Tuesday, July 13, 2004
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VIDEO PREVIEW: Beaten to the Punch

Meg Ryan's boxing movie knocked out by offbeat indie fare

"Lethal" Luther Shaw (Omar Epps), left, and manager Jackie Kallen (Meg Ryan) battle to the top in "Against the Ropes."

It's another schizoid day on home video, as ho-hum Hollywood product shares the spotlight with more adventurous art-house fare in ...

• The big screen scene: For those who missed this at the local multiplex (with good reason), "Against the Ropes" (Paramount) strands Meg Ryan and Omar Epps in a by-the-numbers boxing melodrama inspired by the real-life exploits of fight manager Jackie Kallen. And in "Never Die Alone" (Fox), a heroin-dealing gangsta (played by rap star DMX) returns home hoping for redemption, only to find a one-way ticket to oblivion.

Meanwhile, on the offbeat side of the street, director Bernardo Bertolucci returns to "Last Tango in Paris" territory with "The Dreamers" (Fox), about a Paris ménage a trois among 20-something French twins (Eva Green and Louis Garrel) and a young American (Michael Pitt) they befriend just as the 1968 student riots are about to explode. And the Oscar-winning "The Barbarian Invasions" (Miramax) reunites a terminally ill Montreal professor (Remy Girard) with his son (Stephane Rousseau) and six of the professor's intellectual friends and lovers, whom Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand introduced in 1986's "The Decline of the American Empire."

• Critic's choice: The remake arrives in theaters later this month, but it's difficult to imagine how it could possibly top director John Frankenheimer's 1962 classic "The Manchurian Candidate" (MGM), a brilliant Cold War chiller about Korean War vets (Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey) brainwashed by their Communist captors. Two other outstanding espionage thrillers arrive on DVD today, courtesy of Paramount Home Video: "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" (1966), with Richard Burton as John le Carré's burned-out British agent on assignment in East Berlin; and the World War II thriller "The Counterfeit Traitor" (1962), starring William Holden as an oil trader turned undercover spy.

Two other overseas standouts also turn up on DVD from Koch Lorber: "The Tree of Wooden Clogs" (1979), director Ermanno Olmi's award-winning account of peasants in turn-of-the-century Italy; and Taiwan's "The Wooden Man's Bride" (1994), about forbidden love in remote 1920s China.

• Kidvid corner:In "Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London" (MGM), the teen spy (Frankie Muniz) poses as a music student to get the goods on a rogue CIA agent. Superheroes join forces in the animated "Justice League: Starcrossed -- The Movie" (Warner). And preschool favorites return in "Barney: Now I Know My ABCs" and "The Rubbadubbers: High Noon in the Bathroom" (both from HIT).

• TV transfers: The hey-kids-let's-make-a-movie series from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, "Project Greenlight: The Complete Second Season" (Miramax), follows first-time filmmakers struggling to make the coming-of-age comedy "The Battle of Shaker Heights."

• Vintage vault: The 1994 sleeper "I Like It Like That" (Columbia/TriStar) follows the struggles of a New York wife and mother (Lauren Velez) coping with a roving husband (Jon Seda). And the 1969 romp "The Assassination Bureau" (Paramount), based on an unfinished Jack London tale, casts Diana Rigg as a crusading reporter on the trail of the covert title organization -- and its shadowy leader (Oliver Reed) -- in pre-World War I Europe.