DVD Report

''The She Found Me'' Helen Hunt (with Colin Firth) starred in, directed, and co-wrote the film.

New Releases | Tom Russo

Hunt is mad about babies in her filmmaking debut

When Helen Hunt was starring on "Mad About You," life's tendency to throw everything at us all at once was generally represented by, say, Jamie and Paul's stress-relief canoodling getting interrupted by a knock on the door from Cousin Ira. As star, director, and co-writer of "Then She Found Me" (2008), Hunt raises the dramatic stakes considerably, and at times powerfully, on normalcy gone haywire. Hunt plays April Epner, a down-to-earth schoolteacher whose biological clock-watching and confused feelings about her own adoption have pressed her into trying for a baby with a boyish co-worker (Matthew Broderick), a relationship that barely outlasts the opening credits. Then her adoptive mother dies. Then an Oprah-ish talk show host (Bette Midler) enters her life, claiming to be her birth mother. Then April stumbles into unexpected true romance with Frank (Colin Firth), the recently divorced, wryly humorous parent of one of her students. Then baby issues bring her ex back around. The swirl of craziness allows the cast to chomp into a number of juicy moments: Hunt and a semi-clad Midler seriocomically coming to an understanding about Midler's role in her life, and the chick-flick-perfect Firth venting his many repressed resentments. Hunt's sure hand wavers only in handling certain developments as manipulatively as she does. A life-changing ob-gyn visit seemingly is as much about getting the story out of a narrative corner as it is about staging a poignantly truthful scene. Even as a filmmaking first-timer, she's already better than that.

Extras: Hunt's smart commentary reveals, among other things, why she cast Salman Rushdie as her doctor, and her eagerness to shake up the story's tone. "I'm betraying [the audience]," she admits at one point. "Part of the theory of the movie is that life does that." (Image, $27.98; Blu-ray, $35.98)

"MARRIED LIFE" (2008) We're all for the idea of taking a noirish period piece and layering it with a meditation on the distinction between companionship and passionate love, as filmmaker Ira Sachs ("Forty Shades of Blue") does in his nicely cast indie. But it's awfully distracting when the clothes and cars say 1949, but the flat visual style and nondescript tone say here-and-now, or at least who-knows-when. Chris Cooper is Harry Allen, a buttoned-down businessman who confides in his best pal (Pierce Brosnan) that he's about to leave his supportive wife (Patricia Clarkson) for fetching, sweetly affectionate Kay (Rachel McAdams). Harry's plan eventually turns murderous, making for some terrifically pained moments as he fully grasps the irrevocable choice he's made. But only the roguish Brosnan really seems to know how to inhabit not just his character, but the world around him. Extras: Alternate endings; commentary by Sachs. (Sony, $28.96; Blu-ray, $38.96)

"BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY" (1988) As a snapshot of hard-partying '80s New York, this adaptation of Jay McInerney's literary breakout feels like it's been yanked from a time capsule. (Yep, it's been 20 years.) But you'll also remember it as an unforced (if unlikely) vehicle for Michael J. Fox to convincingly work some haggardness into that fresh-faced Alex P. Keaton/Marty McFly act. And take it from this former fact-checker: For a magazine researcher, Fox might have a generously sized workspace, but the depiction of it as anal-retentive purgatory is spot on. Extras: Commentary by McInerney. (MGM, $14.98)

"ERROL FLYNN: THE WARNER BROS. WESTERN COLLECTION" (2008) Flynn made a strong case in director Michael Curtiz's "Dodge City" that he could play frontier hero as iconically as he could swashbuckle. So Flynn and Curtiz teamed again for this four-disc set's nominal centerpiece, "Virginia City" (1940), a less successful genre entry that's reliable old-fashioned entertainment nevertheless. Flynn plays a Union officer who escapes from prison and promptly sets about busting up a Confederate gold-smuggling plot as payback. But you'll also want to tune in to see a miscast Humphrey Bogart playing a pencil-mustached bandito. Que pasa, indeed. Extras: Film historian commentary; period shorts. (Warner, $49.98; available now)

Documentary DVD | Ty Burr

In the 1960s, disorder in the court

Brett Morgen's absurdly engaging docudrama "Chicago 10" has a mission: to jolt inert young audiences of the early 21st century into fresh outrage and activism. The film is Grade-A agitpop, a mixture of archival footage and cheeky, creative animated reconstruction that's funny and frightening in equal measure. Forget the R rating; if your kids want to know what the '60s were about, here's a start.

In August 1968, antiwar protesters and disaffected college kids descended on Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, intent on bringing their message to middle America via the news media. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley sent in the riot squad; four days of street battles followed.

Eight months later, Nixon's new attorney general, John Mitchell, put the activists he considered responsible on trial in a Chicago federal courtroom, charging them with conspiracy and crossing state lines with intent to incite riot.

Morgen stitches together historical footage without resorting to narration or talking heads. Because no cameras were allowed at the trial itself, "Chicago 10" animates the court transcripts using voice actors and the semi-photorealistic cartoon style of movies like "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly."

