DVD Corner

“Army of Darkness: HD DVD”: From Sam Raimi, a cult classic. Bruce Campbell is Ash, an amputee with a chainsaw for an arm (robust – and helpful) who finds himself in 14th-century England, where he is ushered into Duke Henry’s army and rises up against the Deadites, a ravaged group of zombies filled with just enough blood and entrails to make for a substantial mess. Camp isn’t just an undercurrent here – it’s the grindhouse force that drives the movie with Campbell clearly happy behind the wheel. Rated R. Grade: B+

“Bridge to Terabithia: DVD and Blu-ray”: It champions imagination. From Katherine Paterson’s popular children’s book, the film follows the friendship between Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb), two kids bullied at school who find in the release of their imagined otherworld, Terabithia, a way to deal with the troubles that plague them. Laced with broad echoes of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Terabithia” also understands that in the highs and lows of childhood, fantasy sometimes is the only escape – and so into fantasy the movie plunges. The film doesn’t startle the way “Narnia” did, but its insights into friendship and its embrace of the arts go a long way in making it one of the year’s better family films. Rated PG. Grade: B+

“The Cowboys: HD DVD and Blu-ray”: A coming-of-age film of the toughest sort. John Wayne takes Mark Rydell’s Western and turns it into a passable distraction – though one with a genuinely shocking twist. Armed with a supporting cast that includes Bruce Dern, Slim Pickens, Roscoe Lee Browne and Colleen Dewhurst, the film features the mother of all cinematic cattle drives with Wayne’s Wil Anderson employing a group of boys to help him get the cattle to market. As it must, violence erupts with the act of murder presumably transforming these boys into men. Far from Wayne’s best, but nevertheless a movie whose ending ignites a heated discussion. Grade: B-

“Days of Glory”: Follows a troop of indigenous North African soldiers who joined the French army in 1943 to fight for France. It was a country these soldiers never had seen, but which they were willing to die for even though, as Muslims, they were treated as third-rate citizens by the French fighting alongside them. Though this Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film isn’t without its problems – its maudlin ending is a clich? that should have been axed – it remembers these men as allies and, after the attention it received at the Cannes Film Festival, it shamed France into restoring their pensions, which had been frozen since 1959 in the wake of decolonization. Rated R. Grade: B+

“Dead Silence”: Features a ventriloquist’s dummy named Billy who comes to life in crashes of thunder and lightning to savagely eat the tongues of those who come too close to it. So right away, you know if the movie is for you. For the rest of us, things are predictably bleak. The film sends out rays of stupidity. It’s pointless, it’s shabbily produced, it isn’t scary, it fears humor. It just is, which isn’t enough. What it misses is what the “Child’s Play” franchise embraced. If you’re going to feature a killer doll in your horror film, you better let loose and have a little fun. Otherwise, you’ve somehow taken this junk way too seriously and cut your own throat. That’s the case here. “Dead Silence” couldn’t make a clown happy. So far, it’s the worst movie of the year. Rated R. Grade: F

“Fail Safe”: Shot in black-and-white and performed live on CBS, this claustrophobic Cold War remake of Sydney Lumet’s 1964 original stars George Clooney as a pilot who accidentally is ordered to annihilate a slice of Russia with a nuclear bomb. Richard Dreyfuss is the American president facing a rather difficult situation – enter into war, or allow Russia to bomb the hell out of New York City. A bristling Noah Wyle negotiates the mounting tension with Don Cheadle, Harvey Keitel, James Cromwell, Hank Azaria and Sam Elliott rounding out the excellent cast. Directed by Stephen Frears (“The Queen”). Grade: A-

“The Lucille Ball Film Collection”: Includes five films, none of which are Ball’s best – missing is “Stage Door” and “Without Love” and especially “Room Service” with the Marx brothers. Still, we do get a mix of those movies that helped to make Ball a screen star – “Dance, Girl, Dance,” in which Ball leaves ballet for burlesque (and goes on to stardom as Bubbles), and “The Big Street,” which is about as far removed as one can get from the Lucy audiences know from “I Love Lucy.” Here, she’s a bitter ex-chanteuse in a wheelchair with Henry Fonda starring opposite her. The collection also includes the slight “Du Barry Was a Lady,” with Red Skelton and Gene Kelly, and the 1963 comedy “Critic’s Choice,” with Bob Hope. Perhaps most interesting is Ball as Auntie Mame in “Mame,” in which she sings (sort of), dances (she tries), and goes for the jugular with cutting asides (she succeeds). Ball has nothing on Rosalind Russell’s Mame, but with a bulldozing Bea Arthur at her side, the proceedings are nicely unhinged. Grade: B-

“Robin Hood: Season One”: From the BBC, a lively retelling of the tale that once again makes it hip to steal from the rich and give to the poor. This intentionally silly, promising first season of “Robin Hood” stars Jonas Armstrong in the lead with Hungary posing as 12th-century England and taxes against the poor still an unacceptable proposition. Humor, romance and swordplay commingle amid the tomfoolery with the script embracing a modern wit that often sticks and with the familiar characters nicely updated. Grade: B+