5 DVDS Worth Your Time

By Richard Corliss; James Poniewozik

Sometimes you want a DVD to catch up with a movie you missed. Sometimes you want to see how time has treated a cultural artifact that touched you the first time around. And sometimes you need one to keep the kids occupied for 98 minutes. Whatever the reason, here are our critics' picks for the best of the current crop.

DONNIE DARKO

A TEEN-ANGST science- fiction movie that actually deserves the tag "cult classic," this 2001 space oddity earned less than $1 million in its first release, but has spawned an avid following.

Bright, baffled Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) has to save the world, which, a 6-ft. rabbit informs him, will end in 28 days. Writer-director Richard Kelly populates his suburban Middlesex with nearly as many strange creatures and daunting tasks as Tolkien did his Middle-earth. With an extra 20 minutes and a probing chat track with Kelly and fellow director Kevin Smith, this beautiful, elusive tale of tangent universes and distant technologies is even more beguiling--and almost makes linear sense. Not that it has to. As Donnie's friend Gretchen tells him, "You're weird." When he says, "Sorry," she replies, "No, that was a compliment." From us too. --By Richard Corliss

MURDER ONE: SEASON ONE

BEFORE THERE was 24, there was One. In 1995-'96, Steven Bochco's Murder One took a full season to tell a single story: the trial of a famous actor (Jason Gedrick) for the murder of a 15-year-old girl. The experiment was bracing, intense and a ratings failure. Maybe, in the autumn of O.J. Simpson's acquittal, it was hard to sell a celebrity murder story in which the high-priced defense team, headed by no-nonsense Ted Hoffman (Daniel Benzali), was more sympathetic than police and prosecutors. Maybe audiences weren't ready for a serial format. But One is made for the DVD era: watching the 23 "chapters" consecutively, you can better appreciate both the potboiler plot and the performance by alternate suspect Stanley Tucci. Think of it as practice for the Michael Jackson trial. --By James Poniewozik

BAMBI: PLATINUM EDITION

WALT DISNEY HAD a cunning formula: use the highest illustrative art to make horror movies for kids. Next to Pinocchio (play hooky and you will morph into a donkey), Bambi is the most artful and potent--and the scariest--of Walt's early features. After the youngsters have watched a movie in which a child sees its mother shot and killed, the grownups can stay around to see deleted scenes and ancient storyboards. Later, the kids can play the eight interactive games on the DVD. --R.C.

PICCADILLY

TALKIES MAY HAVE made them obsolete, but silent films went out in style, as this 1929 drama from German director E.A. Dupont proves. It's the All About Eve fable, with an exotic youngster (Anna May Wong) replacing an older star (Gilda Gray). Wong, the one Chinese-American movie star in Holly-wood's first half-century, exudes the toxic perfume of sexual danger and makes every woman around her (including Gray, the ostensible star) look frowsy. Like Wong, this terrific movie still has heat and a hard luster. --R.C.

RAGING BULL

LONG BEFORE THE Aviator, Martin Scorsese was making epics about men with brutal allure who win the big prize, then spiral into dementia. This 1980 film (available alone or in a four-film set of prime Scorsese features) still packs a wallop as maybe the finest of all boxing dramas. For its silver-anniversary edition, the director has added six fascinating mini-documentaries and three audio tracks with no fewer than 13 commentators (including the film's subject, Jake La Motta, now 83). But the movie stands on its own, undefeated. It's psychodrama with grand-opera intensity and a knockout punch.--R.C.