Naked

While there’s a fair bit of nudity in this stunning Mike Leigh movie, the Naked of the title has much more to do with the soul-bearing performances of the cast than anything else. It’s the story of a Johnny (David Thewlis), a motor-mouth madman from Manchester who flees to London to escape a beating from the family of a girl he forced himself on. He hooks up with an ex-girlfriend (Leslie Sharp) but it’s soon obvious that Johnny isn’t looking for a reconciliation. He’s looking for anarchy — the kind of physical, emotional and spiritual anarchy he needs to help him feel there’s something more to life than just killing time until you die. The devastation he leaves in his wake doesn’t matter.

The Lincoln Lawyer

No matter how handsome he may be or how good he looks with his shirt off, Matthew McConaughy will never be the romantic leading man Hollywood has been trying to force him to be in such miserable dreck as Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Failure to Launch. He’s just not that kind of guy, at least on film. McConaughy has always been best playing sexy scoundrels, the kind of bad boys who dress well and have a twinkle in their eyes that you know will not be there in the morning because, no matter how much fun he had in the sack, there are bigger and better opportunities awaiting him on the other side of the bedroom door. The Lincoln Lawyer, which has McConaughy plating a sleazy lawyer defending a young, rich guy named Louis Roulet (played by Ryan Phillippe) accused of beating and raping a woman, gives him a chance to shine.

The Making of a President

With the political situation of the past few years (decades?) it’s hard not to be cynical when host T.H. White opens the first disc of this fascinating set by talking about the ‘noble art’ of politics. As an audience, we’re almost too jaded to not simply scoff and stop watching. But that would be a huge mistake, because the three presidential campaigns covered in the set — Kennedy Vs. Nixon in 1960, LBJ Vs. Goldwater in 1964, and Nixon Vs. Humphrey Vs. Wallace in 1968 — are among the most important of our lifetime. And that’s only partially because they are the birthplace of the kind of dirty politics that cause us to be so cynical today. The three films are not simply historical commentaries using archival footage. They were made during the actual campaigns and shown to audiences soon after, so there is a vibrancy to the stories they tell, minus any feeling of nostalgia, that makes them uniquely compelling.

Bloodrayne: The Third Reich

Make all the jokes you want about his films. As director Uwe Boll explains in the extras included with his latest (and third) Bloodrayne movie, he doesn’t care. And neither do his fans. In his latest, the daywalking vampire Rayne (Natassia Malthe) is forced to fight a mad Nazi scientist (a hilarious Clint Howard) and stop him from creating an army of the undead for Hitler. It has everything you expect (or dread) from a Boll picture: over-the-top violence, gratuitous nudity, and dialogue so cheesy each DVD should come with a pack of crackers. And that’s just fine.

13 Assassins

As an action movie, 13 Assassins ranks among the best in recent memory, and puts the flaccid products pushed out by Hollywood the past few years to shame.What raises the action to the level of art, though, is the skill director Takashi Miike uses to make each battle uniquely compelling. Some of the ways he does it are obvious: a lot of blood spilled in 13 Assassins, but every drop of it that gets splattered across the screen is an integral part of the story being told. It never feels gratuitous. Some of Miike’s style is more felt, than seen. During one of the bigger fight scenes where the assassins are facing off against 10 times as many bad guys, you may not even notice the way the director stops using any music and lets the clash of the swords (and the squishy sound of blood gushing out of sword wounds) be the soundtrack to the scenes.

Hobo With a Shotgun

If the title makes you cringe, or roll your eyes in disgust or stick your nose in the air as if you can smell how bad it’s going to be just by reading what’s on the poster, then this movie, isn’t for you. Set in a poorly defined apocalyptic future, Hobo With a Shotgun tells the story of a hobo (Rutger Hauer) as he tries to scrape out a living collecting cans from dumpsters and garbage pails to get enough money for a little food, a little booze and, with any luck, have a little left over to save to make his dream of buying an old lawnmower and starting a grass cutting business come true. It’s insanely over- the-top and, for fans of films like this, extremely satisfying.

Tom and Jerry: Fur Flying Adventures Volume 2

It’s one of the simplest formula in cartoon history, and one of the best: Tom the Cat chases Jerry the Mouse. Sometimes they chase each other in the house (Saturday Evening Puss), sometimes they chase each other across a concert stage (Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl). And while you know Tom will never win, the joy of watching these classic toons is all about the lengths he will go to (and the abuse he suffers) to get that darn mouse. Like the first volume, the episode mix on Fur Flying Adventures 2 is a bit uneven, but the imbalance is more a matter of taste; some people just don’t like what Chuck Jones did with the battling pair after he took over the mantle of creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and some love it. With 14 episodes on the disc, you’re bound to find more than a few that will delight you.