Kill Bill, Vol. 2
Bill finally gets offed in the second chapter of the Bride’s bloody misadventures, starring Uma Thurman and David Carradine. However, Quentin Tarantino fanatics may want to pass on this bare-bones edition and wait until both films are released together, in what could be, judging from earlier reports, an almost endless director’s cut. R; $29.95.
Johnson Family Vacation
Cedric the Entertainer’s almost-fun, shtick-heavy road-trip comedy. PG-13; $27.98.
Reno: Rebel Without A Pause
Downtown troublemaker and performance artist Reno—one of the first such figures to deliver a sustained response to September 11—delivers her ferocious and often apt Drama Desk–nominated performance. NR; $19.99.
Alf: Season One
A nostalgia-proof show, if ever there was one. NR; $39.98.
Freaks, The Bad Seed, Dead Ringer, Village Of The Damned, Children Of The Damned
Five must-have DVD debuts for the horror fan’s library, including Tod Browning’s 1932 classic—and late-night repertory favorite—Freaks, which is joined by an extra documentary, Freaks: Sideshow Cinema. Editions of The Bad Seed and Dead Ringer feature appropriately fanatical and hilarious commentary by Charles Busch. NR; $19.97 each.
OUR PICK
Smart, sentimental, and slightly strange, German writer-director Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! was one of last year’s best foreign films. It played out as a moving family drama—about a mother who falls into a coma and misses the fall of the Berlin Wall—draped in generational satire. To keep this fanciful film grounded, actress Katrin Sass is wonderfully understated as the mother, but actor Daniel Brühl, already honored with nearly every award in Europe, could hardly have been better. As a son who cares for his sickly mother so much that he conspires to create a fake communist state, he delivers the kind of luminous performance only true stars can muster. R ; $29.95. Extras: Commentary with director and cast; trailers; ten deleted scenes; and raw footage of the film’s fake news broadcasts.