Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Walt Disney Video)
What Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com laments as a "glazed, inhuman, cluttered piece of work, a storytelling mishmash that buries the considerable charms of its actors under heavy drifts of silt," Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune praises as the "most visually spectacular, action-packed and surreal of the adventures of Capt. Jack Sparrow." We're pretty sure you've already made up your own mind on the matter.

DVD Talk breaks down the ample DVD goodies, summarizing that the extras "add some value to the package as they take us behind the scenes and also give us a look at things from the performers' perspectives in addition to providing some interesting background details on the production." About the Blu-ray edition, Hi-Def DVD Digest reports that it "holds its own with the rest of the trilogy. Although there aren't quite as many extras crammed onto this two-disc set as the previous 'Pirates' movies, the video is quite good, while the audio is simply fantastic." And CHUD.com found four Easter eggs.

Erik the Viking: Director's Son's Cut (MGM)
Johnny Depp isn't the only brigand coming ashore on the DVD shelves this week. The Washington Post felt that this "Wagnerian slapstick fantasy" "has the feel of a grown-up bedtime comedy, a gross, sillier Princess Bride. Writer-director Terry Jones did, in fact, base this bit of swords and sorcery on stories he invented for his 7-year-old son that bear the unmistakable style of the Monty Python crowd." According to Time Out, "Terry Jones' post-Python frolic, inspired by his own Norse saga children's book, is not a funny film, and neither well-directed nor exciting." However, it's got John Cleese as "the very-evil-indeed Halfdan the Black" and there's "a certain precocious schoolboy mentality at work in the film: an indulgent delight in making fantasies come to life. Its disarming mix of blood-and-muck realism, researched detail, and soaring wish-fulfillment, wonder and irreverence, does provide lots of small incidental pleasures."

Remember, this is the director who gave us Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, so choose your movie-watching snacks carefully.

Compared to the original theatrical version, this "Director's Son's Cut" edition loses half an hour under the well-honed cutlass of Terry Jones' son, who is a film editor. All is explained in "Behind the Director's Son's Cut," an extra new to this edition. Also here is a commentary with director Jones, the 1989 "making of" featurette, and a photo gallery titled "Giant Visions in the Sky from the Gods of Valhalla."

Arctic Tale (Paramount)
Queen Latifah narrates this cuddly message movie, which blends modern environmental awareness with the sort of nature adventures that Disney used to make. So it's fine for kids and for any parents who feel a warm nostalgia for the days when Jodie Foster was a kid actress. Arctic Tale is the striking story of "Nanu, a spirited polar bear cub, and Seela, a roly-poly walrus pup," who we follow "as they grow up, struggle to survive amid a changing climate, and ultimately have babies of their own." Desson Thomson in The Washington Post begins his review by saying that Arctic Tale "wants to celebrate everything that's pure and authentic about nature, but is the spectacle of walruses sunning themselves to Sister Sledge's 'We Are Family' the way to do it? Apparently so, if you're making a 'wildlife adventure' rather than a nature documentary. That's the self-described mission of this 'fuzzumentary,' which comes to us from National Geographic Films -- the company that helped bring March of the Penguins to America." Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips assures parents that "Arctic Tale has my 6-year-old son very interested in the concept of helping polar bears and walrus pups and other wildlife live better, longer, icier lives. So how bad can it be?"

On the other hand, "fictionalizing and anthropomorphizing animal adventures to make the point and then calling it a documentary puts these filmmakers in a league with pre-Sicko Michael Moore," grouses Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News.

Leave it to the even-handed Eric D. Snider to find the center sweet spot by noting, "regardless of your political ideology, the footage captured by directors Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson is spectacular. Animals are fascinating to watch in their natural habitats, and it's not often I find myself in the arctic to see them firsthand. I'm willing to overlook some lowest-common-denominator idiocy in favor of some well-produced nature photography."

According to DVD Beaver, which provides screen captures, "The picture will stun you due to the majesty of the vistas, but the technical aspects of the transfer are so-so." DVD extras include "Making of Arctic Tale" and "Are We There Yet? World Adventure: Polar Bear Spotting" from National Geographic TV.

New York, New York: 30th Anniversary Edition (MGM)
In this big band-era romance, Jimmy (Robert De Niro) is a joint jumpin' saxophonist on his way to stardom. Francine (Liza Minnelli) is a wannabe starlet who dreams of singing in the spotlight.

