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Mystery/Suspense DVDs

Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)

Sales Rank:596
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

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Director(s):

Actor(s):

Liam Neeson
Ralph Fiennes
Ben Kingsley
Caroline Goodall
Jonathan Sagall

Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit Jurassic Park, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of Schindler's List that Spielberg called "the most satisfying experience of my career." Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps.

By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds. At the same time, he must remain solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and negotiate business with a vicious, obstinate Nazi commandant (Ralph Fiennes) who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa overlooking a prison camp. Schindler's List gains much of its power not by trying to explain Schindler's motivations, but by dramatizing the delicate diplomacy and determination with which he carried out his generous deeds.

As a drinker and womanizer who thought nothing of associating with Nazis, Schindler was hardly a model of decency; the film is largely about his transformation in response to the horror around him. Spielberg doesn't flinch from that horror, and the result is a film that combines remarkable humanity with abhorrent inhumanity--a film that functions as a powerful history lesson and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the context of a living nightmare. --Jeff Shannon

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North By Northwest

Sales Rank:1617
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Director(s):

Actor(s):

Ed Binns
Leo G. Carroll
Bill Catching
Philip Coolidge
Lawrence Dobkin

A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo (1958) and the stark horror of Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie." It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT), an advertising executive who is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named George Kaplan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as the boss, and Martin Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a Train (Eva Marie Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most convolutedly choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of course, there are the famous set pieces: the stabbing at the United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield (where a pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger finale atop the stone faces of Mount Rushmore. Plus a sparkling Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire? --Jim Emerson

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Weeds - Season Three [Blu-ray]

Sales Rank:336
List Price: $39.97
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Actor(s):

Mary-Louise Parker
Romany Malco
Justin Kirk

America's favorite pot-dealing soccer mom is more addictive than ever in the third season of WEEDS, the highly acclaimed Showtime(r) Original Series. Emmy (r) and Golden Globe(r) winner MARY-LOUISE PARKER stars as Nancy Botwin, a single mom who resorts to dealing pot after her husband dies suddenly. But when an off beat way to make ends meet grows into a mini-empire, the mother of all dealers finds she may be in over her head - and on the verge of taking everyone else with her. Hilarious and subversive, WEEDS is the hit that put the herb in suburb.

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Carnivale - The Complete First Season

Sales Rank:2664
List Price: $39.98
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Actor(s):

Guy Chapman (II)
Hot Pie

Carnivàle doesn't waste any time making its--wildly ambitious--aims clear. As carnival manager Samson (Michael J. Anderson, Twin Peaks' diminutive backwards-talker) notes in pilot episode "Milfay," directed by Rodrigo García (son of Gabriel García Marquez), "To each generation [is] born a creature of light and a creature of darkness." With that the story begins. The year is 1934, the setting the Oklahoma dustbowl. In short order, Ben Hawkins (In the Bedroom's Nick Stahl) loses his mother and his home. He's poor, he's alone--he needs a job. So he joins Samson's carnival, en route to the West. Hawkins, naturally, is the good guy. Waiting for him in California is the not so good Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown, The Shawshank Redemption), a fire and brimstone preacher with supernatural powers and a fiercely loyal sister (Amy Madigan). Hawkins, as it turns out, has similar powers....

Created by Daniel Knauf (Wolf Lake), Carnivàle feels like David Lynch (weird, slow, occasionally kinky), plays like American Gothic (Shaun Cassidy's cult series about a good kid and an evil sheriff), and looks like John Ford's Grapes of Wrath. It features one of television's most colorful casts of characters. They include Sophie (Clea DuVall), who reads fortunes--with her comatose mother's assistance, the vaguely sinister Lodz (Patrick Bauchau), blind absinthe-drinker and mentalist (he can see both the future and the past), and Ruthie (Adrienne Barbeau), snake charmer, strongman's mother, and all-around maternal figure. By the final episode of the season ("The Day That Was the Day"), also directed by García, one of these characters will be dead. Carnivàle won five richly deserved technical Emmys for its first year, including awards for cinematography and art direction. Like HBO's edgy Deadwood, it's period drama for people who don't normally like period drama. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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Bangkok Dangerous (Single-Disc Edition)

Sales Rank:113
List Price: $29.95
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

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Director(s):

Danny Pang
Oxide Pang Chun

Actor(s):

Nicolas Cage
Charlie Yeung
Charlie Young
Dom Hetrakul
Chakrit Yamnarm

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To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)

Sales Rank:1472
List Price: $14.99
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MPAA Rating: Unrated

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Color
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Actor(s):

