The DVD Filter

Monster on DVD

By Logan Hill
Published May 31, 2004

Neve Campbell in The Company.

(Photo: Columbia Tristar)

The Company
Robert Altman’s loose, aimless film about a season with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago is “a series of impressions united by not much more than mood,” according to New York’s Peter Rainer. PG-13; $26.96.

Cary Grant: The Signature Collection
Five films starring the suave actor: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, My Favorite Wife, Destination Tokyo, Night and Day—and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, the quintessential story about a Madison Avenue adman who escapes to the ’burbs and nearly goes crazy as a result. NR; $49.92.

My Baby’s Daddy
This Three Men and a Baby redux is so bad it makes you miss Tom Selleck. PG-13; $29.99.

The Times of Harvey Milk
A twentieth-anniversary edition of the tragic Oscar-winning documentary about the assassinated gay mayor, packed with extras. NR; $29.95.

Winsor McCay: The Master Edition
Every surviving film by the whimsical early-cinema animator, with new scores. NR; $29.95.

The Son
Olivier Gourmet gives an intense performance as a father who becomes obsessed with his child’s killer in Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s uneven psychological thriller. NR; $29.95.

OUR PICK
Charlize Theron delivered “a ferocious, career-changing performance” as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, the “otherwise lackluster” drama by Patty Jenkins, wrote Peter Rainer. But did she really nail the part? A smart new twin-pack contrasts Theron’s performance with the murderer herself, coupling the Academy favorite with Nick Broomfield’s tight, bare-bones documentary Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. In the latter, Broomfield cashes in on unprecedented access earned during the making of his earlier documentary The Selling of a Serial Killer, delivering exclusive, absolutely terrifying interviews with Wuornos as she nears her execution. Vicious, threatening, and madly mercurial, Wuornos speaks calmly one moment and makes death threats the next. Theron clearly caught her cadence and swagger, but she actually underplays Wuornos; if she had been as vicious and over-the-top as the real killer, it would have looked hammy. Two discs; R; $39.95.