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A Christmas Carol

Christmas elicits nothing more than "Bah, humbug!" from Ebenezer Scrooge (Scott), a miser whose sole pursuit of financial success has left him a bitter and lonely old man. But a Christmas Eve visit from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future ultimately teaches him to open his heart to the spirit of Christmas and to the joys of friends and family.

In the same year that he directed a handsome version of The Scarlet Pimpernel for television, Clive Donner also made this worthy 1984 small-screen production of the Dickens tale. George C. Scott can't quite muster a decent English accent, but he does bring some new colors to this movie's interpretation of Scrooge, making the character less nasty for the sake of nastiness and more a product of a life of lovelessness. The supporting cast is first-rate, and the production is far more handsome than most TV fare. --Tom Keogh

Scrooged

A ruthless tv-network chief meets the ghosts of christmases past present and yet to come. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/24/2004 Starring: Bill Murray John Glover Run time: 101 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Richard Donner

Most critics couldn't get behind Bill Murray's modern retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, finding it too unfocused at times and not nearly wicked enough. Still, if you're a Murray fan, you have to enjoy his deliciously nasty portrayal of the world's meanest TV executive, who has his cathartic moment one cold Christmas night in New York City. The various ghosts lead him on a ghost-town tour of Manhattan, with stops at holidays past, present, and future and a Kumbaya moment when Al Green and Annie Lennox sing "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." The effects are otherworldly, but one wishes the writing were as sharp as Murray's edgy portrayal. --Marshall Fine

Get Smart - Season 1 (The Original TV Series)

Studio: Hbo Home Video Release Date: 08/05/2008 Run time: 750 minutes Rating: G

The feature film may have missed it by that much, but Get Smart, the TV series, still hits the target with deadly funny accuracy. The right show at the right time, Get Smart brilliantly spoofed the spy genre that was all the rage in 1965, with James Bond on the big screen, and such series as Danger Man, The Avengers, The Saint, < I>The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and I Spy more or less playing it straight on the small screen. Get Smart, on the other hand, had a license to kill…with laughter. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created one of TV's all-time greatest characters, Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of CONTROL, the super-secret agency vigilantly on alert against the forces of KAOS. Smart (Don Adams in his iconic, Emmy-winning role), an American Clouseau, was not stupid. Though all evidence to the contrary, he was, in his own mind, a suave and sophisticated spy, albeit one who would inadvertently lean against a freshly painted wall while shadowing an enemy agent. Get Smart hilariously deglamorized the business of espionage. Agents punch a time clock and dispute vacation time. Cool spy gadgets, such as the infamous Cone of Silence, are prone to malfunction. One running joke throughout the first season finds Agent 44 (Victor French) perched in a variety of unlikely and uncomfortable hiding places, among them a grandfather clock. Although the series would only get smarter and funnier in subsequent seasons (Bernie Kopell's KAOS mastermind Siegfried would be introduced in season two), the first season contains several essential episodes, including the Emmy-winning two-parter, "Ship of Spies," "Aboard the Orient Express," featuring a cameo by Johnny Carson as an unflappable conductor, "Diplomat's Daughter" with the arch --and decidedly non-PC-- villain, the Craw, and "Back to the Drawing Board," featuring Dick Gautier as Hymie the robot. From "Sorry about that" to "Would you believe," no show before Get Smart introduced so many catchphrases into the national language, while Smart and his partner, Agent 99 (the ravishing Barbara Feldon), were perhaps TV's first "will they or won't they" couple. Brooks and Henry contribute separate commentaries for the black and white pilot episode, while Feldon provides commentary for another, and purrs introductions to each episode (beware plot spoilers). With Get Smart, you will be witness to some of TV's funniest moments, sharpest writing, and expertly-executed physical comedy. And… loving it. --Donald Liebenson

The Complete Thin Man Collection (The Thin Man / After the Thin Man / Another Thin Man / Shadow of the Thin Man / The Thin Man Goes Home / Song of the Thin Man / Alias Nick and Nora)

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 08/07/2007 Run time: 592 minutes

Almost as welcome as a shaker full of martinis, The Complete Thin Man Collection represents an eagerly awaited DVD milestone for fans of the fizzy MGM movie series. The best film in the series came first: The Thin Man (1934), W.S. Van Dyke's marvelous adaptation of a Dashiell Hammet novel. The movie gods were in a generous mood when they paired William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, the upper-class sophisticates whose sleuthing escapades somehow joined the classic form of the whodunit with the giddyup of screwball comedy. Among the series' many attributes, one of its most radical notions was the idea that a married couple might find each other delightful and view life as a goofy adventure together.

