The well-nigh insane stories behind Tarsem Singh's gloriously ambitious, bizarro fable The Fall (Sony) are in some ways better than the movie themselves—for instance, the way†Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace feigned paralysis for six weeks to provide verisimilitude for the cast, the crew, and his 5-year-old co-star, who helped script the movie's fantastic fable. The Fall is a mixture of over-the-top fable and grim reality, and its pretension is sometimes stultifying. But it's so staggeringly beautiful that it shouldn't be missed, and neither should the inside-scoop commentary tracks and peeks behind the scenes…
FX's cult hit It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (Fox) turns the insensitivity of a bunch of barflies into high art.†The 15 episodes of Season 3, which the network inexplicably shoehorned into only 12 weeks of airtime, get more room to breathe on DVD, and comedy with this level of rapid-fire outrageousness deserves to be savored. The gang adopts a baby they find in a Dumpster, tries out for the Eagles, transform themselves into citizen newscasters, go on a crusade to clean up the bum problem in their neighborhood, and in their most transcendent moment to date, start two techno bands…
Baby Mama (Universal) strands some extremely funny people—Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Romany Malco—in an all-too-conventional comedy about surrogate motherhood. Some nice moments, including some from a funnier-than-usual-lately Steve Martin, at least make it worth a rental for a night of low-expectations laughs…
Jackie Chan and Jet Li are the biggest Hong Kong martial-arts stars of their generation, and they never appeared onscreen together before The Forbidden Kingdom (Lionsgate). Sadly, they're both at least 15 years past their primes, having been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood. Kingdom epitomizes their bland Americanization, as their talents are railroaded into the kid-friendly story of a young kung-fu enthusiast (Michael Angarano) who travels back in time for some nonsensical purpose…
Got $20? Then you can buy the slimly appointed 10th-anniversary reissue of The Big Lebowski (Universal), complete with featurettes, a trailer, and some photos snapped by Jeff Bridges. Got $15 more? Then you can have it wrapped in limited-edition bowling-ball packaging, which is sure to roll right off your shelf, onto your easily bruised hardwood floor, and into your heart. The third option would be to hold onto that bare-bones edition you've watched 100 times and wait for the film to get the special treatment it deserves.