The DVD Filter

Bad Santa on DVD

By Logan Hill
Published May 21, 2005

(Photo: Warner Home Video)

Wonder Woman: Complete First Season
Lynda Carter’s truth-lassoing, teenage-boy-inflaming heroine is one of the last superheroes and seventies television characters without a Hollywood remake, but that won’t last: Joel Silver has a script in development at Warner. Until then, this set collects thirteen episodes and the original feature-length pilot. An invisible plane may also be included—or not. We can’t tell. NR; $39.98.

A Woman Is a Woman
An expertly rendered Criterion edition of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 riff on musical romance. NR; $29.95.

Secret Window
A low point in Johnny Depp’s oeuvre. PG-13; $28.95.

Cold Mountain
Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Charles Frazier’s Civil War tale strained “to be an American Odyssey,” wrote New York’s Peter Rainer. Nicole Kidman was “too porcelain-skinned to suggest suffering and starvation.” R; $29.99.

Barbershop 2
A disappointingly tame sequel. PG-13; $27.98.

Blazing Saddles
A 30th-anniversary edition, with Mel Brooks commentary. R; $19.97.

The Line King
The Oscar-nominated 1996 documentary about Broadway caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. NR; $24.95.

(Photo: New line Productions)

OUR PICK
Last year, Hollywood somehow delivered two successful holiday films with shelf lives considerably longer than The Santa Clause: Will Ferrell’s goofy, green-legged romp Elf and Billy Bob Thornton’s filthy comedy Bad Santa, which became a cruel holiday classic. (New York’s Peter Rainer called it “deliriously grungy.”) Directed by Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Crumb), the film introduces an alcoholic, sex-crazed safecracker (Thornton) and his little helper (the viciously funny Tony Cox) who pose as Santa and elf in order to raid department-store safes. The jokes are foul, gutter-level, and hilarious—and get even worse on an unrated Badder Santa edition. Though, really, once you’ve watched Thornton leer drunkenly while a cute child sits on his lap and offers his holiday wishes, you’re unlikely to be shocked by anything. R or NR; $29.99.