It is common wisdom that the Thin Man sequels adhere to the law of diminishing returns, and while none of the follow-ups reach the diamond level of the first film, all afford pleasures. There's the cocktail-swilling chemistry of Powell and Loy, for one thing, as well as the considerable satisfaction of average movies made during the studio system: the craftsmanship of studio hands, and a gallery of terrific character actors filling in supporting roles. First sequel After the Thin Man (1936) is very good, with the couple in San Francisco and a supporting part for rising player James Stewart. The scenery moves again, to Long Island, for the rather impudently-titled Another Thin Man (1939), which adds baby Nick, Jr., to the mix (a "bad idea," thought Pauline Kael, perhaps a sign of the domestication of the series).

Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) sets the action around a racetrack, and is the last of the series to be directed by the fast-working Van Dyke. The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) finds Nick escorting family to his parents' house for a visit. Song of the Thin Man (1947) engagingly adds a jazz milieu to the Charles's detective work; at this point, Nick, Jr. was played by child star Dean Stockwell. The series stuck with certain staples: the unveiling of the guilty party, a wirehaired terrier named Asta (who became a star in its own right), and booze. When Nick opines, in the first film, that a dry martini should always be shaken to "waltz time," you know why audiences fell in love with these guilt-free comedies. --Robert Horton

Pan's Labyrinth

When young ofelia & her mother go to live with her new stepfather on a rural military outpost she finds herself in a world of unimaginable cruelty. Soon ofelia finds the creatures of her imagination in which she used to escape have become a reality & she must battle them to save her mother & herself. Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 09/30/2008 Run time: 119 minutes Rating: R

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm, Jorge Luis Borges, and Guillermo del Toro's own unlimited imagination, Pan's Labyrinth is a fairytale for adults. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) may only be 12, but the worlds she inhabits, both above and below ground, are dark as anything del Toro has conjured. Set in rural Spain, circa 1944, Ofelia and her widowed mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil, Belle Epoque), have just moved into an abandoned mill with Carmen's new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López, With a Friend like Harry). Carmen is pregnant with his son. Other than her sickly mother and kindly housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú, Y Tu Mamá También), the dreamy Ofelia is on her own. Vidal, an exceedingly cruel man, couldn't be bothered. He has informers to torture. Ofelia soon finds that an entire universe exists below the mill. Her guide is the persuasive Faun (Doug Jones, Mimic). As her mother grows weaker, Ofelia spends more and more time in the satyr's labyrinth. He offers to help her out of her predicament if she'll complete three treacherous tasks. Ofelia is willing to try, but does this alternate reality really exist or is it all in her head? Del Toro leaves that up to the viewer to decide in a beautiful, yet brutal twin to The Devil's Backbone, which was also haunted by the ghost of Franco. Though it lacks the humor of Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth represents Guillermo Del Toro at the top of his considerable game. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Singin' in the Rain (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Set in the 1920s silent movie star don lockwood falls for a young newcomer whose golden voice & dancing moves are a perfect perfect match for him. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/05/2005 Starring: Gene Kelly Debbie Reynolds Run time: 103 minutes Rating: Nr