John Alderson
Georgette Anys
Brigitte Auber
Martha Bamattre
René Blancard

One of the creamiest of all of Alfred Hitchcock's films, To Catch a Thief is something like pure pleasure. Begin ticking off the ingredients of this 1955 movie and you'll get the picture: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, the French Riviera, champagne, fireworks, cat burglary. Mmm, it already feels good. Grant plays a retired thief who becomes a suspect when valuable things begin disappearing along the Cote d'Azur. The diamonds hanging from the well-sculpted neck of Grace Kelly would appear to be the newest target, but it's just possible that actual romance might also be wafting through the Mediterranean air. The lightness of the story keeps To Catch a Thief from being one of the masterpieces of Hitchcock's great run in the 1950s, but it is very difficult to cavil about the sunny locations, Grant's elegant aplomb, and Kelly's shrewd withholding of her sexual interest beneath the ice-queen exterior. John Michael Hayes provided the amusing script (which stretches double entendres to their limit, especially in a romantic discussion of fried chicken), Edith Head the splendid costumes. If the movie has any weight at all, it's in proving that at this point in his career Hitchcock was consumed with charting the tricky terrain of male-female courtship; if issues of trust are treated here with a light touch, they nevertheless matter as much as the mechanical working-out of Mr. H's suspense stories. --Robert Horton

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NCIS Naval Criminal Investigative Service - The Complete Third Season

Sales Rank:950
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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With two solid seasons already banked, NCIS returns for a compelling third year with exciting plotlines and a slightly tweaked cast. The show's second season ended with the brutal and shocking death of Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander). The first two episodes of this season deal with the aftermath of bringing her killer to justice and examining the emotional impact of her loss on the remaining members of the NCIS team, which is led by Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon). The six-disc set includes all 24 episodes, which aired on CBS during 2005-2006. Returning are happy-go-lucky ladies' man Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly, Dark Angel), forensics expert and resident Goth chick Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette), medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum, The Man from U.N.C.L.E), and agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray). Former Mossad intelligence officer Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) joins the close-knit cast, as does Jennifer Shepard (Lauren Holly, Dumb & Dumber) as the new NCIS director. Working on a daily basis with Shepard initially makes Gibbs wary. Not only is she a former girlfriend, but she also was his underling at one time. Equal parts CSI and JAG, NCIS works primarily because of its quirky cast, which is able to take sometimes regurgitated ideas and rework them into something engagingly watchable. Throughout this season, we will see agents endangered and framed, and one will accidentally kill an undercover detective who may not have been armed. But the explosive two-part season finale will finally shed light on Gibbs' painful history and help explain why he is who is he today. --Jae-Ha Kim

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Jane Austen Collection (Sense & Sensibility / Emma / Persuasion / Mansfield Park / Pride & Prejudice / Northanger Abbey)

Sales Rank:1615
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Box set
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Director(s):

Cyril Coke
David Giles
Giles Foster
John Glenister

Actor(s):

Elizabeth Knight
Anne Maxwell
Katharine Schlesinger
Peter Firth
Robert Hardy

The socially restricted lives of 18th-century women hardly seems like a subject that would inspire dozens of 20th (and 21st) century adaptations--but the brilliant novels of Jane Austen are flush with sparkling dialogue, razor-sharp wit, marvelously realized characters that range from adorably sympathetic to grotesquely comic, and--above all--ingeniously intricate plots, which arrive at a seemingly inevitable happy conclusion yet keep you seized with suspense every inch of the way. The Jane Austen Collection pulls together six BBC miniseries from 1971 through 1987, one for each of Austen's much-beloved books.

Unsurprisingly, the gems of the lot are also the best of the novels: Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Pride and Prejudice, expertly translated to the screen by novelist Fay Weldon, skillfully chronicles the ups and downs of the sensible but quick to judge Elizabeth Bennet (the adorable Elizabeth Garvie) and the snooty Mr. Darcy (played with an imperious scowl by David Rintoul). Any adaptation of Emma rests firmly on its central character, and Doran Godwin wonderfully captures Emma Woodhouse's resilience, determination, and exasperating self-satisfaction. Definitely the funniest of Austen's novels, Emma's satirical humor is perfectly balanced with romantic yearning, and this 1972 version succeeds delightfully.

