DVD Update for week of Friday, May 7th:
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars in “The Tooth Fairy,” a featherweight, family-oriented comedy about a cynical, arrogant former NFL hockey player who is punished by the Fairy-in-Chief (Julie Andrews) for “first degree murder of fantasy.”
Marc Feinberg’s quasi-autobiographical “Play the Game” is a senior-citizen sex romp with Andy Griffith, as a lonely widower, making a move on Doris Roberts. The cast also includes director Ron Howard’s real-life brother, Clint, as Griffith’s smarmy son-in-law and Howard’s father, Rance, as Roberts’ boyfriend.
Part buddy comedy/part heist film, “The Dukes” is a wry, comic tale of a down-and-out Doo-Wop Band (Chazz Palminteri, Robert Davi, Peter Bogdonovich) who take a bumbling detour into burglary.
A fact-based story that proves truth is stranger – and more absurd – than fiction, “California Dreamin” follows a Marine captain (Armand Assante) and his platoon on a mission in Romania. during the 1999 bloody civil war in Yugoslavia.
Inspired by stories of her grandmother’s life in 1950s South Africa, Shamim Sarif’s engaging “The World Unseen” asks if true love can survive amid the chaos of Apartheid.
The red Sesame Street monster Elmo is back and more lovable than ever in “The Best of Elmo 2” And there a Blu-ray and 45th anniversary edition of David Lean’s romantic epic “Doctor Zhivago,” starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie; both include a new documentary on the enduring legacy of the film.
And for foreign film fans, Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s “Tokyo Sonata” probes the dark side of human nature and the social problems that confront contemporary Japan; part social commentary/part situational comedy, it profiles an ordinary Japanese family.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Inspired by Federico Fellini’s surreal 1963 art film “8 ½,” the musical “Nine” revolves around an egocentric film director (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the throes of a mid-life crisis, searching for existential salvation among the pivotal women in his life (Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Fergie, Kate Hudson and Sophia Loren, as his beloved mother). It’s dazzling yet the sumptuous whole adds up to less than a sum of its parts.