Quentin Tarantino came bursting onto the scene with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs and made an even bigger impact with 1994’s multi-award winning Pulp Fiction.

His output since has been sporadic, consisting only of 1997’s Jackie Brown; 2003’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1; 2204’s Kill Bill, Vol. 2,segments of 2005’s Sin City and 2007’s Grindhouse, none of which reached the cultural pinnacle of Pulp Fiction.

Just when we thought there would never be a Tarantino film to equal the critical acclaim he received fifteen years ago, along comes Inglourious Basterds, the brazenly misspelled title of Tarantino’s tribute to a 1978 Italian rip-off of The Dirty Dozen with the properly spelled title of The Inglorious Bastards.

Tarantino’s film is not a remake, Tarntino doesn’t do remakes, but another tale in which a band of military assassins known as “inglorious bastards” reeks vengeance on the Nazis.

Forget the history books. Nothing in this film, which mixes real life characters such as Churchill, Hitler, Goebbels and Emil Jannings with fictional ones, actually happened.

Brad Pitt is the biggest name in the cast, but he’s merely one of an ensemble and thankfully not the most important one. I say thankfully because you won’t want to sit through any more of his half-baked Southern accented Italian (don’t ask!) than you have to. The rest of the cast is first rate, especially Melanie Laurent, Daniel Bruehl, Diane Kruger and Christoph Waltz.

Laurent as a would-be victim of the Nazis with more spunk than Kill Bill’s Uma Thurman, is first seen crouching in the basement of French farm house from which she runs in terror as the only survivor of a mass killing. She emerges as the improbable owner of a Parisian movie theatre selected to host the French premiere of a pro-Nazi propaganda film whose real life hero/star is smitten with her. Bruehl delivers his usual charm in spades as her baby-faced admirer.

Kruger plays her German film star doubling as an allied spy to the hilt while veteran Austrian actor Waltz emerges as an international star as the wily SS detective nicknamed the “Jew hunter” who is always one step behind the bastards.

Numerous extras include two delightful interviews with the now 80 year-old Rod Taylor who was given the role of Winston Churchill because Tarantino appreciated his (Taylor’s) sending him a signed autograph when Tarantino was a nobody. I wonder how many of his contemporaries are kicking themselves now for ignoring Tarantino’s requests for autographs.

Inglourious Basterds is available on both Blue-ray and standard DVD.

Taiwan born Ang Lee has had a storied career. His early films, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman were nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscars and his mega-hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won in that category. He himself was nominated as Best Director for that film and won for Brokeback Mountain. Other films such as Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm and Lust, Caution have also won numerous awards.

His latest film, Taking Woodstock, is good but falls short of expectations. The original Woodstock, the landmark Oscar winning documentary of the festival itself, has such a you-are-there feel to it that any attempt to duplicate the feel forty years on would be next to impossible for almost anyone. Lee’s film, which is about Elliot Tiber, the young artist who was his town’s City Council president was instrumental in bringing the festival to upstate New York after other towns turned it down, is interesting but feels like just another extra on Warner Bros. excellent anniversary re-issue of the original film.

Elliot, as played by Demetri Martin, doesn’t so much act as react to those around him, making him less than a compelling character. In his orbit are such colorful characters as Jonathan Groff as the festival’s young promoter, Liev Schreiber as a tranny security guard, Emile Hirsch as a bummed out Viet Nam vet and Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton as his parents. Staunton as his crazy, penny pinching monster mom plays her character with such fierce determination that she seems out of place in a comedy, which otherwise the film essentially is.

Though definitely worth seeing, the film is not Lee’s best, but is far from his worst. That would be his poorly conceived and received Hulk, made between the highs of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain.

Taking Woodstock is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The first Harry Potter novel was published in June, 1997, the seventh and last in July, 1997. The first film was released in November, 2001, the sixth and latest, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released in July, 2009. The two films made from the last novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows will be released in November, 2010 and July, 2011 respectively.

What can you say about a word-wide phenomenon? With three different directors ranging from Home Alone’s Chris Columbus on the first two films, Four Weddings and a Funeral’s Mike Newell on the third and Y Tu Mama Tambien’s Alfonso Cuaron on the fourth, the films styles varied wildly from one to the next. British TV director David Yates is at least bringing consistency to the remaining four.

Although I get the series’ overall concept of good vs. evil, not having read the novels, the ins and outs of the plots of the various films tend to give me a bit of a headache sorting them out. What is clear, however, is the very strong acting abilities of the three young leads, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson who keep getting better. It helps that they are backed by some of the brightest lights of the British acting aristocracy. Chief among them in this episode are Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith, along with young Tom Felton who also excels this time out.

Among the exhaustive extras is a revealing hour long British TV documentary on a year in the life of Potter author J.K. Rowling beginning with her final draft of the manuscript on the last novel.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Richard Eye directed three of the best films of the decade (Iris; Stage Beauty and Notes on a Scandal, so there was every reason to expect that his latest, The Other Man,with a cast headed by Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas, Laura Linney and Romola Garai, would be in the same league. Boy, was I wrong. This less than 90 minute morbid wallow with beautiful backgrounds is easy on the eyes, but painful on the brain. My only recommendation would be if you’re looking for a quick cure for insomnia.

Neeson does give something approximating a performance but Banderas is left to fend for himself in a poorly written role as the man Linney has an affair with near the end of her life. Garai, as Neeson and Linney’s daughter, like Linney, barely earns her above the title credit as most of the film is presented as both a literal and metaphorical chess match between Neeson and Banderas.

The Other Man is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

An engrossing film about immigration, Wayne Kramer’s Crossing Over interweaves the activities of law enforcement officers, immigration officials and attorneys with six tales of immigrants, some legal, some illegal. Some will have happy endings, some won’t. In the end, three main characters are dead, two are arrested and three are deported while several others achieve the American dream.

Harrison Ford as a cop with a conscience, Ray Liotta as a lecherous official, Ashley Judd as a lawyer with a heart of gold, Cliff Curtis as a conflicted Iranian American cop, Jim Sturgess as an Australian Jew, Justin Chon as a would-be Vietnamese thug, Alice Braga as an Islamic student whose essay is misinterpreted and Alice Eve as an Australian actress who sells her body for a green card are the principal players whose stories interconnect.

Crossing Over is available on standard DVD only.