The following reviews appeared as "Reference DVD" features in the Movies section of Sound & Vision. Out of the 22 discs chosen for their exceptional audio and video from September 2000 through July/August 2003, I consider these five the standouts. BLUE CRUSH Universal
Ah, crime and punishment. They go together like . . . Leopold and Loeb, Donny and Marie, Rimsky and Korsakov. Except, of course, in the movies or on TV, when folks sometimes get away with murder (think Body Heat or The Player).
It all began with a film projector on the hood of a car showing images on a bed sheet hung between two trees. Richard Hollingshead went on to perfect this apparatus, and the world's first drive-in cinema under the stars opened to the public in Camden, New Jersey, on June 6, 1933. By the late 1950s, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins - and why not?
These days, it seems like all the bad guys in the world have it in for America. Thankfully, someone is always looking out for us, whether they're dynamic marionettes or top-secret teenagers. Both these films have lots of fun with the spy movie genre. D.E.B.S. (Sony; Movie •••, Picture/Sound •••½, Extras ••) is aimed squarely at family audiences.
