1. Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter
Who's in It? Gerald Butler and Jared Harris (voices)
The Verdict: Funny how Watchmen took a beating for being too faithful to Alan Moore and Dave Gibson’s seminal graphic novel. Director Zack Snyder would have been better off splitting the film into two parts. That way we may have experienced this chilling traditionally animated rendering of the comic within the graphic novel — about a shipwrecked captain crossing treacherous waters to save his family from his ghostly pirate attackers — in the theaters rather than wait for Snyder to weave it into the DVD version of the film. Narrated with growing hysteria by Butler, Tales of the Black Freighter proves to be a dark and disturbing morality play about fighting our the real and imagined demons in our lives. Once integrated into Watchmen, it should serve as a powerful allegory to Ozymandias’ efforts to save mankind from itself. While Tales of the Black Freighter stands on its own merits, Under the Hood is an invaluable primer to the Watchmen world. Told in riveting 60 Minutes-like fashion, this faux news piece ingeniously details the rise and fall of the Minutemen, the crime-fighting group that predated the Watchmen.
DVD Features: Under the Hood and Story Within a Story featurettes; Watchman Motion Comics: Chapter 1.
Stars: 5 out of 5
MORE: Get last month's Direct-to-DVD reviews!