While any time may be the right time, hot summer nights are especially ideal for chilling out with a good thriller. There's nothing like breaking out in a cold sweat to bring the temperature down. DVD companies seem to know that and have just released a slew of films that do just that.

Focusing on the serial killings that terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area from Christmas 1969 through the mid-1970s, and for some even up to today, David Fincher's Zodiac may be his most accomplished film. Eschewing the excessive gore that informed even his best previous work in Seven and Fight Club, Fincher doesn't focus on the blood and guts aspect of the crimes. Instead he concentrates on the obsessive nature with which three men pursue the killer.

The three men are the ace San Francisco detective who inspired the Steve McQueen character in Bullitt, a San Francisco Chronicle crime reporter and that paper's editorial cartoonist.

Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count on Me, Just Like Heaven) as the detective, Robert Downey, Jr. (Wonder Boys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) as the reporter and Jake Gyllenhaal (The Day After Tomorrow, Brokeback Mountain) as the cartoonist who is the most obsessed of all, provide thoughtful, understated performances, but the film is not about them so much as it is about the exhaustive, detailed hunt for the elusive killer.

Though the killer was never caught, the film makes a slam dunk case for one of the sleaziest suspects in the long investigation. The film's greatest strength is in showing us without making too obvious a point of it, the lack of technology available to law enforcement that may have made a difference in solving the case. Though those of us who lived through the 1970s recall it as a highly sophisticated period, the film makes us wonder how much more we could have accomplished if we had the benefit of some of the things we've come to rely on today. Things like cell phones, e-mails and even fax machines, which were around but not in general use, might have made a difference.

A bit of trivia: Philip Baker Hall, who has a pivotal supporting role, was also in a Showtime film about the case called The Zodiac, albeit in a different role.

Serial killings in an earlier era are at the center of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a film that got lost in the glut of last year's films given Oscar-qualifying runs in December.

This is the first film since the international success of Run, Lola, Run a decade ago, that German director Tom Tykwer really lives up to his potential. We've seen a lot of costume dramas in the last decade, most of which are interchangeable, but this one stands out with its unique story and tongue-in-cheek unfolding.

The film's protagonist is a poor boy who lives through a Dickensian childhood in 19th Century Paris only to emerge slightly warped. An apprenticeship with a great perfumer indulges his damaged mind even further, leading him to become the reluctant murderer of the title.

This macabre thriller is a worthy successor to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Benjamin Ross' The Young Poisoner's Handbook with a totally unexpected, though strangely-satisfying ending.

Ben Whishaw (Enduring Love, Layer Cake) gives a career defining performance in the lead. Alan Rickman (Truly Madly Deeply, Love Actually) has his best role in years as the protagonist's nemesis. Dustin Hoffman (Meet the Fockers, Stranger Than Fiction) as the great perfumer, however, delivers yet another of his increasingly-hammy performances.

One of the ugliest looking films of this or any year has to be The Number 23, directed by Joel Schumacher (Veronica Guerin, The Phantom of the Opera) who has helmed more recent clinkers than any other director alive. The film stars Jim Carrey (The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) who is in many ways to acting what Schumacher is to directing. Put the two together and you get this dreary little film told mostly in mind-numbing flashbacks. Carrey is over-the-top as usual in most of his scenes as the dog catcher who goes nuts reading a book, though he does manage to tone it down nicely for the film's quieter moments. Virginia Madsen (Sideways) offers some compensation as his staunchly-supportive wife.

A bit of trivia: Danny Huston (The Constant Gardener, Children of Men), who plays Madsen's friend in the film, was married to her from 1989-1992.

Madsen also figures prominently as another staunchly-supportive wife in Michael Polish's The Astronaut Farmer opposite Billy Bob Thornton (The Ice Harvest, School for Scoundrels), a fanciful film about a farmer who builds a rocket in his barn with plans to launch it into orbit with the aid of his 15-year-old son. Will he succeed in time to keep the bank from foreclosing on the farm? Will Disney re-release Pinocchio every seven years? Like Polish's previous films (Twin Falls Idaho, Northfork), it may be one-note but it is not simplistic. Thornton's performance is one of his best and the Santa Fe, New Mexico locations add immensely to the film's charm.

