George Lucas wrapped up his Star Wars series with the longest and most thematically complex entry, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (Fox), and he was rewarded with the best reviews he's received in years, as well as substantial box-office. But the ones who thrilled most to the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader were the hearty few who defended Lucas' vision for the first two episodes, which will one day be seen for the crackerjack entertainment they are…
The cover art of the Millions (Fox) DVD proclaims "From The Imagination Of Danny Boyle," which explains quite a bit. Such an effervescent kids' story, full of unlikely twists and strange fantasy interludes, certainly couldn't have come from the real world. And while Boyle loses the bloody adult edge he brought to Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, he maintains his sense of whimsy in this story about an obsessively religious boy who receives a sort of divine intervention in his troubled life when an immense sack of money falls out of the sky, even though it creates more problems than it solves…
Joining the slush pile of modern cult classics repackaged in pitifully thin special editions—see also The Big Lebowski: Achiever's Edition and Dazed And Confused: Flashback Edition—Mike Judge's great cubicle comedy Office Space (Fox) has been reissued with a half-hour documentary and a handful of deleted scenes. The disc touts the new features as "flair," but that's only two pieces of flair, which is well short of the 15 that Tchotchke's requires for its uniforms. And more flair is encouraged…
Horror-themed kid shows often follow the same basic pattern, stringing together Laugh-In-inspired blackout sketches with key words changed to make the jokes more monster-y. The long-running Canadian series The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein (Empire) transcended the shtick because of dynamic comedian Billy Van, who could play a mad-scientist vampire and a culinary-minded witch with equal veracity. The four episodes on the Hilarious House Of Frankenstein DVD have the added attraction of coming from the early '70s, which means viewers get to see Van dressed up as a hipster werewolf, dancing around to Sly & The Family Stone's "I Want To Take You Higher"…
Heather Locklear! Hilary Duff! And Chris Noth! In one movie? No, it's not some kind of crazy, crazy dream, it's The Perfect Man (Universal), in which Duff romances her own mother (Locklear) by pretending to be a secret online admirer. OMG! LOL! It's TFR!