The premise had promise: Characters from a “vintage” Disney movie suddenly find themselves thrust into our world. But somewhere between conception and execution, what could have been so much smart, sharp fun turned decidedly pedestrian. Julie Andrews (awww) narrates the opening animated sequence about a girl named Giselle (voiced by…

This is easily — easily — the worst adaptation of a major novel by a Nobel Prize-winning author. Director Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and writer Ronald Harwood have rendered Gabriel García Márquez’s novel little more than a sudsy telenovela — Lifetime by way of Telemundo…

The Princess Bride: 20th Anniversary Edition (MGM) As far as anniversary-edition DVDs go, The Princess Bride is crushingly disappointing: no Rob Reiner commentary track, no outtakes, no making-of doc, no nothing, save for a lousy game and a few short interviews with Robin Wright Penn, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, and…

After making a mint off a series about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld apparently decided his first feature film ought to be about something — in the case of Bee Movie, the enslavement and torture of bees for the pleasure and profit of humans, which is, like, hilarious. It’s rather tempting to…

Sesame Street: Old School Volume 2 (Genius) On the heels of the Electric Company box sets, which were at once educational and groovy as all get-out, comes the latest in greatest hits from Sesame Street before the neighborhood was gentrified for Elmo’s protection. Chief among the copious highlights in this…

John Cusack, who more or less began his career sneaking a peek at Molly Ringwald’s panties in Sixteen Candles, has finally become an onscreen daddy — only took, what, 23 years? Except he’s not exactly the most fortunate family man on film: First, in Martian Child he plays a widower…

No End in Sight (Magnolia) Charles Ferguson’s debut doc, easily the most important in a year full of notable fact-gathering films, assembles some of the key players behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq and seems to ask them but one question: “What went wrong?” In short: everything. But Ferguson’s…

Dan in Real Life has this much going for it: It is not the worst Steve Carell film of 2007. That honor, of course, goes to Evan Almighty, which even the Lord walked out of during the second reel. Fact is, Dan in Real Life isn’t really much of a…

Directors Series: Stanley Kubrick (Warner Bros.) Most of the old Kubrick DVDs were crap: full-screen editions with poor pictures and virtually no special features. This set makes up for them with 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut (hey, who farted?),…

Transformers (DreamWorks) No doubt, Michael Bay’s slam-bang action-figure commercial doesn’t play nearly as well on television, no matter how high or high-def your screen; this demands to be seen on a screen the size of a skyscraper and heard on speakers as large as jet engines. As such, the first…

It will no doubt be said time and again of Michael Clayton: best John Grisham adaptation ever. Only, of course, it did not spring from the billion-dollar mind of the attorney turned franchise, but from Tony Gilroy, who made his big-screen bow 15 years ago as the screenwriter of the…

You Kill Me (Genius) Funny thing seeing Philip Baker Hall in You Kill Me, because he’s already played the role of a drunken hit man’s boss in The Matador, to which this feels like a slapshtick-noir sequel. It’s also the photonegative of Sexy Beast: Once more Ben Kingsley plays a…

Will you leave your kingdom to a heretic?” That was the question posed to a dying Queen Mary in 1998’s Elizabeth, director Shekhar Kapur’s grim and dingy film now viewed in retrospect as the origin story of a superhero: the Armored Virgin Queen, faster than a speeding lead pellet, more…

Caligula: Imperial Edition (Penthouse) (Spoiler alert: Fisting!) One day back in the swingin’ Seventies, somebody mentioned how “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and then Bob Guccione, Gore Vidal, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, and Peter O’Toole said, “Let’s make a big-budget movie about that, with come shots.” And Caligula was born. Actually…

Knocked Up (Universal) Apparently as Judd Apatow was making Knocked Up, he was also prepping for its DVD release, because most of the bonuses here were shot during breaks on location. And they’re no small treats, either — finally here’s a “collector’s edition” worthy of the moniker. Chief among the…

Saturday Night Fever: 30th Anniversary Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) For all of its camp-classic status as the ultimate disco-fever dream, John Badham’s movie truly is remarkable — a foulmouthed, mean-streets masterpiece that just happens to feature a Bee Gees score that spreads like melted cheese 30 years later. And, of…

Bad Santa gets worse every time he trots out the same mean routine. Does anyone at this late date recall a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton in which he doesn’t yell at retarded kids and bark at their stupid parents? After coaching The Bad News Bears to ruin and flunking…

The Graduate: 40th Anniversary Edition (MGM) Fifteen years after its last home-video commemorative edition (extras from which appear here), The Graduate once more gets the bonus-laden makeover — and if ever a movie deserved its kudos, it’s Mike Nichols’s masterwork. That said, the movie is its own bonus. Not since…

The Office: Season Three (Universal) After a shaky first season and a better-with-every-episode second, The Office proved itself one of the most consistent comedies in the history of the medium. The show has long since escaped the shadow of its BBC forebear and boasts an ensemble from which you could…

Year of the Dog (Paramount Vantage) It’s just about the First Commandment of Hollywood: Don’t kill the dog. So it’s a testament to the clout of writer-director Mike White (School of Rock) that killing off the dog is the first of many rules broken in this weird-ass movie. Folks fooled…

Resurrecting the Champ is a great movie about journalism — maybe the best there ever was — because Resurrecting the Champ is mind-erasingly boring. It’s a solid story about the newspaper business — specifically about how a well-intentioned writer occasionally makes a mistake totally by accident, a mistake that is…

The Lives of Others (Sony) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film, easily the best of last year, exists on many levels: as tragedy, dark comedy, and love story — not between a man and a woman, but between two seemingly opposite men bound by the same damnation. On the one hand…