Warner Bros. continues to dominate the classic film release market with Film Noir Classics, Vol. 4 this week with no less than ten new-to-DVD examples of the genre culled from four studios - MGM, RKO and Monogram as well as Warner Bros. - from the mid-40s through the mid-50s.

Robert Ryan (Crossfire, On Dangerous Ground) is at his menacing best as a World War II veteran out to kill his former commanding officer, Van Heflin (Shane, Battle Cry) in 1948's Act of Violence, directed by Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity), in which no one is what they seem. Mary Astor, in a departure from the kindly mothers she played at that point in her career (Meet Me in St. Louis, Little Women), has a meaty role as a tired hooker.

Forensic science was solving murders long before TV's CSI and Bones as evidenced by 1950's Mystery Street, filmed entirely in the Boston area with Ricardo Montalban (Neptune's Daughter, Battleground) as an intrepid detective, Bruce Bennett (Mildred Pierce, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) as a Harvard forensic expert, and Elsa Lanchester (The Big Clock, Witness for the Prosecution) as a duplicitous landlady. John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape) directed with the same level of high-adrenaline suspense he would bring to later, better known projects. Lanchester, not surprisingly, steals the film.

Remakes seldom improve upon the original, but 1955's Illegal, a nifty remake of 1932's The Mouthpiece, with Edward G. Robinson (Woman in the Window, The Stranger) in fine form, is a notable exception. Robinson plays a career D.A. who turns criminal lawyer after sending the wrong man to the electric chair. Nina Foch (An American in Paris, Executive Suite) who usually played hard, caustic characters gets a chance to show her softer side as his adopted daughter, and Ellen Corby (I Remember Mama, TV's The Waltons), for once, gets to play a strong character on screen instead of one of her trademark wimps. Jayne Mansfield (The Girl Can't Help It, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?) makes her screen debut in a seemingly unimportant role. Lewis Allen (The Uninvited, Suddenly) directed with panache.

The stars of the classic noir Out of the Past were reunited for 1950's The Big Steal under the direction of Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry). This time around, Robert Mitchum (The Night of the Hunter, Home from the Hill) and Jane Greer (The Prisoner of Zenda, The Man of a Thousand Faces) lighten it up considerably with sparkling dialogue that almost threatens to turn the film into a screwball comedy. Joining them in their cat-and-mouse games are William Bendix (The Blue Dahlia, Detective Story), Patric Knowles (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Auntie Mame) and Ramon Novarro (Mata Hari, Heller in Pink Tights).

The best known of the films in the collection is undoubtedly 1949's They Live by Night, Nicholas Ray's (In a Lonely Place, Rebel Without a Cause) poignant love story set against a tale of bank robbers on the lam. Farley Granger (Strangers on a Train, Senso) has his best role as the naïve robbers' accomplice opposite Cathy O'Donnell (The Best Years of Our Lives, Ben-Hur). Filmed in 1947, this was Ray's first film as a director, but it didn't reach U.S. theatres until eight months after his second film, Knock on Any Door, due to a whim of RKO's new owner, Howard Hughes. Robert Altman made an equally effective version of the novel under its original title, Thieves Like Us,a quarter century later.

Granger and O'Donnell, the actors who play star-crossed lovers of They Live by Night,are reunited in 1950's Side Street, directed by Anthony Mann (Border Incident, The Man from Laramie) at breakneck speed. Granger plays a part-time mailman who becomes a petty thief so that his wife can have their baby at a hospital. He is driven further and further into the labyrinth until the finale that spins out of control in the canyons of lower Manhattan. Jean Hagen (Adam's Rib, Singin' in the Rain) is dazzling in an 11th hour showcase as a chanteuse.

