One of the most eye-popping achievements of all time, Ang Lee’s Life of Pi opens with breathtaking pans of exotic animals in an Indian zoo and doesn’t let up until the final shot. This is an effects laden film for which the effects are indeed special. The heart of the film is the escape of a sixteen year-old boy from a sinking ship, who ends up in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a zebra, an orangutan and a hyena, or did he? The Japanese journalists who interviewed him didn’t believe his story, but you likely will.

Although the awesome effects are central to the story, there is much more at work here beginning with a framing device that has the now grown protagonist (Irrfan Khan) once again being interviewed, this time by a Canadian journalist (Rafe Spall).

The bulk of the film’s acting is done by Suraj Sharma, a New Delhi high school student who accompanied his younger brother to an audition for the film’s lead. His brother was too young, but something about Suraj impressed the talent scouts so much so that they insisted he read for the role. Through a process of elimination he was given the part and not only had to learn to act, but to swim and perform his own stunts, of which there are many.

Lee seamlessly weaves live action, animation and computer generated imagery together in a swirling mass of entertainment that earned him a standing ovation when he won his second Oscar for directing one of his finest achievements. The film also won Oscars for Visual Effects, Cinematography and Score.

Life of Pi is available in three formats: 3D Blu-ray; standard Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Somewhat misrepresented as a film about the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock is actually about the relationship between the legendary master of suspense and his writer-collaborator wife, Alma Reville, during the making of the film.

Hitch owed Paramount one more film under his contract with the contract. The film he is to make is to be done at his insistence at Universal Studios where his highly successful TV series is filmed without the interference of Paramount executives who are dubious about his ability to make something out of a horror novel.

Gervasi’s film captures a lot of the Hitchcockian wit and does a decent job of showing how Psycho was made despite Hitchcock’s estate refusal to allow the use of actual footage from the film or replicate actual scenes. The infamous shower scene is nevertheless presented in a most intriguing manner.

Anthony Hopkins perfectly captures Hitch’s voice, walk and stance and the always amazing Helen Mirren is once again a revelation as the formidable Reville. If Hopkins’ makeup isn’t quite up to the task of duplicating the great director’s look, the makeup of Scarlett Johanssen as Janet Leigh; Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins and actor/model Josh Leo who silently plays John Gavin does full justice to those actors. The film’s only letdown are the extraneous subplots that have Hitch conjuring up the ghost of Ed Gein, the psychopath upon whom Psycho’s Norman Bates is based, and Reville’s dalliance with ten years younger writer Whitfield Cook.

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

I’m not sure who the intended audience is for Dreamworks’ animated feature Rise of the Guardians. The voice cast led by Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law and Isla Fisher suggest it might be aimed at more sophisticated audiences, but the story about Jack Frost, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy joining forces against the Bogey Man seems strictly for kids, and young ones at that.

The animation is decent enough, but the accents employed by Baldwin as Santa and Jackman as the Easter Bunny seem grotesque and silly. Pine as Frost and Law as the Bogey Man come off best in what is a fairly predictable story.

Rise of the Guardians is available in three formats: 3D Blu-ray; standard Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Having had success with its Blu-ray combination upgrade of 1995’s Pocahontas and its 1998 made for home video Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, Disney has upgraded two more of their successful 1990s theatrical releases and their made for home video sequels.

Some day they may make a faithful version of Victor Hugo’s five book opus, Notre Dame de Paris. Until they do, we’ll have to live with the many versions already out there, all of which change the title to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, focusing on the book’s most famous character, albeit not the main one.

The main character in the book is the gypsy Esmeralda who is hanged for a crime she did not commit, not saved as she is in all the film versions by the deformed bell-ringer who can’t hear and can barely speak. Speak he does, and sing, in Disney’s 1996 animated version with a fairly decent score by Allen Menken and Stephen Schwartz. The film’s happy ending allows room for the 2002 made for home video sequel which is about as removed from Hugo’s original concept as you can get, but not bad in its own right.

The best version of the story remains the classic 1939 film with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo (the hunchback), Maureen O’Hara as Esmeralda and Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Frollo, Quasimodo’s adoptive father and the book and all the film versions’ main villain.

Disney’s 1998 animated feature, Mulan, based on Chinese folklore about a woman warrior, is a good film with a strong message for kids, especially girls, that they can do anything they set their minds to. Musically, though, while the songs are decent enough, the score which carries the film through its first half is all but forgotten in the second. The same is true of the made for the 2004 home video sequel.

Scottish actor Gerard Butler seems to be everywhere these days. Two of his recent films have just been released on home video.

Chasing Mavericks, with directorial credit split between Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted, is the better of the two, a based on the factual story of the coming of age of a 15 year-old poor kid (Jonny Weston) who is mentored in his surfing skills by an older champion (Butler). Though aimed at family audiences, the film does have two major deaths which might make a bit hard to take for younger kids.

Butler is a former soccer star in Gabriele Muccino’s Playing for Keeps in which the down on his luck ex-star is now the coach for his nine year-old son’s soccer team. While trying to win back ex-wife Jessica Biel, he is hit on by all the sex-starved mothers of the other kids including Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Judy Greer. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds.

Chasing Mavericks and Playing for Keeps are available in both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

New releases this week include Les Misérables and Zero Dark Thirty.