House of Flying Daggers
Zhang Yimou’s martial-arts romance is one of the most beautiful films in recent years, with a few set pieces that are instant classics. Accented with billowing silk and specks of blood, homicide never looked more ravishing or felt more heartbreaking. PG-13; $28.95.
Birth
Nicole Kidman’s child-molestation mystery failed to capture audiences as, say, Michael Jackson’s has—partly because Jonathan Glazer’s arid cinematography only amplified his preposterous plot. R; $27.95.
Dynasty: The Complete First Season
The Carringtons come crawling out of the woodwork. NR; $39.98.
Meet the Fockers
Hasn’t everyone seen this dreck already? PG-13; $29.98.
A Love Song for Bobby Long
Hasn’t everyone skipped this dreck already? R; $26.96.
Seed of Chucky
Don Mancini’s reinvention of his franchise—in which the killer doll has a gender-confused son—was a flop but a damn funny, bizarrely transgressive sequel. R; $29.98.
Errol Flynn: The Signature Collection
These six swashbuckling films—including The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood—are campy fun but still pale compared with his legendarily juicy autobiography. NR; $59.92.
Our Pick
Last year, Shane Carruth made Sundance’s most exciting debut with his no-budget Grand Jury winner Primer. It’s about a little band of Texas scientists who, building circuits in their garage, concoct a time machine. And it features the kind of clockwork sci-fi plotting that can only be pulled off by a full-blown obsessive—much like DIY filmmaking. As Carruth and his co-stars rip apart a refrigerator to extract xenon, you imagine they weren’t so different off-screen, where they must have been scrounging for props and lights and obsessively tweaking a marvel of a script. Commentary by Carruth and cast; PG-13; $27.95.