The mean streets of L.A. are the backdrop for 1954's Crime Wave, directed by Andre de Toth (Man in the Saddle, Monkey on My Back). Sterling Hayden (The Asphalt Jungle, Johnny Guitar) gets top billing as a tough cop, but the real lead is Gene Nelson (Tea for Two, Lullaby of Broadway), excellent in a then-rare dramatic role as an ex-con duped into aiding a gang of vicious thugs. Phyllis Kirk (House of Wax, TV's The Thin Man) gets to play against type as Nelson's hard-boiled wife. Charles Bronson (Death Wish, 10 to Midnight) has a major supporting role as a cold-blooded killer.

The strangest film of the lot is 1946's Decoy about a femme fatale (Jean Gillie) who juggles three lovers, a doctor (Herbert Rudley) and two gangsters (Edward Norris, Robert Armstrong), one of whom is a revived corpse. To say more would spoil the fun.

This is a one-of-a-kind movie made by first-time director, Jack Bernhard, a one-time poverty row producer, as a showcase for his wife, leading lady Gillie. Unfortunately the marriage ended when the filming stopped and Gillie died a mere three years later after making just one more film, 1947's The Macomber Affair.

The best known cast members are Armstrong (King Kong) and Sheldon Leonard (Guys and Dolls, Pocketful of Miracles), who plays the gumshoe hot on their heels. Leonard later became one of TV's most prolific producers.

Robert Mitchum returns in 1950's Where Danger Lives, directed by John Farrow (His Kind of Woman, Hondo). Mitchum plays a young doctor who falls under the spell of conniving Faith Domergue (This Island Earth, It Came from Beneath the Sea ). Claude Rains (Casablanca, Notorious) and Maureen O'Sullivan (Tarzan and His Mate, Hannah and Her Sisters) have a couple of scenes but despite its title, this is primarily a road film featuring the two leads. Like most noirs, you can figure out where it's going, but not how it gets there. Mitchum delivers another first-rate performance.

No femme was ever more fatale than Audrey Totter (The Set-Up, A Bullet for Joey) at her meanest and she's at her meanest in 1950's Tension, driving milquetoast husband Richard Basehart (Fourteen Hours, Moby Dick) over the edge. Both stars are terrific under the direction of John Berry (Claudine, Boesman and Lena). Cyd Charisse (Silk Stockings, Party Girl) has one of her best early roles as Basehart's true love, but Barry Sullivan (Another Time, Another Place, Light in the Piazza) and William Conrad (Body and Soul, The Naked Jungle) are hard to take as smarmy cops.

Next week: more classic films in the Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection, featuring films they made together aside from The Thin Man and The Great Ziegfeldd.

-Peter J. Patrick (July 31, 2007)

If one hasn't gotten their fill of Harry Potter by reading the newly-published seventh and final book in the series or going out to see the film version of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, one can plan a marathon showing of the first four films on DVD, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or having gotten one's fill of Harry Potter but not of the stars of the films, seek out films with those stars.

Certainly the supporting casts of the Potter films have left a wide range of films, some of them going back 50 years, but what of the young stars? Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) so far hasn't done anything outside of the series, but Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) have.

Radcliffe's first starring role was in the 1999 TV mini-series, David Copperfield, recently re-released on DVD along with various other well made television productions of literary works by Charles Dickens and other authors.

The definitive David Copperfield will always be George Cukor's 1935 version in which every actor looked as though they were born to play their parts. It had been filmed three times before and ten times since, with yet another version in development for theatrical release next year.

Next to the Cukor, my favorite version is British director Simon Curtis' splendid production with young Radcliffe, the best young David since Freddie Bartholomew. Even then, at the tender age of 9 with no long term career ambitions, you could see the makings of a future superstar in the way he more than held his own against an experienced cast. Two-time Oscar winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, California Suite), who plays Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Potter films, won BAFTA and Emmy nominations for her spot-on portrayal of Aunt Betsey Trotwood, a performance that stands shoulder to shoulder with the brilliant work of Edna May Oliver in the Cukor version. Bob Hoskins (Mona Lisa, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), Smith's co-star in The Lonely Passion of Judith Herne, is excellent as well, even managing the next to impossible feat of blotting out memoires of W.C. Fields' Micawber in the Cukor version.

Radcliffe more recently appeared on stage in a well-received London production of Equus, the 1977 version of which is on DVD featuring the Oscar-nominated performances of Richard Burton (Becket, The Night of the Iguana) and Peter Firth (Mighty Joe Young, The Hunt for Red October), the latter in the role reprised by Radcliffe.

