One of the most satisfying animated features of all time, as well as a front-runner in this year’s Oscar race, Pixar’s Up is a film that pulls you in from the first frame and doesn’t let you go until the last.

It begins with a starry-eyed 15-year-old boy becoming transfixed with the career of an explorer (voiced by Christopher Plummer) who becomes discredited and disappears. In the meantime the boy, Carl, meets his soul mate, Ellie, who shares his love of adventure. Throughout their marriage, they plan to get away to a mystical wilderness retreat in South America, but life keeps getting in the way. Eventually they grow old and Ellie dies. Now 78 years old, Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) is a grumpy old man still clinging to his and Ellie’s lifelong dream of getting to that retreat. As could only happen in animation, he floats away with helium balloons lifting his house into the stratosphere.

Although the film has all the trappings of a kid’s movie – a lovable big bird, a sweet-natured dog that talks and a fearless 8-year-old stowaway (Jordan Nagai) – its appeal to adults is even stronger as it teaches or reaffirms some very valuable life lessons. [spoiler]Only after Carl comes across a note from Ellie in a photo album of their seemingly mundane life, thanking him for their life’s adventure together and telling him to find a new adventure, does he find the strength to let go of the past and rejoice in the here and now[/spoiler].

The Blu-ray release of the film is a four-disc set comprised of the film with commentary on disc one; special features on disc two; a standard DVD version of the film and a digital copy.

The 2001 Pixar hit, Monsters, Inc. has also been given the same deluxe Blu-ray packaging.

John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi and the late James Coburn are among those lending their voices to this still-fun extravaganza about monsters who scare little children and are, in turn, scared by them.

Now we move from children’s films to decidedly non-kid-friendly ones.

A psychological horror film in the grand tradition of such evil child movies as The Bad Seed and The Omen, Juame Collet Serra’s Orphan somehow slipped under the radar in theatres.

This is a Grade A drama about a couple who, having lost their third child in childbirth, decide to adopt an older girl from the local orphanage. The adoptive mother (Vera Farmiga) soon begins to suspect all is not right with “Esther”, but the adoptive father (Peter Sarsgaard) remains convinced his wife is imagining things.

Twelve-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman is as convincing as the brat as are Jimmy Bennett as her “brother” and adorable Aryana Engineer as her deaf-mute younger “sister”. CCH Pounder lends considerable charm to the role as the nun who runs the orphanage. You may see some of the twists coming, but you won’t see them all.

Orphan is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It isn’t often that a remake improves upon the original, but Tony Scott’s update of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, previously filmed by Joseph Sargent in 1974, does just that.

The basic premise is the same: four gunmen hijack a New York City subway car, demanding $1 million in ransom to be paid in one hour or passenger-hostages will be shot one by one for every minute the money is delayed.

The characters have been re-written to suit the personalities of the new film’s stars, Denzel Washington and John Travolta, in for Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw as the perplexed transit officer and the chief bad guy, respectively, and the ending has been changed. The biggest difference, however, is in the spectacular special effects, which were unimaginable thirty-five years ago.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. The 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is available on standard DVD only.

One of the year’s nicest surprises is Richard Loncraine’s My One and Only, which was given a limited theatrical release in what seems like just a week or two ago. Marketed as a comedy, it is filled with dramatic tension as well as comic touches throughout.

Renee Zellweger is very funny in the early scenes and poignant in the later ones as her character matures. She plays a former Southern belle who catches her bandleader husband with another woman, packs up her two teenage sons and goes cross country in search of another husband in 1953. Though somewhat fictionalized, this is the story of how she works her way to Hollywood where her older son (Mark Rendall) is determined to become a movie star. Through happenstance, however, it’s her younger son (Logan Lerman) who winds up with the Hollywood contract and changes his name to George Hamilton. Both Lerman and Rendall are outstanding.

Kevin Bacon plays the husband while Chris Noth, Eric McCormack, Steven Weber, Nick Stahl and Troy Garity appear as various men she meets along the way.

