If ever a blockbuster were built for DVD, it would be Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's noir comics series Sin City (Miramax), which the filmmakers divided into chapters that are just right for bite-sized home-video consumption. The movie is arguably little more than a consumer good itself, however gamy its milieu, and however artfully Rodriguez recreates Miller's panels—disemboweling, dangly earrings, and topless lesbian parole officer included. The film is shot in black and white with splashes of red, blue, and yellow, and though the stories are hyper-violent, the stark lighting and abstracted color scheme makes Sin City seem like a pulp fan's sweet indulgence, where perversity and draftsmanship have become ends in themselves…
Fresh from the overstuffed romantic-comedy wing of High-Concept Hell comes The Wedding Date (Universal), a gaudy programmer about a desperate single neurotic (Debra Messing) who hires a high-class escort (Dermot Mulroney) to accompany her to a wedding. The brilliant, exquisitely sensitive Mulroney turns out to be the best catch this side of Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, and romance, comedy, and way too many demographics-pandering oldies all inevitably ensue…
It seems like seasons of The Simpsons have been rationed like breadline giveaways during the Great Depression, but the current batch has been worth savoring. Highlights of The Simpsons: The Complete Sixth Season (Fox) include the Itchy & Scratchy theme park, with attractions like Unnecessary Surgery Land and Searing Gas Pain Land; The Stonecutters song ("Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do!"); and director Steven Spielbergo, Steven Spielberg's non-union Mexican equivalent…
Famously decried by Roger Ebert as the worst film ever to play in competition at Cannes, Vincent Gallo's notorious and frequently beautiful road movie The Brown Bunny (Columbia Tristar) was re-cut and redeemed to a great extent in its American release, not least by a positive Ebert review. Gallo's narcissistic indulgences still lead him into trouble, but his vision is undeniably singular…
Initially turned away by major festivals, only to pick up a steady buzz over two years of intermittent screenings and growing critical acclaim, Andrew Bujalski's wonderfully observed comedy Funny Ha Ha (Wellspring) was self-distributed for a long time, but it finally got a proper release earlier in 2005, and it's found its way to DVD. Bujalski's ear for the broken language of smart, stumblingly inarticulate young people makes his work resemble an amiable John Cassavetes film.