Susan Granger’s dvd update for week of Friday, Nov. 21st:
The four lifelong friends (Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn, Blake Lively, America Ferrera) of Ann Brashares’ “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” are back in a sequel for another summer of drama and discovery, sharing the magical pair of thrift-shop jeans as a way of staying connected to each other – and you may recognize scenes filmed at Yale and the Westport Country Playhouse.
Direct-to-dvd, “The Clique,” based on the first of Lisi Harrison’s teen series, explores the social scene at an exclusive private girls’ school in Westchester County, while Harmony Korine’s bizarre “Mister Lonely” revolves around a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) enticed by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) to an impersonator commune in the Scottish Highlands, where he finds a menagerie of wannabees, asserting, “There are no truer souls than those who impersonate.”
Narrated by droll Johnny Depp, Alex Gibney’s “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” is the definitive documentary about a brilliant but self-destructive writer whose creativity sprang from his perpetual state of imbalance.
PICKS OF THE WEEK: For families, ‘WALL-E” is a wistful, whimsical robotic romance set in 2700 on post-apocalyptic Earth, where a lonely Waste Allocation Load Lifter (WALL-E) finds a little green sprout that attracts the attention of an Extra-Terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE). So WALL-E travels with her to a distant galaxy and teaches spaceship passengers how to be human again.
For adults, “Tropic Thunder” is a hilarious spoof of war movies, starting with four bogus trailers featuring a washed-up action star (Stiller), grossed-out comedian (Jack Black), black rapper (Brandon T. Jackson) and Oscar-winning Aussie (Robert Downey). While the British director (Steve Coogan) decides to drop these self-indulgent celebs deep in the jungle, the paunchy, power-crazed studio exec (Tom Cruise) steals the show.