When it premiered in 1977, Roger Ebert said that New York, New York, Martin Scorsese's homage to bygone backstage musicals, "never pulls itself together into a coherent whole, but if we forgive the movie its confusions we're left with a good time. In other words: abandon your expectations of an orderly plot, and you'll end up humming the title song. The movie's a vast, rambling, nostalgic expedition back into the big band era, and a celebration of the considerable talents of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro." Meanwhile, Vincent Canby at The New York Times opined that "after one has appreciated the scholarship for about an hour or so, admiring Mr. De Niro's manic intensity and Miss Minnelli's way of desperately throwing out comic lines as if they were failed lassoes -- things that are often funny in themselves -- one begins to wonder what Mr. Scorsese and his writers, Earl Mac Rauch and Marik Martin, are up to."

On a more up note, the lads at the Edinburgh University Film Society tell us that "Scorsese's technique is as usual faultless; during certain set-pieces, notably the opening victory-ball, he follows the notion of composed film created by Michael Powell with breezy camera movements matched by close up intensity. New York, New York is usually dismissed as a failure in the Scorsese repertoire, but it certainly deserves to be seen." And "the sparks generated by the manic pairing of De Niro and Minnelli are always colorful," says Dave Kehr in The Chicago Reader. "Scorsese has effectively re-created a 40s studio style to go with his 40s story. Not first-rank Scorsese, but still impressive."

The audio on this two-disc edition takes the "A" train with Dolby Surround 5.1 audio. However, the image is the letterboxed, non-anamorphic format we got the last time around. The disc's extras feature Scorsese's introduction to New York, New York, audio commentary by Scorsese and film critic Carrie Rickey, alternate takes/deleted scenes, and a two-part featurette called "The New York, New York Stories," "Liza on New York, New York, and commentary on selected scenes by cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs.

Superbad (Sony)
This teen raunchfest -- and the film with the year's most confident title -- offers us, says Peter Travers in Rolling Stone, a "deceptively throwaway farce" that's "actually a keeper that comes up aces in writing, acting and directing." Over at ReelViews, James Berardinelli reassures us that, the "awful" trailers notwithstanding, the "prime requisite of any comedy -- that it generate laughs -- is amply met. Superbad is chock full of R-rated glee... Through all of the mayhem, however, director Mottola never loses sight of his characters, and that's a key point to remember. While we laugh both with and at the protagonists, we also care about them." In a similar vein, to Sean Axmaker in the Seattle PI Superbad is "refreshingly frank about the young male obsession with sex and the way the fantasy promise of Internet porn and late night cable movies collides with the complexity of real girls in the flesh."

Still, well-voiced concerns come from FlickFilosopher's MaryAnn Johanson, whose site is worth visiting on a regular basis. She observes that "Only 13-year-old boys -- or those eternally 13 -- could possibly endure the nonstop barrage of male adolescent fear of sex, of women, that is Superbad. Oh, and don't demonstrate the slightest bit of affection for male friends, either. That's so gay." Note her comments thread afterward.

Superbad is available in single and double disc, as well as R and unrated editions. Film Freak Central's Bill Chambers lets us know that the two-disc "Unrated Extended Edition" restores "some four minutes of filthy hand gestures and penis euphemisms to the piece." The detailed appraisal of the "hours upon hours of hilarious special features" at DVD Talk includes the line, "Fans of pot will love this clip."

The Last Man on Earth (MGM)
With the latest movie version of Richard Matheson's 1954 science-fictionized vampire classic, I Am Legend, opening this week, it's worth noting as a Trivial Pursuit score that the 2007 film stars Will Smith in a role first handled by Vincent Price in 1964's The Last Man on Earth (and then by Charlton Heston in 1971's The Omega Man).

Dr. Robert Morgan (Price) is the only survivor of a devastating worldwide plague due to a mysterious immunity he acquired while working in Central America years ago. He is all-alone now... or so it seems. As night falls, plague victims begin to leave their graves; they are part of a hellish un-dead army that's thirsting for blood -- his!

A part-Italian production, The Last Man on Earth "enjoys a much better reputation today than it did upon its initial release," notes Turner Classic Movies, which goes on to say that it's "true the film's flaws are hard to ignore -- the ultra-low budget, erratic pacing, the inferior post-dubbing -- yet they also lend the film a strange, alienating quality that works to its advantage in suggesting a post-apocalyptic world." DVD Savant, in a review of a previous DVD edition, describes it as "a handsome production which could have been a classic if it didn't try to make Italian locations stand in for the San Francisco area." It's "an underappreciated progenitor of the modern zombie film," as Not Coming to a Theater Near You puts it, "and as a post-apocalyptic tale of terror, it holds its own." And finally, bloody-disgusting.com awards it three skulls out of five.

Thanks to the new A-list Will Smith biggie hitting the theaters, it's not surprising that the far more modest original is getting a re-release on DVD. The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with English mono sound and subtitles in English, French and Spanish. The sole extra is "Richard Matheson, Storyteller: Last Man on Earth," a chat with the writer about this film, The Omega Man and other topics.

Read about more new DVDs.

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Mark Bourne

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