Man On Fire
In vigilante action flicks like this one, starring Denzel Washington, the ends (saving the kidnapped Dakota Fanning) supposedly justify Abu Ghraib–like means (stuffing plastic explosive in a bad guy’s orifices), but nothing justifies this kind of Hollywood overkill. R; $29.98.
THX 1138
A special edition of George Lucas’s chilly 1971 sci-fi film. R; $26.99.
Coffee And Cigarettes
Jim Jarmusch’s caffeinated, nicotine-stained collection of short films has a “low-key, hangdog lyricism,” wrote New York’s Peter Rainer, who dubbed the shorts with Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Alfred Molina, and Steve Coogan “small classics.” R; $29.98.
Björk: Inner Part Of An Animal Or Plant Structure (Snapper)
For obsessives, a studio tour behind Björk’s recent album. NR; $12.98.
Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete First Season
The last of the great hetero domestic sitcoms? NR; $44.98.
Baadasssss!
Mario Van Peebles’s messy but brilliant film about the making of his father Melvin’s blaxploitation classic. R; $24.96.
Our Pick
The six-hour, Mike Nichols–directed adaptation of Tony Kushner’s epic Angels in America, wrote New York’s John Leonard, was “not only the best television of the year but, hands down, the best movie, period.” Nichols succeeded by grasping Kushner’s far-reaching and often unnaturally literary dialogue (a “sort of choral response to Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’ ” wrote Leonard) and finding only the country’s best stage and film actors to deliver it: Al Pacino, Mary-Louise Parker, Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Jeffrey Wright. Finally, a contemporary stage work of consequence got the lavish production and cast it deserved. Next up: Nichols’s Closer, John Madden’s Proof, and (gulp) Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera, all out this December. Two discs; NR; $39.98.