MOVIES ON DVD Selected releases

Our critics’ views on the original release: Fever Pitch

Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Americanized version of Nick Hornby’s novel about soccer obsession switches to baseball. Businesswoman Drew Barrymore falls for a teacher (Jimmy Fallon) who lives and dies by the team’s fortunes. It follows the romantic comedy formula. Geoff Pevere Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This movie adaptation of Douglas Adams will amuse and vex fans while leaving casual observers mildly baffled. The picaresque sci-fi adventures of the bathrobeclad Arthur Dent start with the destruction of the Earth and proceed skyward as remembered in Adams’ book. Martin Freeman is a flawless choice as Dent but the movie is a series of sketches and puns that don’t always connect, and which in many cases worked better in their original radio incarnation than they do on the big screen. Peter Howell Nobody Knows

Inspired by events that captured Japanese headlines in the late 1980s, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s masterfully executed fourth movie tells the tale of four children abandoned in a Tokyo apartment for nearly a year. Kore-eda refuses to offer any moral judgments or emotional catharsis and the film functions brilliantly because it never stays from seeing the situation from the point of view of those living it. GP Winter Solstice

Anthony LaPaglia ( Lantana, TV’s Without a Trace) is a an actor who specializes in being morose and he is right at home here as a landscaper living a life of quiet desperation in smalltown New Jersey. Not much happens as he deals with raising his sons after his wife dies in a car accident, even when a single woman played by The West Wing’s Allison Janney) moves into the neighbourhood. The acting isn’t the problem, but the writing and directing are deadly. PH FOREIGN FARE Stupeur et tremblements ( Fear and Trembling) (France- Japan, comedy, 2003) Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto ( Swept Away) (Italy, comedy-drama, 1974)