My One and Only is supposed to be a Target exclusive but within days of its release it was already available online at Amazon.com and E-Bay.

Barely released overseas, Griffin Dunne’s The Accidental Husband is a direct-to-video release in the U.S.

Uma Thurman as a smug radio psychologist and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a fireman who looks like he never bathes may be a mismatched couple, but the supporting cast including Colin Firth, Isabella Rossellini, Keir Dullea, Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams, shines in this easy-to-take throwback to the screwball comedies of the 1930s, albeit one with a modern twist.

The Accidental Husband is available on standard DVD only.

Just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Criterion has released Wim Wenders’ 1987 masterwork Wings of Desire on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Bruno Ganz stars as a colorblind angel assigned to Berlin before the fall of the wall. The angel, who has the ability to hear people’s thoughts who falls in love with a beautiful singer and longs to become human so he can spend time with her. Peter Falk co-stars as himself in Berlin to make a movie.

Part of the charm of the film is the black-and-white cinematography that makes up most of the film. When the angel becomes mortal and begins to see in color at the end of the movie, the film loses its pristine look and turns ordinary looking even to Wenders who says so in his informative commentary.

It seems like White Christmas has been re-issued by Paramount just about every year, but in reality the new 55th Anniversary Edition is only the third time around for the 1954 holiday classic directed by Michael Curtiz that was first released on DVD in 2000.

The original DVD release featured commentary by the then-only surviving star, Rosemary Clooney, as well as a retrospective interview with the actress-singer who passed away in 2002. The 2007 reissue offered an improved picture but no other changes to the original release. The current two-disc release retains the film with commentary on the first disc and moves the Clooney interview to the second disc where it is joined by tons of other extras including informative documentaries on three of the film’s four stars. Clooney’s brother and sister, niece and daughter-in-law Debby Boone are interviewed along with the proprietors of the Kentucky museum that occupies Clooney’s old house and contains a good deal of memorabilia from the film.

The Crosby documentary includes interviews with his widow, Kathryn, and his son, Harry. The Danny Kaye documentary includes interviews with his daughter and tributes to his philanthropic impact on UNICEF.

The fourth star, Vera-Ellen, doesn’t get her own documentary, but she is mentioned in everyone else’s including the one on composer Irving Berlin, which features an interview with one of his daughters. Finally, there is a short documentary on the film-to-stage production of the recent Broadway musical.

Sony (Columbia) has made available in one DVD set a group of British horror films from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Called the Hammer Films Icons of Horror Collection, the two-disc collection consists of The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll; Scream of Fear; The Gorgon and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.

Terence Fisher’s The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll from 1960 changes a few things from Robert Louis Stevenson’s oft-filmed tale. This time around instead of smooth faced Dr. Jekyll growing a hairy visage as he turns into the hideous Mr. Hyde, he is bearded as Jekyll and smooth faced as Hyde. The object of Hyde’s lust is not the prostitute Ivy but his cheating wife, Kitty. Paul Massie stars as Jekyll and Hyde opposite Dawn Addams as Kitty and the redoubtable Christopher Lee as his wife’s lover.

Lee also turns up in Scream of Fear and 1964’s The Gorgon .

In Seth Holt’s Scream of Fear he’s the village doctor who may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of a wealthy man and the attempted murder of the man’s only child. Susan Strasberg stars as the man’s wheelchair-bound daughter who enlists the aid of her stepmother’s chauffeur (Ronald Howard) in determining the stepmother’s (Ann Todd) involvement in the disappearance. More of a psychological murder mystery than a horror movie, the four leads are all excellent.

Lee and Peter Cushing are the stars of Terence Fisher’s The Gorgon in which the title character turns men who gaze upon her into stone. Though obviously cheaply made, it’s nevertheless eerie and atmospheric and worthy of a look. The same can’t be said for the same year’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb directed by Michael Carreras. This dull and witless re-telling of the oft-filmed tale stars Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard and Fred Clark.

That’s enough for this week. Star Trek and Gone With the Wind next week.

-Peter J. Patrick (November 17, 2009)