Thus far Rupert Grint is the only one of the three stars to have a separate showcase in a more recent film. In Driving Lessons, Grint plays a character obviously molded after first time director Jeremy Brock, the award-winning screenwriter of Mrs. Brown and The Last King of Scotland.

Grint plays the shy, complacent and compliant son of a British vicar and his domineering wife,played by two-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney (You Can Count on Me, Kinsey) in full bitch mode. His life changes for the better when he learns to be independent under the spell of the aging actress he goes to work for. She's played by two-time Oscar nominee Julie Walters (Educating Rita, Billy Elliot), Grint's mother in the Potter films, in a nicely controlled performance that never goes over the top. The inevitable showdown between the two women doesn't quite result in the fireworks display one hoped it would, but is instead sweet and endearing like most of the film. This is one of the best coming-of-age films in a long time with two superb performances, those of Grint and Walters.

A coming-of-age story of quite a different stripe is Jean-Pierre Melville's film of Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terrible, being given the full Criterion Edition treatment.

Melville, later director of the dark Bob le Flambeur and Le Samourai, may seem like a strange choice to direct a film taken from a novel by sensualist Cocteau (The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast), but Cocteau, then in his 60s, felt his novel about young people required a young director so he gave it to 32-year-old Melville who had then directed only one film. Cocteau, though, wasn't about to give up complete control. He reportedly stood over Melville's shoulder during most of the shoot and even does the voice-over narration. The one thing Cocteau disagreed with Melville on was the casting of a young woman as the film's narcissistic villain. I agree. The casting is as disconcerting as Mel Gibson's use of a woman to play the devil in The Passion of the Christ.

The commentator on the DVD, whose plot elements I won't give away, is Gilbert Adair, who was so obviously fascinated with the film that he borrowed chunks of it for his screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003).
 
The Oscar campaign for Sienna Miller (Alfie, Casanova) as 60s legend Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl burned brightly for a while last fall but just like her doomed character, it didn't last long. It's not that she isn't good, it's that she's as overshadowed by the actor playing Andy Warhol as the real Sedgwick was by the real Warhol.

Warhol has been a character in films before, most notably in Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol (1995) and Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996), but as good as Jared Harris and David Bowie were in those films, neither got as deeply into the soul or maybe, soullessness, of Warhol the way Guy Pearce (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Proposition) does.

The film is a companion piece to those earlier works, but suffers a bit from the miscasting of Hayden Christensen as an emerging singer-songwriter whose real name couldn't be used. Not since Evelyn Keyes "didn't play" Ruby Keeler in The Jolson Story has it been so obvious who a major character is supposed to be, but suffice it to say you'll be thinking of Blonde on Blonde a lot when you see him.

Two supporting performances in the film that really stand out are those of Illeana Douglas (Grace of My Heart, Happy, Texas) as Diana Vreeland and Edward Herrmann (TV's Eleanor and Franklin, The Aviator) as the Sedgwick family lawyer.

A factory of another sort figures in the title of Warner Bros.' Musicals from the Dream Factory, Vol. 2. The dream factory is, of course, MGM and the musicals include a potpourri of styles and content unlike any other collection yet released. There is a pirate musical, a biopic, two films celebrating opera, two showcasing the movies' greatest hoofer and one featuring a collection of dance numbers from the first sixty or so years of Hollywood sound film.

A critical and commercial failure in its day, 1948's The Pirate, directed by Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris, Gigi) and starring Judy Garland (Meet Me in St. Louis, The Clock) and Gene Kelly (Singin' in the Rain, It's Always Fair Weather), has grown in affection with both critics and the public in the 60 years since it was made.

A troubled production from the start, the film is based on a 1911 play updated for Broadway in 1941. It went through numerous re-writes before the MGM brass decided to turn it into a musical and hired Cole Porter to write the songs. The finished product is from the second completed musical screenplay. The film was completed in 1947 and tested in October of that year. The test screenings were disastrous and the film was re-cut, new scenes were filmed and one major production number, "Voodoo", was cut altogether. What remains, though, has its charms which peak with the Kelly/Nicolas Brothers' rendition of "Be a Clown", effectively reprised with Kelly and Garland.

