Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe What's new on the home video scene... Movies Advertisement "The Others" -- Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a young mother waiting out the final stages of World War II with her two small children in a cavernous and creepy Victorian mansion on the British channel island of Jersey. Her son and daughter are supersensitive to bright lights so all of the house's many windows are covered with heavy drapes and she tutors them by candlelight. Outside the fog is thick, the woods creepy as three mysterious servants show up to replace those who inexplicably ran off, touching off a wave of startling supernatural happenings. A piano plays when there's no one there, doors open and close by themselves, a chandelier waves but there is no breeze, the children report communicating with ghostly "intruders," there are ominous sounds in the dead of night. After a while, even disciplined, tightly wound Grace begins to believe the house is haunted. There's a lot more to it than that, though, as the tale builds toward an unexpected ending. In his American debut, writer-director Alejandro Amenabar, whose "Open Your Eyes" was adapted as "Vanilla Sky," instills his ghost story with a subtle scariness where the fear is more of things unseen than seen, where, under the right circumstances, just the anticipation of what's behind a closed door or down a darkened hall can lead halfway to hysteria. 2001. 104 minutes. Dimension Home Video. Rated PG-13 (thematic elements and frightening moments). Advertisement "From Hell" -- In this dark and dreary retelling of the ghastly deeds of Jack the Ripper, Johnny Depp plays a troubled 19th century police detective trying to solve a bizarre series of savage murders of London prostitutes, often at odds with his superiors who seem to have their own plans for the notorious serial killer. Depp portrays Scotland Yard Inspector Frederick Abberline, an opium-addicted clairvoyant called in to investigate the slayings of five prostitutes in London's Whitechapel area and finding the bodies assaulted in a particularly gruesome manner decides someone with medical knowledge had to be involved. He also falls for one of the potential victims (Heather Graham) who sets him on the trail of a vast high-level conspiracy that reaches right to Queen Victoria's court. Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, the film is a combination murder mystery and horror story, atmospherically bathed in deep shadows, visually impressive but a grim, unsettling experience with a lot of graphic gore. Not for the squeamish. 2001. 137 minutes. Fox Home Entertainment. Rated R (strong violence/gore, sexuality, language, drug content). "Snow Dogs" -- A light and likable Disney farce in which Miami dentist Ted Brooks (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is summoned to a tiny, remote Alaskan village where his birth mother (he didn't know he was adopted) has died and named him in her will. There he finds, along with the usual eccentrics, some of whom look a lot like "Northern Exposure" rejects, that he has inherited a rambunctious team of sled dogs. Intimidated by a crusty old cuss called Thunder Jack (James Coburn) who wants the dogs, Ted is determined to turn his Huskies into a sled team again himself, though shushing through the snow is not an everyday occurrence back in Miami. Bonding with the dogs is no easy matter -- they sneer, snicker and smirk while resisting his greenhorn efforts, but he gets help from the town's lone lovely (Joanna Balcalso) and the rest is pretty predictable. 2001. 99 minutes. Walt Disney Home Video. Rated PG. Advertisement "Corky Romano" -- The FBI has the goods on mob boss Pops Romano (Peter Falk) and is about ready to haul him in on a bunch of charges. Pops and his two sons (Peter Berg and Chris Penn) hit on the idea of having someone go under cover with the FBI to find and destroy the evidence against him. Their only, reluctant choice is the boys' other brother, the family blacksheep, dorky Corky ("Saturday Night Live's" Chris Kattan), an affable but bumbling veterinarian so naive he thinks his father really is in the landscaping business. Corky easily infiltrates the FBI and in no time has his dim boss singing his praises. Lots of slapstick, some laughs. 2001. 85 minutes. Touchstone Home Video. Rated PG-13 (drug and sex related humor, language). "Rose Red" -- Stephen King takes on the haunted house genre with mixed results in this lengthy, slowly developing four-hour-plus thriller about a group of psychics and ghost lusters who join a psychology professor(Nancy Travis)in an overnight stay at a spooky, decrepit mansion known as Rose Red. They succeed in unleashing the spirit of a former owner and uncovering long-buried secrets of those who lived and died there. Originally a TV minseries, it has its scary moments. 2002. 254 minutes. Lions Gate Home Entertainment. Rated PG-13 (terror, violence, some sexual reference). Advertisement VIDBITS Coming up next: "Vanilla Sky" with Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz, the Australian mystery "Lantana," "Sidewalks of New York" and "How High"... "Behind Enemy Lines" and "Domestic Disturbance" are the top movie rentals this week... "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" debuts on VHS and DVD in the United States on May 28, but it goes on sale in British video stores Saturday. As part of its massive promotion campaign, Variety reported, Warner Home Video turned Platform 1 of the King's Cross Station, one of London's oldest train stations, into the fictional platform 93/4 and, with about 700 mostly young fans on hand for the rally, brought in cast members aboard a replica of the film's Hogwarts Express train to work the crowd and hand out DVDs and other movie-related stuff. Missing was Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry. He had to study for exams and sent his greetings by video... With Mother's Day at hand, Entertainment Weekly has chosen the top videos to watch with mom. No. 1 is "The Joy Luck Club," Wayne Wang's version of the Amy Tan novel about four Chinese women and their Americanized daughters. Available only on VHS; DVD due June 4... For sports fans: "Maryland's March," all about the drive to the NCAA basketball championship... Advertisement The enormous box-office success of "Spider-Man" has its video fallout, too. The swinging, web-slinging superhero is featured in the animated "Spider-Man: The Ultimate Villain Showdown," pitting Spidey against the Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus and Kingpin... Disney's "Oliver & Company," the tuneful, animated 1941 romp by a likable gang of canny canines, returns to kid row May 14, for another look on VHS and in a DVD debut. Voice talent includes Bette Midler and Billy Joel.
