DVD picks

Pick of the Week

Solaris

Sci-fi drama; unrated (some disturbing images, but safe for teens); Blu-ray reissue

The Gist: Soviet scientists orbiting the sentient planet Solaris confront psychic manifestations of their memories and regrets.

The Lowdown: When the week's biggest movie cycling to DVD is the abysmal "I Am Number Four," it's time to dig into the wealth of other titles released to home video each week - Blu-ray reissues, indie docs, sports collections and direct-to-DVD features.

Reissued to Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi classic "Solaris" is the original space ghost movie. Even if you're not a sci-fi fan, consider "Solaris," which is among the creepiest and most unsettling stories ever put to film. Watch in particular how Tarkovsky uses odd angles and weird geometries to suggest the utterly alien nature of the cosmonauts' dilemma.

The Extras: Nine deleted and alternate scenes; audio commentary and essays with various film scholars; four interviews with surviving members of the production.

The Bottom Line: A slow-cooking sci-fi thriller that rewards patience and attention.

Double Secret Bonus Tip: Serious sci-fi nerds will also want to read the original novel by Stanislaw Lem, consistently ranked among the genre's all-time greats.

Triple Secret Bonus Tip: Director Stephen Soderbergh's 2002 remake is pretty good, too.

Transcendent Man

Documentary; unrated

The Gist: Futurist and technology pioneer Ray Kurzweil discusses the particulars of his "Singularity" hypothesis, which predicts an evolutionary man-machine fusion in about 30 years.

The Lowdown: This modest indie doc expands on Kurzweil's best-selling 2005 book "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology." The basic notion: Thanks to exponential advances in genetics, nanotech and information technology, we will all be immortal "transhumans" by the year 2040, or thereabouts.

The Singularity hypothesis has gained a lot of traction in recent years. Director Barry Ptolemy presents opposing arguments but more compellingly digs into the biographical and emotional source of Kurzweil's utopian vision. Mourning his father and afraid of death himself, Kurzweil desperately wants to believe. But should we?

The Extras: Extended interviews, deleted scenes and a Q&A with Kurzweil and Ptolemy.

The Bottom Line: A fascinating blend of hard science, compassionate biography and wild-eyed end-of-days prophecy.

Double Secret Bonus Tip: "Singularity" is a term borrowed from physics and describes the point at which our mathematical models of the universe break down. The film's scariest passages suggest parallels in technology forecasting - all our predictive models collapse around the year 2040.

The Big Bang

Action thriller; rated R for some strong sexual content, nudity, violence and language; also available on Blu-ray

The Gist: Los Angeles private eye Ned Cruz (Antonio Banderas) investigates a bizarre case involving porn producers, Russian boxers, particle physics and Snoop Dogg.

The Lowdown: A superior specimen of the straight-to-DVD movie, "The Big Bang" is a clever (sometimes too-clever) script that riffs on tough-guy LA noir traditions, then giddily zags off into the New Mexico high desert for some cosmological intrigue.

Producer-turned-director Tony Krantz can't quite find the right tone for writer Erik Jendresen's showy script. The movie trips over its self-consciousness throughout, and Banderas looks mostly lost. Happily, supporting turns from deadpan comic specialists like William Fichtner, Delroy Lindo and Sam Elliott go a long way toward redeeming the movie's funniness potential.

The Extras: Extended scenes, director's commentary track, a short making-of doc.

The Bottom Line: A fun B-movie script that, one suspects, could have been kicked up to the A-list with a different director and star.

Double Secret Bonus Tip: Once again, Snoop Dogg proves he can't act. And once again, he doesn't really have to.

Prime 9: MLB Heroics / MLB Bloopers Doubleheader

Sports compilations; unrated

The Gist: Highlights and bloopers from the vaults of Major League Baseball.

The Lowdown: MLB has been joined with A&E Home Entertainment for a while now in issuing these variously packaged baseball highlight reels.

The two-part bloopers package features three-plus hours of the lighter side of baseball. If you've ever scanned YouTube looking for this stuff, you know that MLB protects its property pretty vigilantly online. These official DVD releases are the only place you can find pro baseball's best bloopers all in one place.

The "Prime 9" disc collects nine episodes of the MLB Network countdown show, which profiles the top home runs of all time, or All-Star game moments, or comebacks, or what-have-you.

The Extras: None

The Bottom Line: In terms of pound-for-pound entertainment efficiency, these official MLB DVD titles are hard to beat. If you're a baseball fan, anyway.

Double Secret Bonus Tip: Prime 9's "Best World Series" episode inexplicably fails to include last year's glorious San Francisco Giants world championship. What is this, amateur hour?