Home movies

By Karen Martin

LITTLE ROCK — Recent DVD releases:

The Deep (PG, 123 minutes) This 1977 thriller from a novel by Peter Benchley, now available on Blu-ray, stars Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset as a couple on a romantic holiday in Bermuda where, while diving, they discover what they hope is a long lost treasure but turns out to be something comparable in value but much more volatile. The film is best known for its poster of Bisset in a wet T-shirt. With Louis Gossett Jr. and Eli Wallach.

Grade: 78

Grumpy Old Men (PG-13, 103 minutes) The Blu-ray release of this 1993 comedy features Odd Couple wise guys Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as longtime Minnesota neighbors who share a 50-year history of bickering and annoying each other, which grows worse when a sexy new resident (Ann-Margret) moves in across the street. Grade: 82

Knowing (PG-13, 115 minutes) A cinematic defense of numerology that gains whatever legitimacy it possesses from a convincing performance by Nicolas Cage. He plays John Koestler, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist whose son comes home with a slip of paper he took from a newly opened time capsule. It's covered with numbers, and John starts to see patterns in them that seem to indicate dates of coming disasters.

Grade: 72

The Ruins (R, 91 minutes) A small, effectively scary movie based on a novel by Scott Smith that follows four American tourists (Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey, Jonathan Tucker and Shawn Ashmore) whose holiday in Mexico turns sour when they encounter some decidedly unfriendly indigenous people.

Grade: 83

Stop-Loss (R, 113 minutes) Brilliantly observed, vividly shot and built on a career-making performance by Ryan Phillippe, this is one of the best Iraq War movies because it's so personal. Co-writer and director Kimberly Peirce brings her Boys Don't Cry grasp of violence and rural American machismo to a story of young Army Ranger from Texas who has done his duty and comes home to find that the military has "stop-lossed" him - keeping him on active duty against his wishes - for another tour in Iraq.

Grade: 90

MovieStyle, Pages 35 on 07/10/2009