Latest video: Death warmed up

By Ewan McDonald

Star power oozes from the weekend's new rental releases - Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt team up, so do Cameron Diaz and Christian Slater, and there's even a 30-year retrospective of Neil Young's career which will please fans for whom large chunks are missing (which probably includes Neil, come to think of it).

* Director Martin Brest chose to repackage the 1934 classic Death Takes A Holiday to pair Hollywood's dream team of Hopkins and Pitt, adapting it as Meet Joe Black.

Death, aka Joe Black (Pitt), chooses media tycoon William Parrish (Hopkins) to shuffle him around this mortal coil. Parrish's family is preparing for his lavish 65th birthday bash while his soon-to-be son-in-law Drew (Jake Weber) is preparing to take over his business.

It all turns to custard when Death/Black falls for Parrish's daughter/Drew's fiance Susan (Claire Forlani).

This one doesn't quite come off. At three hours it's ... well, let's be polite and say more than an hour too long. Pitt is at one moment aw-shucks naivety and at the next all-knowing, while Hopkins isn't quite sure where he is. And yes, I have to say it died at the box-office.

* There's a wedding on the horizon in Very Bad Things, too. It's a week away and Laura (Diaz) wants to make her fairytale come true; all her fiance, Kyle (Jon Favreau), wants to do is keep the peace. But he won't give up that bachelor party in Las Vegas with his four best friends.

As you've seen in every second episode of Sally Jessy Raphael, this involves alcohol, cocaine and male bonding, culminating in the arrival of a stripper. When the stripper meets a grisly death, family man Adam (Daniel Stern) wants to call the police. Boyd (Christian Slater) persuades the lads to bury the hooker in the desert.

From there it's all downhill from psycho-thriller into splatter-fest as the men spiral out of control. Good idea turned into, hey, a very bad thing.

* Now an unusual and highly recommended offering from Russia. Set in 1952, The Thief opens with Katya (Ekaterina Rednikova) and her 6-year-old son Sanya (Misha Philipchuk) on a train where they meet an officer, Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov). The two adults become lovers and the trio disembark in a nameless city where they rent a room.

Desperate for a father figure, and haunted by the ghost of his dead one, Sanya resents his mother's lover. Gradually the rough Tolyan wins him over and teaches him to survive by force and deceit.

But Katya and Sanya learn that Tolyan is a thief who moves from town to town stealing from the people he calls friends. Does he love mother and son, or is he simply using them, too?

* Return to Paradise presents a situation that a few Kiwis might count themselves lucky not to have found themselves in. Three friends (Vince Vaughn, Joaquin Phoenix and Jada Pinkett Smith) experience Malaysian hospitality to its fullest. When two return to the United States, their mate, Lewis, is arrested for a mistake they all made.

Unaware of his situation, two years pass and they are confronted by Lewis' lawyer, Beth (Anne Heche), who tells them Lewis will hang unless they return to Malaysia and accept prison sentences; three years if they both return, six years if only one does. Will they let him hang or share the punishment?

* The Deli is a feelgood slice of New York life, the tale of Johnny Amico (Dumb and Dumber's Mike Starr), a lovable gambler. He's given a week to make good on debts at his local Italian-American deli or it'll close. It's Johnny v the neighbourhood of bookies, gangsters and nutcases.

* And to round off a list of eclectic releases, Year of the Horse is famed indie film-maker Jim Jarmusch's dramatised documentary of 30 years with the many and various incarnations of his band, Crazy Horse. It's both a concert film and group portrait.