DVD Corner

Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith will review the latest DVD releases.

“The Bourne Identity: HD DVD”: A sleek espionage thriller that reduces the world to the size of a postage stamp while focusing on a group of gun-toting characters hopping between Zurich and Paris as if they were zipping between Milo and Meddybemps. Adapted from Robert Ludlum’s 1980 best-seller, Doug Limon’s engrossing film pulls in the reins on the author’s iron-horse prose and updates the gadgetry without sacrificing the hysteria. Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, an amnesiac spy who’s on the run from the CIA while also trying to learn his true identity. The chase that ensues plays mostly by the rules, but since it pairs Bourne with the terrific German actress Franka Potente, that chase is more fun, imaginative, sexy and diverting than it otherwise might have been. With Chris Cooper, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen, the film arrives on high definition just in time for the upcoming “The Bourne Ultimatum.” Rated PG-13. Grade: B+

“Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory, Vol. 2”: Seven films, all digitally remastered, with five marking their debut on DVD. Included are Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in 1948’s “The Pirate” and “Words and Music,” the latter of which, a colossal production, features nearly two dozen songs by Rogers and Hart. Kathryn Grayson stars in two films, 1949’s “That Midnight Kiss,” with Jose Iturbi and Ethel Barrymore, and 1950’s “The Toast of New Orleans,” with Grayson so woefully miscast opposite Mario Lanza, viewers might toast their own endurance should they get through the movie. That won’t be necessary for 1952’s “The Belle of New York,” in which Fred Astaire mixes it up with Vera-Ellen and Marjorie Main, while in Stanley Donen’s 1951 musical “Royal Wedding,” Astaire is on fire, dancing on the ceiling and joining Jane Powell in helping to save Alan Jay Lerner’s rote story. The set also includes the 1985 documentary “That’s Dancing,” with Gene Kelley, Liza Minnelli, Shirley Temple and others shuttling us through one dizzying musical time capsule. Grade: B+

“Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4”: As distinctly American as jazz. During its heyday in the 1940s-1950s, the noir movement dominated American pop culture, rivaling the outlaw toughness of the Western, the darkness of the Gothic. The films were urban and racy – the dialogue snapped, sex underscored the sleaze and blood soaked the pavements. All boil together in this fine collection from Warner, which showcases 10 films of “timeless suspense” on five discs, with such stars as Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum, Farley Granger and the amazing Audrey Totter taking matters into their own hands, which usually were filled with knives or guns. Best of the lot are Totter in “Tension,” Mitchum in “Where Danger Lives” and Sterling Hayden in “Crime Wave.” Grade: A-

“The Joan Collins Superstar Collection”: Long before she was swinging her fists, shaking her diamonds and smoking her cigarillos on “Dynasty,” Collins was a movie star, slinking from stage left to stage right as if she belonged at stage center. And she did, too, even if too many of her movies were stinkers. This new collection from Fox gives us five Collins’ films, all from the CinemaScope era, with three proving just absurd enough to be disarming – 1955’s “Girl in the Red Velvet Swing;” 1957’s “Sea Wife,” with Collins marooned onscreen opposite Richard Burton; and the 1957 espionage thriller “Stopover Tokyo,” with Joan and Robert Wagner struck dumb in Japan. The set’s two other movies, 1958’s “Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys” and 1960’s “Seven Thieves,” are as enjoyably appalling as you could imagine. This is the rare boxed set in which the cover art alone, which features Collins as kneeling, bustiered sex kitten, is worthy of its own commentary, though not in a family newspaper. Grade: B

“The Number 23”: Joel Schumacher’s latest mess would love to scare the No. 2 out of you, but forget it – the film is an incomprehensible joke. Jim Carrey is dog catcher Walter Sparrow, who becomes obsessed by the number 23 after his wife, Aggie (Virginia Madsen), buys him a book about a detective, Fingerling, who sees the number as a curse. Not surprisingly, Walter starts to do the same, likely because weird things start to happen to him and particularly since he and Fingerling have so much in common. Carrey, after all, plays Fingerling in the heavily stylized flashbacks, with a tawdry Madsen tarted up in a black wig to play sluttish Fabrizia, the girlfriend Fingerling murders. As Walter succumbs to the encroaching madness, one’s questions about whether Aggie will suffer the same fate as Fabrizia are put on the fast track when Walter starts dreaming about stabbing her to death. As a concerned Aggie herself notes to the increasingly freaked-out Walter, “You’ve concerned yourself with minutiae and you’ve drawn wild conclusions from them!” The film follows suit, with Schumacher manufacturing every conceivable connection to the number 23. Rated R. Grade: D

“Zodiac”: David Fincher’s meticulous, nearly three-hour drama is about the quest to bring down the famed serial killer Zodiac, who wreaked havoc in Northern California in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The effort to capture him was formidable, but since the killer was never caught, there’s the sense going into the film that perhaps Fincher might pull an Oliver Stone and close the books with his own theories. He doesn’t. As such, there is no payoff in the telling and the movie’s ending, as a result, is unsatisfying. Some of the acting follows suit. As San Francisco Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith, Jake Gyllenhaal is especially flat; you can feel his fatigue, which becomes ours. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards fair better as two detectives, though Dermot Mulroney and Chloe Sevigny are wasted. The film’s memorable performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, the Chronicle reporter who covered the case. Sheathed in mischief, he gives his scenes a bounce they otherwise would have lacked. Rated R. Grade: C