101 Dalmatians
(Disney, $30)
The “fur-clad, chain-smoking, skull-faced” Cruella de Vil is surely the worst of Disney villains, said Warren Clements in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Now she’s finally been released from Disney’s “vault” onto DVD. The platinum edition includes extras that revisit the 1961 film’s innovative use of xerography, a process of copying drawings directly to celluloid rather than tracing and painting them.
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Into the Wild
(Paramount, $30)
Sean Penn’s passion for the story of a young man’s ruminative journey into
the wilderness permeates the director’s latest, said Barry Caine in the San Jose Mercury News. His adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction best-seller takes a “painfully downbeat story” and turns it into a “vibrant, beautifully photographed, and poetic tale.”
12 Angry Men
(MGM, $20)
Thank Henry Fonda for bringing Sidney Lumet on as director of 12 Angry Men, said Gene Seymour in Newsday. The 50th-anniversary edition of this courtroom drama was the first of Lumet’s films to prove his talent “at crafting psychological suspense, wrestling declamatory power from themes
of truth and justice, and eliciting superb work from actors.”
