DVD Corner

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” HD DVD: Imagine if you could permanently erase someone from your memory – perhaps a former lover who jilted you, a trusted friend who wronged you, a childhood bully who humiliated you. With those people no longer clouding your thoughts and causing you emotional pain, you would essentially be free of them forever, allegedly living a happier life basking in the eternal sunshine of your newly spotless mind. In the heat of the moment, such a possibility would undoubtedly be tempting to some. Just imagine the power of entering a crowded doctor’s office and declaring that you’d like to delete Jane or Jim – forever! Still, since who we are is all that we have experienced, is it wise to remove those negative elements from which we have learned so much? The movie considers the ramifications, with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as the vehicles that drive them. Each find in the trappings of one’s subconscious not only two strong performances, but reasons to review the past to find what really matters – the potentially brighter end that might accompany it. Rated R. Grade: A-

“Failure to Launch” HD DVD and Blu-ray: The same can be said for the movie. After her disastrous turn in “The Family Stone,” Sarah Jessica Parker sinks again in this underwhelming comedy. In it, Matthew McConaughey is Tripp, a 35-year-old man who still lives in New Orleans with his parents (Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw). Since they would prefer that he move out, they hire Parker’s Paula to get him on his own. The idiot plot goes like this – Paula will get Tripp to fall in love with him, he will want his own place, end of story. But Tripp has his own agenda, which by the end of the movie, hasn’t complicated it nearly as much as it should have. The only genuine feeling the movie generates is in its images of pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, which reminds you of all that was lost – and all that has been mishandled since. Rated PG-13. Grade: C-

“Feast: HD DVD”: From John Gulager, winner of the third (and final) “Project Greenlight” contest, comes this derivative, aggressively bloody monster show, in which horror, comedy and parody meet one night at the dreary Beer Trap Tavern, where bar-flies come to drink – and where bar flies get swatted flat with predictably gruesome results. A slight, forgettable film, not without energy or humor, with an inexhaustible taste for sending up B-movie trash. Unrated. Grade: C+

“Ironside: Season One”: From 1967, a groundbreaking show, with Raymond Burr bulldozing his way through his iconic role as Det. Robert T. Ironside, San Francisco’s former chief of detectives who was left wheelchair-bound after a near-fatal shooting. Ironside is disabled, sure, but nobody moves as swiftly when it comes to solving a case. Forty years out, the 28 shows in this collection are retro cool – you can almost smell the Aqua Velva. To those fans of the series, that fact – and Burr himself, who came to the series fresh off the success of “Perry Mason” – will prove a big part of its appeal. Grade: B+

“Larry King Live: The Greatest Interviews”: Joining CNN’s recent celebration of Larry King’s 50 years in the business, is this boxed set from Warner, which features dozens of interviews with political figures and celebrities, many of them worth revisiting. King isn’t the toughest interviewer around – his penchant for sensation and scandal can be off-putting, such as in his unrelenting coverage of the Anna Nicole Smith fiasco, which was overkill. Still, people trust him, which allows for pockets of insight, such as in his interviews with Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Richard Nixon, Bill Cosby, Hillary Clinton and the essential Bill Maher. Grade: B+

“The Queen” DVD and Blu-ray: How do you react to real life when the only life you’ve ever known has been an illusion banked behind stone fortresses? For the British Monarchy, real life smashed through those fortresses when Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in the streets of Paris in 1997. It was an event that sent the world into a kind of cataclysmic mourning, with Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren in a terrific, Academy Award-winning performance) suddenly caught with her blue blood all over her hands. Protocol suggested the family grieve in private, which Elizabeth was more than happy to do given her tumultuous relationship with Diana. Still, given Diana’s enormous popularity, Elizabeth reluctantly had no choice but to listen to the advice of the newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and make a public statement about Diana’s death. Since going into the movie we know this, the film has the tricky job of getting us into the backrooms and bedrooms via the undercurrent of fiction. What’s mounted is a plausible story (at least until the mawkish ending) that weaves between drama and comedy as the Windsors and the Blairs find their footing within the fallout of one woman’s tragedy and a country in change. Rated PG-13. Grade: A-

“A Scanner Darkly” DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray: From director Richard Linklater (“Waking Life”), a new animated film for adults that fuses illusion to reality. This dizzying commentary on drug use and the drug wars is wrapped around stunning images reminiscent of those in a graphic novel. As his characters plunge into the depths of drug-induced paranoia, Linklater employs animation that allows his movie to literally burn, shimmer and jitter, thus creating a near-seamless marriage between the medium of film and the content of the story itself. Based on Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel “Scanner,” the movie isn’t for those seeking a run-of-the-mill Hollywood film and it can’t be viewed with a trace of passivity. Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and a very good Robert Downey Jr. all are onboard to mess with our minds. Rated R. Grade: B+