On the downside, the supporting cast is disappointing. Walter Slezak (Lifeboat, The Inspector General) seems to be acting in another film and the usually magnificent Gladys Cooper (Now, Voyager, Separate Tables) mostly acts annoyed throughout the film.

More satisfying to 1948 audiences was Words and Music, a musical biography of the lives and careers of Rodgers & Hart, directed by Norman Taurog (Boys Town, Presenting Lily Mars).

The mid-forties to mid-fifties saw numerous films about the lives of great composers, most of which were heavily fictionalized, probably none more so than this one. A reticent Richard Rodgers didn't want his life story told at all but relented so as to allow the Hart estate to make some money. Hart's real life story would have been impossible to film in 1948. Instead of the morose, self-loathing, gay and alcoholic Hart we get cheery, womanizing Mickey Rooney (Babes in Arms, Girl Crazy) in one of the most absurd pieces of miscasting in film history. Bland Tom Drake (Meet Me in St. Louis, Warlock) is a welcome relief as Rodgers.

The film's centerpiece is of course, the re-staging of the great Rodgers & Hart songs performed like they never were before with a galaxy of MGM stars including June Allyson, Perry Como, Judy Garland, Betty Garrett, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly and Ann Southern. They're all, to use a Forties word, swell.

It's impossible to describe the impact Mario Lanza had on people who weren't around at the time. The Philadelphia native grew up listening to Enrique Caruso recordings and had a golden voice that most critics agree was even better than the earlier tenor's.

Lanza wanted a career on the opera stage, but was destined to become a movie star instead when L.B. Mayer saw him in performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947. Rushed into his first film, 1949's That Midnight Kiss, directed by Norman Taurog (Words and Music, G.I. Blues), he proved an overnight sensation. The film, co-starring Kathryn Grayson (Anchors Aweigh, Show Boat) and Ethel Barrymore (Pinky, Just for You), was a smash hit as was the follow-up, 1950's The Toast of New Orleans, also directed by Taurog with the same co-star, Grayson. An incisive hour long biography produced for BBC Wales is included on the DVD of the latter film.

Fred Astaire had officially retired from the screen after 1946's Blue Skies, but came back to replace the injured Gene Kelly in 1948's Easter Parade, which became that year's top box office attraction. After that, the singer-dancer proved more popular than ever and MGM easily talked him into starring in a film that mirrored his own life to a point, the charming 1951 film Royal Wedding directed by Stanley Donen (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Face). The film with a score by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane, who later collaborated on On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, went through several changes of leading ladies before settling on Jane Powell (A Date with Judy, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) who is perfectly delightful. This film, with its famed dancing on the ceiling number, was previously available only in badly-faded public domain prints. Warner Bros. is to be commended for going through the expense of restoring it to its original glory.

Astaire's next film, 1952's The Belle of New York, directed by Charles Walters (Lili, High Society) is so bad it had Astaire contemplating retirement once again. Luckily, The Band Wagon was waiting just around the corner.

The final film in the Warner Bros. set is That's Dancing! (1985), which tries to do for dancing in films what 1974's That's Entertainment! and 1976's That's Entertainment, Part II did for singing and dancing combined. The problem with this film is that it takes itself too seriously. Instead of letting the clips speak for themselves with the simple introductions given the sequences in the earlier films, this one comes on way too strong, often describing what we're seeing in voice-over. It's kind of like watching a DVD with a commentary track that you can't shut off.

A word about last week's most high profile release, Premonition, the word is why, as in why, Sandy, why? Why, Sandra Bullock, do you squander your talent on such drivel? Didn't you waste it enough with last year's The Lake House? Both films are about time shifting and both films are a waste of her talent and your time. Both were used to much better advantage in Infamous, the film made before these two, but released theatrically between them. Let's hope that whatever rational thoughts inspired her to play To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee in that film return, and soon.

-Peter J. Patrick (July 24, 2007)