DVD & Blu-ray

Say "movie trilogy" and most people reach for Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. A few of us might mention Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy -- three thematically related movies set in modern France and Poland. Red Riding is a new trilogy that fits somewhere in-between genre films and art films.

I don't know when I've seen a movie as devastating as The Red Riding Trilogy, a three-picture adaptation of four novels by British author David Peace. The three movies -- which open Friday at the Starz Denver Film Festival -- originally were made for British TV and total five hours in length.

At four hours, plus 15 minutes for intermission, Hamlet is for the faint of neither tush nor eye. Nevertheless the movie is fairly well paced and there is enough happening on screen, even in slow parts, to hold one's attention. There is also the reward of seeing the entire play, uncut. Branagh's version is reputedly the first film version to present all the dialog of Shakespeare's masterpiece. Now that it's been done (and done so well), it need never be done again, let's hope.

Part of what makes this epic endurable are excellent performances both by Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Hamlet's stepfather, and by Branagh himself as Hamlet. Jacobi's Claudius is a loving husband and a not unjust stepfather. Though he killed Hamlet's father, he is not portrayed as a purely evil villain; his character is well-rounded, understandable, and human. Branagh's Hamlet is superb. So often I have heard the soliloquies from Hamlet ("To be or not to be . . ." and "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt . . .") without understanding the depth of their meaning. Coming from Branagh, the words are profound and moving.

Much of the movie takes place in the main hall of Elsinore castle. This set is beautiful, with stark black and white tiles, vibrant red draperies, and mirrored doors leading to secret alcoves running the length of the hall on both sides. To top it off, the camera seems free to roam the entire hall. The camera circles the actors in an elaborately choreographed dance.

The camera movement in the hall reminded me of the Hitchcock movie, Rope, in which there are only three or four visible edits. The rest of Rope looks like one long, continuous take, and the camera is blocked and choreographed just as much as the actors. In Hamlet, the camera movement is more a technical wonder because you will never see a camera in one of the mirrored doors. Sometimes there are carefully placed screens, other times, the camera is angled juuuust right. I wonder how much footage ended up on the cutting room floor because of camera reflection.

In addition to its length, there are other marks against Hamlet. Hamlet is laced with cameos, and with only a few exceptions (Billy Crystal, for example), they are too distracting. Robin Williams steals the first scene he's in (imagine, Robin Williams stealing a scene!) and it detracts from the mood and, for me, the comprehension of the Shakespearean dialog. I couldn't tell you what transpired in that first scene with Williams. Jack Lemmon, senior citizen, plays a guard with night duty at the castle gates.

Still, in spite of its length, Hamlet is a relevant and moving film. I was able to empathize with Hamlet, and I even found myself being depressed by the things that haunted Hamlet. He looks at the skull of Yorick, twenty years dead and wonders where the life went. What of Hamlet after he dies, and what of us after we die?

I was afraid that Breakfast With Hunter Vol. 2 was going to be just a second volume, simply more of the Hunter Thompson show, an addendum to director Wayne Ewing's 2002 documentary Breakfast With Hunter (reviewed by Matt Anderson on Movie Habit). And at first that's what I thought I was watching. I said to myself, "Well, Ewing has this extra footage of Thompson and it was not used in Vol. 1, so why not show it now? That would be better than sitting on it after all... share it with the rest of the world." Now that I've watched Breakfast Vol.2, I think there is more to this film than that.

James and the Giant Peach, Henry Selick's stop-motion follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas, isn't as flashy as its predecessor, but it doesn't need monsters or fantastical sets to tell a good story.

Michael Cera carries the burden of his familiar presence lightly enough to keep from wearing out his welcome. In Youth in Revolt, Cera (familiar from Juno and Superbad) again follows in his own footsteps, playing a baby-faced high-school kid who's afraid he'll die a virgin.

The Book of Eli is the Hughes Brothers' first feature film since 2001's From Hell. They haven't lost their touch.

If you're a moviegoing regular, you've seen the world end so many times that you've probably learned to take post-apocalyptic devastation in stride. In the last several months alone, we've had 2012 (an attempt at a mainstream apocalypse) and The Road (a serious look at a fragile fight for survival). Now comes The Book of Eli, perhaps the wackiest post-apocalyptic movie yet. Starring Denzel Washington and directed by Allen and Albert Hughes, The Book of Eli carries eclecticism to its wildest extreme.

I first read about Collapse during last year's Toronto International Film Festival, so I knew the film had a reputation for knocking folks off center, but who'd have thought that a single talking head could instill so much gloom and doom?

There is only one subject in the documentary Collapse: Michael Ruppert (more on him later). There is only one setting. There are snips of archival footage, but for most of 80 minutes, it's a screen filled with one man talking. By all rights, Collapse should be no more than a niche film with limited appeal.

War of the Worlds is undeniably well-crafted and intense. Beyond that, there is room for honest disagreement about whether the story works on film, whether Tom Cruise is more of a presence or a distraction, whether John Williams' music is overbearing or fitting, and a hundred other details.

The Wolfman, a remake of the 1941 horror classic that starred the estimable Lon Chaney, puts some fury on display -- mostly as a result of violence that's introduced with all the subtlety of a sonic boom. But what's the point? Visually overstimulated and thematically hollow, this edition of Wolfman brings better technology to an old tale, but still finds itself hampered by ridiculously ominous dialogue, grandly inflated conflicts, and a tendency to turn its wolfman attacks into slashing arias of what one character describes as brains, guts and God knows what.

At the beginning, Shutter Island oozes with creepiness. Unfortunately, even the esteemed Martin Scorsese can't quite keep the mojo going from first frame to last, but the end result is still worth a look.

The quickest way to sum up Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is with a mild distortion of a cliché every writer is encouraged to avoid: It's one hell of a dark and stormy movie. Drenched in weirdness and flooded with water (in the form of hurricane-driven rains and bobbing seas), Shutter Island makes you feel as if reality is receding as steadily as an outgoing tide.

Alice in Wonderland is Tim Burton's most visually ambitious movie to date and, especially after dreaming up $1 billion at the global box office, it deserves a Blu-ray release with much more muchness.