In Case You'd Rather Stay Home

Straight Out of Brooklyn

Directed by Matty Rich:

88 minutes;

rated R, 1991.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Directed by Norman

Jewison; 102 minutes;

rated R; 1968.

The Revenge of the Pink Panther

Directed by Blake

Edwards: 113 minutes;

rates G; 1975.

The video store is the modern library. Actually, it's a kind of combination library-and-sweet-shop-candyland, since, as we all know, it is more exciting to be surrounded by hundreds of movies than by hundreds of books. Each visit to the store brings back the hope that upon exiting you will have chosen the perfect film, one which you have never seen and have always wanted to see. Of course, if it's not any good, the whole experience is extremely dispiriting, but that's not important. The actual viewing has been reduced in importance relative to the process of selecting the movie in the neighborhood store. And there is nothing worse than choosing the old standard, sticking with what you know and picking Star Wars or Coming to America, Heathers or another such film which is always rented. So, each week in this space, we will offer you some fine films which tend to be overlooked by the average video renter. Hopefully, you will both like the movies and, above all, avoid the obvious and the tedious.

Straight Out of Brooklyn--Nineteen-year-old Matty Rich's directing debut delves into the life of a Black family in Red Hook, a Brooklyn housing complex. The movie examines the fate of the young generation in urban New York City. The viewer sympathizes with the plight of the son. Dennis Brown, who looks down on his father, an abusive gas-pumper. But Brown has no patience to work his way out of Brooklyn and is determined to rob a drug dealer. Both the father and son emerge as the victims and not the villains of society.

While Straight Out of Brooklyn was not a box-office smash, it is more realistic than New Jack City and more moving than Boyz in the Hood. The movie avoids the glamour of the drug culture and instead focuses on the dilemma facing ambitious Black youths.

The Thomas Crown Affair--Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway star in this 1968 classic. In the opening scene, Thomas Crown (McQueen) masterminds a $2.6 million bank robbery of a Boston area bank. Director Norman Jewison skillfully uses split screens and bright light to build the drama for heist. But, the action at the outset is replaced by a well-planned investigation. An insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway), delves into the motives of the robber, eventually leading her to Crown.

The course of the movie examines the interaction between Dunaway and McQueen, a master-mind criminal and an intelligent investigator, as their relationship turns into an affair. Unlike many more recent movies, the drama does not depend solely on the action and the sex, but instead, delves into the psyche of the pursuer and the pursued.

The Revenge of the Pink Panther--Clouseau is at it again. This is probably the second funniest of the Pink Panther movies, but the most intelligent of the series. But there are also moments of utter hilarity.

Clouseau once again roams his familiar haunts--the dim, misty back alleys of Paris. The bumbling detective is presumed killed by a bomb ("boom" in Clouseau-speak) and spends the rest of the movie tracking his killers all the way to Hong Kong.

Peter Sellers' Inspector is one of the film world's classic comedic protagonists. Each place and each person who comes into contact with Clouseau becomes helplessly embroiled in the Inspector's mad, inside-out universe of erector-set winged cars, Disguises by Balls, and Cato's Asian Harem. Of course, Herbert Lom, as Clouseau's nemesis on the Paris police force, is unable to snap back from these trips into madness and spends most of the film locked in a padded room.

Director Blake Edwards is right in tune with human nature and its potential for being mocked. His camera captures the murky underside of Parisian middle-class existence as well as the maddening, busy life of Hong Kong's spaghetti-thin streets. As usual, Sellers is athletic and absolutely absorbing as Clouseau, and Herbert Lom is wholly nutty and pop-eyed as the mad chief of police.