The collision between straight America and the counterculture has never seemed more surreal. The conflict is personified in the showdown between Bobby Seale (Jeffrey Wright) and Judge Julius Hoffman, whose querulous voice is provided by the late Roy Scheider. Seale wanted to represent himself, Hoffman refused, Seale made an angry stand for his constitutional rights - and Hoffman had the defendant tied to a chair, silenced with a gag, and knocked around by bailiffs.

It was at that moment the government lost its case, and "Chicago 10" gives us the stark visual correlative: a black man bound to a chair in an American courtroom, beaten for trying to speak his piece.

The defendants are seen as heroes not because of what they did but where they drew the line, saying: If you cross here, you're no longer fighting for freedom but against it. "Chicago 10" implicitly prompts a viewer to wonder where his or her own line is. Better yet, it makes you question what, if anything, you're doing about it.

Documentary DVD | Mark Feeney

When great art was at great risk

The story of Nazi art plundering is relatively little known. "The Rape of Europa," an Oscar-nominated documentary from last year based on Lynn Nicholas's 1994 book of the same name, seeks to rectify that. It does so through period footage (much of it riveting), newly shot material, and talking heads.

The movie includes several astonishing stories, any one of which merits a film of its own. Hitler's dream of a mammoth Fuhrermuseum for his hometown of Linz, Austria, is at once dizzying and pathetic. The evacuation of "The Winged Victory of Samothrace" from the Louvre during the early days of World War II is a veritable cliffhanger.

One of the true heroines of the war was Rose Valland. Hired by the Nazi art gatherers to do clerical work, she secretly compiled a comprehensive catalog of what they stole. (Her new employers failed to notice she spoke German.) Or there's the story of the "monuments men," US soldiers assigned to accompany front-line units to preserve damaged art and retrieve looted objects.

Unfortunately, these stories get buried among too many talking heads (Nicholas is one) and a larger, diffuse account of the devastation the war wrought. Note that both the "Samothrace" evacuation and the monuments men are peripheral to the Nazis' pillaging. The documentary has nearly as much material about the ruinous effect of World War II on cultural artifacts, per se - the Allied bombing of Monte Cassino, for example - as it does on what the Nazis did. Joan Allen narrates.

Extras: Trailer, teacher's guide (Menemsha Films, $29.95, already available)

ALSO THIS WEEK

"THE PROMOTION" (2008)

Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly get up to dependable high jinks as grocery store employees dueling for a managerial slot. Hey, it's a tough economy.

Extras: Filmmaker commentary; deleted scenes and outtakes. (Genius Products, $24.95)

"HOW TO ROB A BANK" (2008)

Fed-up ATM user Nick Stahl tries to make his voice heard to a real-live person behind the teller window, only to stumble onto a real-live robbery. Rocker Gavin Rossdale is the jittery gunman; Erika Christensen is the girl locked in the vault with Stahl. Familiar but energetic.

Extras: Production featurette. (Genius Products, $19.95)

"POSTAL" (2008)

Schlockmeister Uwe Boll ("In the Name of the King") directs a video-game adaptation about a "postal dude" turned gun-toting, terrorist-stomping dude.

Extras: The disc's selling point, such as it is, is footage of a publicity stunt in which Boll got in a boxing ring to fight reviewers who'd trashed his movies. (Vivendi Entertainment, $26.99; Blu-ray, $34.99; available now)

REISSUES

"THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS" (1993)

Producer Tim Burton and animation director Henry Selick's macabre stop-motion fantasia gets a two-disc reissue with new commentary by the filmmakers, as well as Burton shorts and oddities. (Disney, $32.99; single-disc Blu-ray version, $39.99; available now)

"TIME AFTER TIME" (1979)

H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) time travels to '70s San Francisco in pursuit of Jack the Ripper (David Warner) in director Nicholas Meyer's thoroughly addictive sci-fi thriller. McDowell's performance is one that never seems to get mentioned along with "A Clockwork Orange" and "If. . ." - but it should. (Warner, $14.98)

FOREIGN

"WATER LILIES" (2008)

This French import from first-time filmmaker Céline Sciamma explores the sexual awakening and tension between teenage synchronized swimming teammates. Thoughtful, but unintentionally uncomfortable at times.

Extras: Deleted scenes; casting segments. (Koch Lorber, $26.98)

"SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM" (1976)

Italian provocateur filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini imagines the dark world of the Marquis de Sade reborn amid his country's fascist WWII regime. As political commentary, Pasolini's final film is as hard-core as it gets, in every sense.

Extras: Retrospective documentaries; scholarly essays. (Criterion, $39.95; available now)

TELEVISION

"THE OFFICE": SEASON FOUR (2007-08)

If the writers' strike threw off your weekly visit to TV's most excruciating workplace, now is your chance to get current with some dedicated power viewing. Sort of like Steve Carell gearing up for that 5K by carbo-loading on fettuccine Alfredo.

Extras: Cast and crew commentaries. (Universal, $49.98)

Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.