DVD SCANS

DVD review | Hitchcock on Blu-ray's a thriller

No one can definitely say 1959's North By Northwest is Alfred Hitchcock's best movie -- how to choose? -- but from first frame to last, it may well be his most entertaining. The first of Hitchcock's pictures to appear on the Blu-ray format (Warner Home Video, $35), the film has been given a $1 million restoration, and to say it looks utterly fantastic on high-definition -- one of the most astounding Blu-ray transfers to date -- is probably an understatement.

'The Box' filmmaker Richard Kelly pushes his viewers' buttons

Filmmaker Richard Kelly's initial encounter with Richard Matheson's fiendish little short story Button, Button -- about a cash-strapped couple offered a million dollars to push a button on a box that will instantly cause someone they don't know to drop dead -- came not on the page, but on TV.

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Review | Disney's A Christmas Carol (PG) ***

Classic Christmas tale retold with eye-popping effects

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Review | The Men Who Stare at Goats (R) **

Super soldiers in Iraq have nothing to do

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Review | The Box (PG-13) ***

Eerie morality tale may well push your buttons

MOVIES

Essay inspired an instant classic

Everything about An Education, the story of a 16-year-old girl's affair with a 30-year-old man in London in 1962, comes together in a way that gives the movie the feel of an instant classic.

SCREEN GEMS

Coming this week at the movies and on TV

BIG SCREEN The Box (PG-13): -- After the spectacular failure of his ambitious second film Southland Tales, writer-director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) goes the simpler, high-concept route with this thriller adapted from a tiny Richard Matheson short story, about a married couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) given a wooden box. Push its button, and you become instantly wealthy -- but someone, somewhere, drops dead. Would you do it? Come on, you know you would.

DVD SCANS

DVD review | 'Orphan': Modest little picture's a frightful romp

A fiendishly clever twist on the ''evil child'' genre of horror films, Orphan (Warner Home Entertainment, $29 DVD, $34 Blu-ray) was unceremoniously dumped into theaters this summer with little promotion. But the movie, produced by Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment, which specializes in modest little B-pictures (House on Haunted Hill, Ghost Ship), deserved better.

MOVIES

Review | An Education (PG-13) ***½

Sweet sixteen's out to learn the hard way

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Review | Tetro (Unrated) ***

Coppola's tale of two brothers dazzles

SCREEN GEMS

A look at the week ahead in the movies and TV

Michael Jackson: This Is It (PG) -- High School Musical director Kenny Ortega, who was collaborating with the singer on a series of London concerts, culls a concert film and cinematic memorial (with some sequences in 3D) from the hundreds of hours of footage taped during Jackson's rehearsals for the shows.

MOVIES

Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival: Reviews and schedule

The buzz on the film festival circuit is that the dearth of independent filmmaking caused by the recession has made festival programming increasingly difficult. But at the 2009 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, the show will go on.

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Review | Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (PG-13) **

Too many monsters spoil the goth

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Review | A Serious Man (R) ****

For Jewish professor, questions without answers

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Review | Coco Before Chanel (PG-13) ***

The emergence of a fashion icon

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Review | Paraiso (Paradise) (Unrated) ***

Cuban trilogy wraps up with style

FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Review | Black Dynamite (R) **

Can't compete with the real thing

FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Review | Timer (Unrated) **½

Clocks are ticking in sci-fi quest to find The One

FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Review | Trucker (R) ***

Truck driver role is a star-maker for Monaghan

FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Review | Queen to Play (Unrated) ***

Pawn becomes a queen in a tale of self discovery

'A Serious Man'

Coen brothers' latest proves you can go home again

Even by Joel and Ethan Coen's bleak standards, A Serious Man would be an uncommonly pessimistic movie. The film tells the story of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a college professor in Minnesota in 1967 whose life is spiraling out of control.

SCREEN GEMS

Coming this week at the movies and on TV

BIG SCREEN A Serious Man (R) -- Iconoclastic directors Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo) get personal with this comedy, loosely based on their middle-class Jewish upbringing, about a beleaguered college professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) who seeks advice from three rabbis on how to get control of his topsy-turvy life. As funny and bleak as anything the Coens have ever made, but without all the distancing stylistic tricks and irony.

