Flightplan

Jodie Foster fans, think of Flightplan as Panic Room with wings. Foster stars as Julia Pratt, a propulsion engineer who, with her 6-year-old daughter, travels from Germany to the United State, the plane she has designed, with the body of her recently-deceased husband. After a short nap Julia (and the audience) awaken to the confused question of whether Mommy has lost her daughter or her mind.

While director Robert Schwentke effectively flips on the fasten seatbelt sign, inflicting his audience to a very visual bumpy ride, and although the film is infused with some first-class performances (Peter Sarsgaard is outstanding as the calm, albeit overly-obliging air marshal), interesting pyrotechnics and creative camera work, there are too many flight patterns going on in this movie to deem it believable. Bonus Features: Two making-of featurettes "The In-Flight Movie: The Making of Flightplan" and "Cabin Pressure: Designing the Aalto E-474," plus an audio commentary by Schwentke. -- J. Corbett Holmes

Live Freaky Die Freaky

Using claymation puppets in Live Freaky Die Freaky! director John Roecker molds together a disturbingly humorous re-enactment of the Charles Manson/Sharon Tate murders that traumatized Hollywood in the late 1960s. Infused with copious amounts of X-rated activities and dialogue, as well as an original indie-rock soundtrack, this art-house film goes where no clay has gone before. LFDF opens in the year 3069, after the Earth has been destroyed by the ozone and rendered a vast wasteland. Its only survivors are nomads devoid of any historic memories. While in search of explanations to their existence, a paperback copy of the book Helter Skelter is discovered. Once the soil is brushed away from its cover, the audience is taken, through clay, into the musically murderous story of the Manson "family" and their crazy brand of religion. While the film is creative, it's also utterly without boundaries and not for the easily offended. Bonus Features: "Making Puppets Speak" and "Soundtrack Rehearsals and Recordings," as well as a music video and audio commentary by Roecker. -- J. Corbett Holmes

Also:

Every Judy Garland queen worth his salt should already own the complete set of the entertainment icon's legendary television variety series The Judy Garland Show. If not, two new DVDs offering a total of four shows are now available. The first disc features an impossibly young Tony Bennett and Steve Lawrence, while the second offers Peggy Lee in all her va-va-voom glory and Ethel Merman in peak powerhouse vocal form. All the qualities that made Garland so endearing -- the self-deprecating wit, the nervous energy, that voice! -- are on display here. Bonus features include outtakes and an audio commentary on the Bennett/Lawrence DVD by the series' original producer, George Schlatter, who discusses the highs and lows of working with the tempermental Garland, whom he calls "a force field of energy."

Two films from T.L.A. Releasing make their home video debut this month: Sex/Life in L.A.2, director Jochen Hick's sequel to his 1999 documentary, is an unflinching -- and often really depressing -- look at the dreams, disappointments, and successes of men working in the gay porn industry featuring adult film stars Kevin Kramer, Cole Tucker, and Matt Bradshaw. Better is director Gaël Morel's Three Dancing Slaves, a harrowing French drama about a trio of brothers (Nicolas Cazalé, Stéphane Rideau, and Thomas Dumerchez) grieving their mother's recent death and wrestling with their inner demons. As with Morel's previous film, Full Speed, this one is chock full of homoerotic imagery and features one of the most photogenic casts in recent memory. -- Jeremy Kinser