Building a DVD library—the Warner way: the Warner Home Video backlist, with more than a dozen of the American Film Institute's 100 Best American Films, is a treasure trove for collectors - Entertainment

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2003 by Robert S. Rothenberg

The Candidate (110 minutes, $19.98), which limns a race for the California governorship, remains so up-to-date that, three decades later, star Robert Redford is developing a sequel. Redford's idealistic public-service lawyer, pitted against the slick incumbent governor, is lured into running when a shrewd political consultant (Peter Boyle) assures him that he'll be able to speak out freely since he has no chance of winning. Of course, once it turns out he does have a shot, his integrity is sacrificed on the altar of politics, leaving him to inquire plaintively after his upset victory, "Now what do we do?" (The sequel, by the way, will have Redford, by this time president of the U.S., about to run for a second term.) Meanwhile, sit back and see how many parallels you can find between this 1972 film and the Bush-Gore 2000 race! Jeremy Lamer was awarded the best original screenplay Oscar for the picture. There are no special features.

DE NIRO AND PACINO

Heat (172 minutes, $19.98) pits Los Angeles cop Al Pacino against master criminal Robert De Niro in the only movie wherein they come face to face on screen. (No, know-it-all reader, "The Godfather, Part II" doesn't count. While both starred in it, they occupied two different time periods and never were seen together.) The film is action-packed from start to finish under the hand of writer-director Michael Mann, with both of the leads and the strong supporting cast (Jon Voight, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, most prominently) playing a very grown-up version of cops and robbers with great relish. Where most caper movies work like a Swiss watch until things invariably go wrong, the robbery here more resembles a major conflagration--hence, the title. The DVD lacks any special features.

GoodFellas (146 minutes, $24.98) is the ultimate real-life Mafia movie (vs. the wonderfully fictionalized version in "The Godfather" trilogy), albeit director Martin Scorsese chose to change most of the names from author Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy, which dealt with mobster/stool pigeon Henry Hill's rise and fall. There is nothing romanticized about organized crime here, the gangsters universally vicious and despicable, especially Robert De Niro as Jimmy "The Gent" Conway and the sadistic Joe Pesci, whose "So you think I'm funny?" rant is as mesmerizing as watching a lion about to tear apart a helpless antelope. The film, number 94 on the AFI list, won Pesci the 1990 best supporting actor Oscar, though the picture lost out to "Dances with Wolves," whose director, Kevin Costner, topped Scorsese, and Lorraine Bracco (now psychoanalzying mobster Tony Soprano on TV) was beaten by Whoopi Goldberg ("Ghost") for best supporting actress. The DVD has no special features.

Analyze This (104 minutes, $14.98) casts Robert De Niro somewhat against type as a Mafioso (not unexpected), but one with psychological problems that lead him to a psychiatrist instead of a killing spree (as might be expected). Yes, this is a comic twist on the theme--and one that might have inspired the similar gangster-shrink relationship in "The Sopranos," though here it's Billy Crystal trying to iron out the criminal kinks, lending new meanings to the term "family counselor." In short, this 1998 comedy is a hoot, with De Niro's self-parody a total delight. The DVD includes a dual De Niro-Crystal audio commentary and another by writer-director Harold Ramis plus a "gag reel" that sends the satiric balloon soaring even higher.