All right, let’s break this down. Andy Griffith as Matlock is a pretty damned solid figure, even if it sometimes seems like there’s a minimum age requirement of 65 for anybody to get enjoyment out of the series (let’s just say that this first season box set is Rated G in every way, shape and form). Whether the guy’s cases are redundant and plain-jane is irrelevant

Hey kids – wanna watch some teenagers get gored and gutted for about an hour-and-a-half? Well, who doesn’t? This writer has no problem with gore – I really can’t go for more than a month or two without watching Evil Dead II or Dead-Alive – but the nastiness in Carver is just pointless. Teens hike into the woods, stumble across some Mongoloid maniacs: THE END. Boooo-ring.

Craig T. Nelson has been able to be a chameleon of sorts in the character-actor parts he takes, and this writer believes he’s underestimated because of it. Whether he’s the high-and-freaked-out dad in Poltergeist, the sensitive father in The Family Stone or as the eponymous star of Coach: The Third Season, Nelson has proven time and time again that he’s able to ricochet from role to role with the stoic, noble grace of a real star. The only problem with Coach

This guy quietly has been at the epicenter of some of the most sonically adventurous yet commercially and artistically successful albums released in the last several decades.  He was instrumental in five epochal U2 albums (including the shockingly, gloriously resilient Joshua Tree).  He pulled Bob Dylan from a drifting period (the resulting Time Out of Mind and Oh Mercy remain brilliant).  He helped catapult Peter Gabriel from steady cult fave to arena star without loss of credibility (So and Us).

After an anemic theatrical run in the United States, Guy Ritchie’s Revolver is finally on DVD, and it’s a wild one. I’ll keep the Swept Away jokes for next time – instead I’ll just focus on how with this crime-caper tale it is apparent that Ritchie seems perfectly content making the exact same film over and over. Jason Statham plays the ex-con trying to straighten up and fly right; Ray Liotta is the nasty-ass shark who wants Statham’s character dead, and then there’s a weird, escalating caper planned by Andre 3000 and Vincent Pastore that quickly spirals out of control. It goes without saying that Ritchie’s movies look like fun – how fun would it be to work with him? – but the end result is kind of just another warmed-over kooky criminal flick.

It doesn’t matter how many special editions it gets – Mrs. Doubtfire just kinda sucks. Robin Wiliams adds both humor and presence to his loony performance here, but aside from some fantastic showcases of San Francisco landmarks and a noble (if unconvincing) turn from the always-dependable Sally Field, this cross-dressing family tale is limp and cheesy. The Billy Wilder Film Collection all but rubs this fact in Mrs. Doubtfire’s face – this collection of four standout Wilder flicks (The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, The Fortune Cookie and Kiss Me, Stupid) shows how you mix wild, outrageous humor with earnest emotional stories to create a truly indelible film scenario.

Into the Wild is the kind of film that is easy to appreciate yet hard to like, though the film has its champions from all corners of the viewing public. There are those who find Emile Hirsch’s performance as the central character in this tale of a young man’s yearning to connect with the Earth that bore him as a thing of monumental clarity and truth. Others point to Hal Holbrook’s career-definitive supporting turn, or simply the film’s lush, gorgeous photography (that looks absolutely stunning on HD DVD).

This writer has never been able to warm up to Jean-Luc Godard – I won’t deny that there’s an avant-garde madness to his cinematic rhetoric that should be applauded in the halls of cinephilia – but I’ll be damned if I didn’t almost think Pierrot Le Fou was a blast

Yes, you see wieners and beavers galore in Tell Me You Love Me: The Complete First Season (HBO), but what’s both unique and, honestly, quite leaden about this new series is that there’s little joy in ‘peeping the junk’ here. The show aims to address the fundamental, almost reptilian aspects of sex and what the act of intercourse (and its variations) represent in relationships, but all the coitus in the series is so clinical and painfully blocked-out that it’s neither illuminating nor titillating. And what good is sex if it can’t be either (or both) of those?

Toshiba will announce to step down its HD DVD format, and production of the device this coming Monday, scoped by NHK, Japanese public broadcast station on Saturday evening in Japan Standard Time.