DVD SCANS

DVD reviews | 'South Park': Buy the Blu-ray for the extras

Ten years in the making, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have finally made good on their promise to record a commentary track for South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. The only catch is that the track is exclusive to the new Blu-ray release of the film (Paramount Home Entertainment, $30), and the movie's crude animation doesn't benefit much from the format's higher resolution.

MOVIES

Review | Where the Wild Things Are (PG) **

Monster bash turns out to be a pretty tame party

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Review | Law Abiding Citizen (R) **

Interesting, but implausible with a vengeance

MOVIES

Review | New York, I Love You (R) **

Tales of the big city needed brighter lights

SCREEN GEMS

A look at the week ahead in the movies and TV

BIG SCREEN Law Abiding Citizen (R) -- An angry man (300's Gerard Butler) targets the Philadelphia prosecutor (Jamie Foxx) who orchestrated a plea bargain for the killer of his wife and daughter. Sometimes, words just aren't enough.

DVD SCANS

DVD review | Director's humble comments accompany scandalous `Audition'

You never forget your first time watching Takashi Miike's Audition: For some people, it is the first and last Miike picture they ever see. The wildly prolific Miike's best-known (and arguably most disciplined) work, the movie scandalized film festival audiences when it was shown around the world in 1999, and the terrific new two-disc Audition: Collector's Edition (Shout Factory, $25 DVD, $30 Blu-ray) celebrates the movie's 10th anniversary with a truckload of enlightening extras.

MOVIES

Review | Couples Retreat (PG-13) *

Make a fast retreat from this clunker

MOVIES

Review | Paranormal Activity (R) **1/2

See it in a crowded theater -- and soon

SCREEN GEMS

A look at the week ahead in the movies and TV

BIG SCREEN Couples Retreat (PG-13) -- Four married couples (among them Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman, Jason Bateman, Kristin Davis and Jon Favreau) vacation on an island that specializes in relationship counseling. More than specializes, actually: The therapy is mandatory. The cast is promising, and Favreau and Vaughn co-wrote the screenplay, so the movie should be funny. But the trailer looks deadly.

DVD SCANS

DVD review | 'The Girlfriend Experience': 'Little' Soderbergh flick's a big hit

One of the small experimental films (like Bubble and Full Frontal) director Steven Soderbergh often makes in between larger, big-budget projects, The Girlfriend Experience (Magnolia Home Entertainment, $27 DVD, $35 Blu-ray) was shot on the Red One digital camera filmmakers have been raving about and looks absolutely sensational on Blu-ray.

MOVIES

Review | Zombieland (R) ***

Lots of laughs amid a plague of the undead

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Review | Whip It (PG-13) ***

Drew's debut rolls in with sheer energy

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Review | Capitalism: A Love Story (R) ***

Muckraking aside, Moore's entertaining

With Zombieland, the undead shuffle into the mainstream with big names, laughs

When Woody Harrelson received a copy of the screenplay for Zombieland last year, he stuffed it into his duffel bag of unread scripts and promptly forgot about it.

SCREEN GEMS

A look ahead at the week in TV and movies

BIG SCREEN Capitalism: A Love Story (R) -- Michael Moore's most impassioned cinematic plea for activism yet explores the recent banking and housing collapse and the increasingly larger -- and more destructive -- role corporations have played in the U.S. government since the Reagan era. Moore does an impressive job of compressing a complicated subject into two highly watchable and entertaining hours, replete with man-on-the-street examples of the toll of the recession on the middle class.

MOVIES

Review | Fame (PG) *

Talented cast can't save this forgettable remake

SCREEN GEMS

A look ahead at the week in TV and movies

BIG SCREEN Fame (PG-13) -- Alan Parker's influential 1980 musical about the students at New York City's High School of Performing Arts gets a ''reimagining'' that includes a toning-down of the original R-rating to a High School Musical-friendly PG-13. Yes, New York has changed a lot since the 1980s. But still. Asher Book, Kristy Flores, Paul McGill and Naturi Naughton are among the talented kids who hope to live forever and learn how to fly high. This one is not being screened for critics until the last possible minute, so don't expect much.