Persuasion, though more melancholy in tone, has a wonderfully sympathetic heroine in Anne Elliot (played by the graceful Ann Fairbanks), who once turned away the man she loved but is given the chance, seven years later, to set things right. Sense and Sensibility suffers from comparison to the star firepower and cinematic sweep of the 1995 movie with Emma Thompson (a must-see for any Austen fan), but the dueling characters of gracious Elinore and headstrong Marianne, two sisters struggling with fallen fortunes, make for enjoyable viewing in this 1981 adaptation. Mansfield Park has perhaps the dullest hero and heroine of any Austen novel, yet the story zips along, powered by some of Austen's most outrageous supporting characters, here brought to deliciously comic life by Anna Massey and Angela Pleasence. Northanger Abbey satirizes gothic romances and the overheated imaginations that loved them; but though the tone is more broad and melodramatic than most of Austen, this 1987 adaptation suits the novel and rounds out this very satisfying boxed set. --Bret Fetzer

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24 - Season Five (Slim-Pack)

Sales Rank:256
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Director(s):

Jayne Atkins
Jude Ciccolella
Peter Weller

Actor(s):

Kiefer Sutherland
Mary Lynn Rajskub
Kim Raver
Jean Smart
James Morrison (II)

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Sense & Sensibility Collector's Set (Sense & Sensibility 2008 / Miss Austen Regrets / Persuasion 2007)

Sales Rank:874
List Price: $49.98
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Lush, dramatic, and beautifully acted, the BBC's three-part miniseries Sense & Sensibility captures the languid urgency that resonates throughout the Jane Austen novel on which it is based. The miniseries begins with a seduction scene: As a young girl cautiously gives herself to a man, she asks, "But when will you come back?" He answers ominously, "Soon... very soon," and gallops off into the night. We know what she does not--that he will not return for her. But viewers do not learn until the end who the couple are, and how their actions set off a chain of events. It is inevitable that this period piece will be compared to the 1995 big screen adaptation that starred Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant, and won Thompson an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. To its credit, this later version stands up incredibly well, with actors whose looks match Austen's written description. And due to a longer running time than the film version, there is more attention paid to detail and minor characters. Sense & Sensibility focuses on the longings of the Dashwood sisters Elinor (Hattie Morahan) and Marianne (Charity Wakefield). After their wealthy father dies, leaving his entire estate to their milquetoast half brother John (Mark Gatiss), Elinor, Marianne, their younger sister Margaret (Lucy Boynton), and their mother are left penniless. John and his shrew-like wife Fanny move into the manor, making the Dashwoods feel like unwanted guests. It is only after Fanny's handsome and kind brother Edward Ferrars (Dan Stevens) arrives for a visit that Elinor feels happy again. Marianne, too, has attracted the attention of two suitors: serious and shy Colonel Brandon (David Morrissey) and dashing Willoughby (Dominic Cooper). Learning that the 35-year-old colonel is interested in her, a stunned Marianne says, "You do realize that it will be impossible for me to speak to him again." Her actions are that of a little girl, running away and hiding when he comes to call on her. But her feelings for Willoughby are real: the kind of love a girl feels for the first time. The differences in the sisters' choices, actions, and secrets set the tone for an era when a perceived impropriety could ruin a woman's reputation and her family's standing in a community. Filmed in England with good use of aerial shots, the production has a sweeping feel that adds a distinct flavor to the drama. As with many Austen novels, the heroines in Sense & Sensibility go through many misunderstandings before their happily-ever-after ending. But that ending leaves viewers satisfied that things turned out just the way that they should.

Austen fans will be delighted with the second disc in this set: Miss Austen Regrets is a perfect companion to the miniseries, starring Olivia Williams stars as the author, and Greta Scacchi--who could easily pass as Williams' real-life sibling--as Austen's sister Cassandra. The film takes a bittersweet look at Austen's life and hints at what could have been had she married one of her suitors. Smart and headstrong, Austen refuses to cave into society's notions of what a proper woman should do. While her famous heroines all paired up with dashing gentlemen, Austen found that the loves of her life were her written creations. --Jae-Ha Kim

On the third disc of this set is the sumptuous production design and first-rate acting in the 2007 Masterpiece Theatre version of Persuasion. Sally Hawkins is controlled and moving as Anne Elliot, the quietly heartbroken but sensible heroine who was "persuaded" (read: forced) to turn away her true love but still carries an unseen torch for him. Hawkins's performance is genteel yet steely, and the quiet strength of the entire production. Hawkins looks alternately quietly lovely and sadly pinched--as one might expect the long frustrated Anne to look. Other highlights include a post-Buffy Anthony Head, as Anne's clueless, blustery father, Sir Walter. Head gets to turn on his deft comic talent here in ways most American audiences have not yet seen him; he's clearly enjoying himself immensely, blustering about "my shrubberies" and other trivial affairs. The cinematography is lush (several breathtaking tracking shots are used, especially early on), as are the period costumes. The production was filmed exclusively on location, and the reality of the sets enforces the story. Some fans may prefer the 1995 Amanda Root version, for the casting of Ciaran Hinds as Capt. Wentworth, but this later effort is a worthy entry in the Austen film oeuvre--and Rupert Penry-Jones is a dreamboat in his own right. As the wistful Anne says, on behalf of all women, "We do not forget you, so soon as you forget us." --A.T. Hurley

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