Adult dvd rental review

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Deriving its title from the romantic-nihilist Neil Young anthem Kurt Cobain quoted in his suicide note, Dennis Hopper's long-unavailable 1980 cult film Out of the Blue is burnout cinema at the end of its rope. Teenage misfit Linda Manz, whose embrace of punk attitude is inherited from a seemingly idolized father (Hopper), reunites with Dad after he's done five years for crashing his truck into a school bus full of kids. Tapping into a late-Seventies sense of youth alienation and the manifest bankruptcy of adult authority (there's also a junkie mom, Sharon Farrell), the film shifts gear -- after lots of rambling, semicoherent interplay -- from listless teen-wasteland sensationalism to full-on family psychodrama, on its way to a truly flipped-out ending. Opportunistic and overindulgent, to be sure, but a fascinating compilation of deranged icons, conflating Elvis, punk, Dad, and Hopper as abusive fucked-up masculinity incarnate. Above all, it's a memorably entropic standoff between Hopper the director, fixated on Manz but with no idea what to do with her, and Manz the actor, by turns hyperactive and enervated, her unique performance reportedly obtained by Method mindfuck. Anchor Bay, $14.98.

DVD

Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 98) -- Defining itself in terms of the original's sense of the terrible burden of the past, Van Sant's seemingly inconsequential exercise is a quite conscious demonstration of the impossibility of eradicating or repressing what has gone before. Its every shot and cut is haunted by the original's, and Herrmann's insistent, insidious score continually threatens to peel back the image to reveal Hitchcock's more measured and implacably staged film. The addition of several whimsically superfluous lines and the retention of anachronisms in the dialogue mock the very idea of any autonomy from the earlier film, and indeed, Van Sant only occasionally duplicates the original shot-for-shot: compositions and shot durations mostly only approximate Hitchcock's. And yet all the same, Van Sant's shrewdly calculated casting and the associations and performative nuances they bring, as well as certain substitutions in incidental decor and props, alter the emotional and moral climate. To cite only one example, the contrast between the ripe sexuality and melancholy, troubled quality of Janet Leigh's performance and the low-voltage sexual presence and more shallow, unreflective nervousness of Anne Heche's is the contrast between two moral universes, subtly shifting the film's center of gravity and creating a small but unmistakable window of meaningful difference there for the taking. Universal, $34.98.

Alien X 4 Alien (Ridley Scott, 79, WS, deleted scenes), Aliens (James Cameron, 86, WS, 17 extra mins), [Alien.sup.3] (David Fincher, 91, WS), Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 97, WS) -- 20th Century Fox $29.95 each/$109.98 set.

The General (John Boorman, 98, WS, original noncolor version) -- Columbia TriStar, $27.95 (VHS version is colorized and priced for rental)

Mallrats Collector's Edition (Kevin Smith, 96, WS, over one hour of deleted scenes) -- Universal, $34.98

La Sentinelle (Amaud Desplechin, France, 91) -- Fox Lorber, $29.98

OTHER NOTABLE RELEASES

Clara Bow X 3: The Plastic Age (Wesley Ruggles, 25 + Run Girl Run), Parisian Love (Louis Gasnier, 25) & It (Clarence Badger & uncredited Josef von Sternberg, 27) -- Kino, $24.95 each

Brit Noir X 2: Contraband (Michael Powell, 40) & They Made Me a Fugitive (Cavalcanti, 47) - Kino, $24.95 each

Truffaut X 6 from Fox Lorber: Les Mistons (57) & Antoine et Collette (62, WS), $19.98/DVD $24.98; Jules et Jim (61, WS), $29.98/DVD $29.98; The Soft Skin (64), Bed and Board (70), Stolen Kisses (68), The Woman Next Door (81) -- all $19.98/DVD $29.98

The Allnighter (Tamar Simon Hoffs, 87 + Hoffs's 22 min short The Haircut starring John Cassavetes) -- Anchor Bay, $14.98

Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, Italy: 49) -- Home Vision, $19.95

Danton (Andrzej Wajda, France, 82, remastered WS) -- Home Vision, $29.95

Death by Design (Peter Friedman & Jean-Francois Brunet, 95) -- First Run, $39.95

Halloween ltd. ed. (John Carpenter, 78, WS & 12 mins of additional scenes from TV version) -- Anchor Bay, $44.98

Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, Italy, 56, director's cut) -- Home Vision, $29.95

Outrageous (Richard Benner, 77) -- Hen's Tooth, $29.95

The Pornographers (Shohei Imamura, Japan, 66, WS) -- Home Vision, $29.95

Project A II (Jackie Chan, Hong Kong, 87, WS) -- Tai Seng, $19.98

Snake Eyes (Brian De Palma, 98, WS) -- Paramount, $14.95

Tenderness of the Wolves (Uli Lommel, Germany, 74) -- Anchor Bay, $14.98

The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 98, WS) -- Paramount, $14.95

Velvet Hustlers (Toshito Mazuta, Japan, 67, WS) -- Home Vision, $29.95

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me? (Ulu Grosbard, 71) -- CBS/Fox, $9.98

STRAIGHT TO VIDEO

In J.S. Cardone's bleak Outside Ozona (98, Columbia TriStar), Taj Mahal hosts a radio program that unites miscellaneous Oklahomans (Meat Loaf, Sherilyn Fenn, etc.) marked for death by a hitchhiking serial killer. Craig R. Baxley's heavyhanded progun Under Pressure (99, Col TriStar) stars Charles (formerly Charlie) Sheen as an apparent hero with a darkside who bullies the family next door in an escalating war of nerves, provoking them to retaliate. The characters in Carl-Jan Colpaert's incoherent thriller Facade (99, Col TriStar) also take the law into their own hands when Eric Roberts's shady real estate development leads to the betrayal and overheated sexual finagling we expect from Sidney Sheldon. And lust sets the tone for Gonzalo Suarez's Rowing with the Wind (Spain, 87, Miramax), a haughty drama about vacationing poets Byron (Hugh Grant) and Shelley (Valentine Pelka), and the wenches (Elizabeth Hurley, Lizzy McInnerny) who crave them. Much sex is had and literature is generated. In the best of a bad bunch, John N. Smith's A Cool, Dry Place (99, 20th Fox), Vince Vaughn is a neglectful parent reeling from the desertion of his wife. His law career sags while he cares for their child, possibly the worst kid actor ever to appear on film. Enter Joey Lauren Adams, whose initial hostility to Vaughn is overcome by his winning sensitivity, and after a quick fuck in the front seat of her track, she proves herself even more capable in his kitchen.

--Nicole Armour

ORDERING INFORMATION

Anchor Bay 1-800-745-1145. Connoisseur 1-800-529-2300. Facets 1-800-331-6197. First Run 1-800-488-6652. Fox Lorber 1-800-414-1690. Home Vision 1-800-826-3456. Kino: 1-800-562-3330. Milestone 1-800-603-1104. New Yorker 1-800-447-0196. Tai-Seng 1-800-888-3836/www.taiseng.com. Water Bearer Films 1-800-551-8304.