---
Movies
on DVD
RELAXATION
By Stephen Shupe
A Home at the End of the World
R, 1 disc
Movie: ★★☆
DVD: ★1/2
because he's naturally optimistic or he's permanently fried from dropping acid as a
To see Colin Farrell give a credible and compelling performance as a gay man, skip Oliver Stone's camp Alexander and rent AHome at the End of the World. In the movie's terrific first half, a late '60s love child
named Bobby eats windowpane with his big brother before a series of tragedies orphan the poor kid and he has to go live with another family. After an extended prologue, Farrell shows up about 25 minutes in as the adult Bobby. Hooking up with an old boyfriend and his hippie roommate in New York City, Bobby maintains an almost childlike euphoria, either
9-year-old.
Michael Cunningham adapted the screenplay from his bestselling novel (he also wrote the gay-themed The Hours). The film gives the characters too much breathing room in the last 30 minutes, so that we're left with too few people with too little to say. Farrell and strong supporting performances
by Sissy Spacek and Robin Wright Penn hold the movie together. And in translating Cunningham's vision of the free love garden of the '60s withering in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, the ending achieves a quiet, tremulous power. The DVD is scant on special features - just a trailer and brief interviews with the cast and crew.
Blade/Blade II
R, 3 discs
Movies: ★★★/★★1/2
DVD: ☆☆☆
In anticipation of next week's release of
Blade: Trinity, New Line has released a two-pack of the film's well-received prequels, starring Wesley Snipes as the tortured vampire slayer. The character first appeared in the Marvel comic Tomb of Dracula in 1972, and the main badie in Stephen Norrington's 1998 film adapta-
tion, Deacon Frost, figured heavily in Blade's comic-book adventures. Stephen Dorff as Frost is the best part of the original movie, which opens with a smashingly kinetic fight scene (who could forget all that blood spurting out of the sprinkler system?) and then turns tepid and stylistically flat. Guillermo Del Toro's vastly superior 2002 sequel has style to burn and genuinely shocking horror effects throughout. The package comes with a bonus disc with a preview of the new film.
PG,1 disc
The Iron Giant
DVD: ☆☆1/2
Movie: ★★★★
Before he directed Pixar's latest eye-popping smash The Incredibles, Brad Bird created this overlooked gem, one of the hallmarks of the '90s traditional animation boom. The
film grossed $23 million in the late summer of 1999, and it's never won the audience it deserves. A subtle cautionary tale about the '50s Red Scare, the film centers on a sprightly kid from Maine named Hogarth Hughes who befriends a 100-foot tail robot that's really a walking weapon of mass destruction. First-rate voice work by Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr. and Vin Diesel lend a giant-size soul to this gentle fable, which is right up there with Steven Spielberg's E.T. in its child's-eye view of governmental paranoida run amok. The disc includes commentary by Bird and sketches of deleted scenes.