-morning water-cooler chatter.
Loaded with good character actors (Donald Pleasence, Sidney Blackmer, Vera Miles, Martin Landau, Nina Foch) and promising newcomers (Shirley Knight, Martin Sheen, Carroll O'Connor), "Outer Limits" tried like "Twilight Zone" to find a sting in every tail and leaned even more overtly on the moral in every tale.
A few episodes were released on laser disc in the 1990s. The new DVD set contains the entire first season of 32 hour-long episodes (27 hours and 22 minutes with the commercials removed), and includes a superior booklet describing the casts and plots. A collector's dream.
"Frailty" (2002)
Rated R
It's true there aren't enough good new movies, but just as true that the public lets some strong stuff get by because the studio doesn't know how to market it and the content sounds off-putting.
"Frailty," directed by and starring Bill Paxton, must have seemed too disturbing.
Matthew McConaughey drops into Dallas' FBI headquarters to tell agent Powers Boothe that a serial killer has killed himself.
McConaughey's brother, Paxton, who had sons around 11 (Matt O'Leary) and 8 (Jeremy Sumpter), had gone crackers some time earlier and begun executing those anointed for death in his spiritual visions.
The movie is constructed so strategically that while you may have fun anticipating, you can't see a clear link between what you know and what you expect. And the boys are such sympathetic pawns in their father's mania that you watch them disconnect with tension you don't find in superhero epics.
The many extras on the DVDs include deleted scenes and three audio commentaries, including one by Paxton. Too bad no one had Anthony Perkins do one for "Psycho."
"Kansas City Confidential" (1952)
PG-13 in nature
Before there was a "Reservoir Dogs" or "The Thomas Crown Affair," a neat little 1952 crime thriller called "Kansas City Confidential" depicted participants in a perfect crime do not know each other's identities.
The latter was based on the unsolved Boston Brink's robbery, which spawned such direct descendants as "Six Bridges to Cross" and "The Brink's Job."
"Kansas City Confidential" posits that an embittered ex-police chief (Preston Foster) hired three unrelated slugs (classic villains Jack Elam, Neville Brand and Lee Van Cleef) to help him rob an armored truck but with a layered agenda.
John Payne is the innocent ex-con who gets fingered for the job and spends the rest of the film trying to vindicate himself.
Thrown away on double bills when it was new, "Kansas City Confidential" has appreciated since, even though it is not truly film noir as billed. The DVD contains an amusingly stilted nine-minute interview by "Dark City" noir historian Eddie Muller with Colleen Gray, who was too sweet to make it in the dark films, like this one, in which was leading lady.
"Koyaanisquatsi" (1983)
G in nature
"Powaqqatsi" (1988)
Rated G
Godfrey Reggio's two films, both scored by Philip Glass (who will present concerts of his compositions at 8 p.m. Oct. 25 and 26 at the Byham Theater), are like no others.
They're visual head trips set to monotonous aural tones that excited a small, enthusiastic audience. I never imagined they'd reappear on DVD with new interviews by the director and composer.
"Koyaanisquatsi" (koy yanna scot see) is the Hopi Indian word for crazy life or life out of balance, life disintegrating in turmoil.
It was filmed over seven years on locations as diverse as the Grand Canyon and Times Square. Buildings and bridges blow up and collapse in slow motion. Reggio juxtaposes images, often speeded up, to make provocative, repetitious comments about a society unconcerned with the systematic destruction of its environment.
"Powaqqatsi" (pow a cot see) applies the same visual technique to shots of ancient cultures contrasted with modern times to suggest the high price of progress.