Decades before the Hollywood film industry became famous for megabudget disaster and science fiction spectaculars, the studios of Southern California (and particularly Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) were renowned for a uniquely American (and nearly extinct) kind of picture known as The Musical. Indeed, when the prestigious British film magazine Sight & Sound conducts its international critics poll in the second year of every decade, this 1952 MGM picture is the American musical that consistently ranks among the 10 best movies ever made. It's not only a great song-and-dance piece starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and a sprightly Debbie Reynolds; it's also an affectionately funny insider spoof about the film industry's uneasy transition from silent pictures to "talkies." Kelly plays debonair star Don Lockwood, whose leading lady Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) has a screechy voice hilariously ill-suited to the new technology (and her glamorous screen image). Among the musical highlights: O'Connor's knockout "Make 'Em Laugh"; the big "Broadway Melody" production number; and, best of all, that charming little title ditty in which Kelly makes movie magic on a drenched set with nothing but a few puddles, a lamppost, and an umbrella. --Jim Emerson

The World's Fastest Indian

In the late 1960s after a lifetime of perfecting his classic indian motorcycle burt sets off from the bottom of the world invercargill new zealand to clock his bike at the bonneville salt flats in utah. With all odds against him burt puts his irrepressible kiwi spirit to the test braving the new world. Studio: Magnolia Pict Hm Ent Release Date: 12/31/2007 Starring: Anthony Hopkins Bruce Greenwood Run time: 127 minutes Rating: Pg13

A movie that exudes affection and goodwill, The World's Fastest Indian is an unabashed mash note to a lovely character from New Zealand's recent past. Burt Munro, played by Anthony Hopkins, is a cantankerous Kiwi with an obsession: he's been tinkering with his 1920s-era Indian brand motorcycle for years, pushing it to ever-faster speeds. It's the 1960s, and Burt has the utterly mad idea of taking the bike to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, site of world records for speed racing. The movie takes a while to get to the journey--and then the journey takes a while--but the genial atmosphere prevails. (People of a certain age, for whom the word "Bonneville" evokes pleasant associations with hotrods and world-speed records, will not be disappointed in the film's location shooting, or its sense of awe.) Hopkins is not quite on-the-money casting for the jovial, happy-go-lucky Munro, and his accent wavers, but he nails the emotional scenes and the fascination with speed. Smaller bits are well-filled by Diane Ladd and Christopher Lawford (son of Peter), who looks uncannily of the era. New Zealand director Roger Donaldson doesn't take any chances here, but the story clearly means something to him, and that sense of commitment carries the film through its sleepier moments. --Robert Horton

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley

Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/06/2007

Essential Classics - American Musicals (The Music Man / Meet Me in St. Louis / Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/13/2008

This three-disc set, part of Warner's Essential Classics series, collects three truly classic films--The Music Man, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers--in one inexpensive package. The drawback is you don't get the second disc of either Meet Me in St. Louis or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, so if you're a featurette junky or if you simply have to see the reshot version of Seven Brides, you'll want to stick with the individual releases. But this set does include the commentary tracks and any other material that was on the first disc of those two-disc sets (The Music Man still has everything that was on the one-disc release), and best of all, they have the great remastered pictures of the previous releases. So if you just want the movies looking better than ever with some bonus features thrown in for good measure, the price per movie makes this set an attractive bargain. --David Horiuchi

Practical Magic

Sandra bullock and nicole kidman provide plenty of hex appeal in this screen enchantment about modern-day sisters and witches vexed by a centuries-old family cures: men they fall in love with are doomed to an untimely death. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008 Starring: Sandra Bullock Dianne West Run time: 104 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Griffin Dunne

Actor Griffin Dunne improves a bit on his first film as a director, Addicted to Love, with this drama-comedy about a family of witches. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock play spell-casting sisters of different temperaments: the former is a high-living, free-spirited sort, while Bullock's character is a homebody who can't get around a family curse that kills the men in their lives. A widowed single mom, Bullock gets into a jam with an abusive Bulgarian (Goran Visnjic) and is helped out by her sibling, but the result brings a good-looking, warm, inquisitive cop (Aidan Quinn) into their lives. The film has a variety of tonal changes--cute, scary, glum--that Dunne can't always effectively juggle. But the female-centric, celebratory nature of the film (the fantasies, the sharing, the witchy bonds) is infectious, and supporting roles by Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as Kidman and Bullock's magical aunts are a lot of fun. --Tom Keogh