DVD Corner

“Definitely, Maybe”: From Adam Brooks, a film that at once embraces formula and, in critical scenes, dismisses it all together. Early in the movie, Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) is asked a few difficult questions by his inquisitive 10-year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin). Some involve sex, which she’s learning about at school, and another involves the reason Will is divorcing Maya’s mother, which she’s learning about at home. It’s that latter question that’s the land mine. Since we don’t know who the mother is, what ensues is a trip back in time to 1992 to find out. There, we see a younger Will leaving his girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) to work on the Clinton campaign and apparently, when their relationship fizzles in New York, to enjoy his share of women, particularly those played by Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz, each of whom join Banks in playing their roles very differently and very well. It is, in fact, a virtue of the film that none of the women comes off as a type. Like Will himself, sometimes we like them, sometimes we don’t, which makes for a richer experience all around. Rated PG-13. Grade: B+

“ER: Complete Ninth Season”: The melodrama escalates to a fever pitch, but then it had to, didn’t it? This is the ninth season of “ER,” and the producers aren’t willing to allow fans to move away from the water cooler quietly. As such, we get 22 episodes of chaos and disorder, with romance and broken hearts hurtling through the doors of Chicago’s County General Hospital almost as frequently as the injured and the dying. In this season, with Anthony Edwards’ Dr. Greene fully out of the picture after his death in the eighth season, the show now rests on Noah Wyle’s Dr. Carter. It’s a struggle – you can’t help but miss Greene – but Wyle does his best in spite of misguided plot points (an African safari?) that pull hard at the show’s seams. Grade: B-

“The Missing” Blu-ray: It’s 1885 and times are tough in New Mexico, particularly for a healer like Cate Blanchett’s Maggie Gilkeson, a single woman raising two daughters with the help of Brake Baldwin (Aaron Eckhart), the scruffy cowpoke she loves, albeit secretly. Maggie is a force, which is a good thing since her teenage daughter, Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood), recently has been kidnapped by a band of Apaches determined to sell her and other women in Mexico. Reminiscent of John Ford’s 1956 classic “The Searchers,” the film conspires to reconnect Maggie with her father, Samuel (Tommy Lee Jones), who abandoned her as a child and who has since re-entered her life to make amends. Even in its high-definition transfer, the film is never as scenic as the films of Sam Peckinpah, but it does have passion, moments of real comedy, and it rises above its contrivances because director Ron Howard’s heart is in it so completely. Rated R. Grade: B+

“Persepolis” DVD, Blu-ray: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Academy Award-nominated movie ushers audiences into two colliding worlds. The first is an arresting, black-and-white world animated with the grimness of abstract noir (color is used only fleetingly here). The second is Satrapi’s real-life story of growing up in Iran and Europe during the late 1970s and early 1990s, which gives life to the film’s 2-D animation in ways that make for a strange yet fascinating brand of pop art. Based on Satrapi’s graphic novels, this coming-of-age story for adults follows headstrong Marjane (voice of Chiara Mastroianni) through an extended period of civil and personal unrest via the backdrop of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. To a certain degree, Marjane’s cynical worldview and her dark sense of humor help her to assemble what can’t rationally be assembled. But even that ability can take her only so far. As it unfolds, “Persepolis” reveals an undercurrent of sadness that’s bracing and questions about our place in the world that are humbling, none more so than the idea that sometimes your country no longer can be your home if you radically oppose its views. Not rated. Grade: A-

“The Spiderwick Chronicles” DVD, Blu-ray: Freddie Highmore plays two characters, twins Jared and Simon. Sarah Bolger is their older sister Mallory, who conveniently knows her way around a sword. Mary-Louise Parker is their recently divorced mother, who has left New York and moved them all into a haunted house tucked away in the country. Naturally, that house is bulging with mysteries and problems, most of which are unleashed when Jared finds an ancient-looking book written by Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn) and opens it in spite of warnings not to do so. When he does, a wealth of computer-generated freaks and monsters spring forth, with one towering, fearless ogre (Nick Nolte) especially determined to cause trouble. While the movie earns points for being genuinely scary and having good special effects, it isn’t nearly as compelling as its competition – the “Harry Potter” and “Narnia” franchises. The tale bogs down in its hectic switch from fantasy to reality, and there’s the sense that it might only be here to cash in. Rated PG. Grade: C+

“10,000 B.C.” DVD, Blu-ray: Roland Emmerich’s dumb movie is hamburger – and not the lean variety. This film is about 90 percent cinematic fat. The other 10 percent? Gristle. Maybe a bit of bone. The movie follows the dreadlocked D’Leh (Steven Strait), whose great love, Evolet (Camilla Belle), is stolen away along with others by a competing tribe. It’s D’Leh’s duty to go after them, which involves, among other things, D’Leh coming to throws with some hilarious-looking giant birds, the lot of which are about as real as Rod Hull’s aggressive puppet, Emu, from the 1960s. Since the movie is set in 10,000 B.C., D’Leh naturally is brought to a lost city filled with pyramids, which the Egyptians apparently built 7,000 years earlier than we thought. Who knew? Not Emmerich, or maybe he did know and doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. At least his characters aren’t fighting tooth decay – they all have amazingly white, perfect teeth. And at least some of the men were able to find a Bic in the B.C. – several are shaved, including their chests. But enough. As with any movie that stretches history to suit its needs, “10,000 B.C.” could have been forgiven every one of its shortcomings had it been a blast, which it isn’t. Since the film is either too lazy to look back into history and do its homework or too cynical about its audience to believe they haven’t done theirs, it just charges forward with zero knowledge of the time it’s trying to evoke. The result? A movie you actually forget while watching it. PG-13. Grade: D-