'The Mist'

Frank Darabont built a pretty good career turning Stephen King's softer side into hard cash at the box office. "Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" fared well with fan and critic alike, even earning red-carpet strolls at Oscar time. Both were explorations of the human soul.

But it's the inhuman element of life the director targets in a film adaptation of King's novella, "The Mist." As we learn in a "making of" documentary -- one of several good extras in the just-released two-disc collector's edition DVD -- Darabont cut his teeth years ago on horror flicks. He even considered making "The Mist" before settling on "Shawshank."

Wise decision. While entertaining and even occasionally scary, "The Mist" ($32.95; Dimension) will never achieve a resume rank as anything other than a paycheck.

The plot isn't complicated: A mist descends upon a New England town, bringing with it deadly creatures. Venture into the mist and you likely won't venture out. It drives a number of residents into a grocery store, where the inevitable tension creates fissures -- most notably a clash with a Bible-quoting zealot (Marcia Gay Harden) whose growing number of followers is every bit as scary as the creatures on the outside.

A father (Thomas Jane) and his son are allied with a handful of others determined to break free of the store and get to safety.

The warring factions might have made for good theater had the ensemble of actors shown the slightest amount of chemistry. Harden does her best as the fire-and-brimstone fanatic Mrs. Carmody. But Jane's performance is as wooden as the trees that produced this newspaper, and his compatriots unfortunately follow his lead.

The special effects team -- led by Pittsburgh's own Greg Nicotero -- did a wonderful job with the creatures (think giant insects). But the script from Darabont, despite his assertions in the extras, misses an opportunity to make this a larger statement about the politics of war and religion.

Speaking of extras, these are uniformly good -- from the obligatory commentary track and deleted scenes to the handful of featurettes. There's even a black-and-white version of the film, given Darabont's original intent to lose the color.

Finally, much has been made of the ending of "The Mist," which is a variation from King's novella but one the author says he endorsed. I won't spoil it here, but it isn't worth the debate. It is what it is -- a deft closing upper-cut in a film that otherwise lacks punch.

-- Allan Walton, Post-Gazette AME/multimedia

'The Kite Runner'

Very few films have the emotional sweep of "The Kite Runner," a story about a boyhood betrayal in pre-Soviet and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and its ripple effects decades later for an Afghan writer living in the United States. Even as he begins to enjoy some measure of literary success in his adopted land, Amir (Khalid Abdalla) is still haunted by an act of stunning unfaithfulness to a childhood friend on the eve of the Soviet invasion of his traumatized country. When Amir gets a call from one of his father's oldest friends to return to an Afghanistan now dominated by the Taliban, he sees it as an opportunity to make amends and possibly reconnect with an old friend he left behind. What he encounters instead is a harrowing mission into the Taliban heart of darkness.

Much of the narrative is a flashback illustrating how Amir got to the point of desperate self-sacrifice. We meet the guilt-stricken writer as a duplicitous young boy (Zekiria Ebrahimi) along with his servant and best friend Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada) living in Kabul the way it was before occupying powers reduced it to rubble. Amir and Hassan are a formidable kite-flying team who are adept at winning and staying a step or two ahead of a trio of bullies. Hassan is a fighter, but Amir has no stomach for defending his own honor. That is left for Hassan to do in a way that tears their friendship apart.

Directed by Marc Forster, "The Kite Runner" is a faithful adaptation of Khalid Hosseini's bestselling novel. The DVD includes two interesting features about the making of the movie and the creative decisions that went into successfully translating the book into film. The controversy that initially surrounded the film because of a pivotal scene involving the boys is not addressed, which is odd given the cultural sensitivities it stirred. Still, this DVD only enhances our appreciation of a truly great film.

--Tony Norman, Post-Gazette staff writer

Also new this week

'Wristcutters: A Love Story'

First-time director Goran Dukic based the movie on an Etgar Keret short story about a young man (Patrick Fugit) who kills himself and goes off to an afterlife where he has a crummy job at a pizza place. It's darkly funnier and more life-affirming than you could imagine for a movie about suicide, and it has Tom Waits, both in song and in person, as a camper he meets on his journey.

'Lost Highway'

David Lynch brings a carload of obsessions to the screen with this impenetrable tale of lust, murder and character transferral from 1977 (first time on DVD). Bill Pullman is imprisoned for murdering his wife (Patricia Arquette), but one day they find Balthazar Getty in his cell. It just gets weirder after that. "Lost Highway" is a dead end.

'Walk the Line'

New version of the Johnny Cash-June Carter biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon comes with 17 additional minutes of footage, plus director commentary, deleted scenes and more.

'Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains'

Jonathan Demme's documentary is a snapshot of Carter through the prism of his December 2006 promotional tour for "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

Special: "Bonnie and Clyde (Two-Disc Special Edition)."

TV on DVD: "Baldwin Hills," season 1; "Day Break," complete; "Frisky Dingo," season 1; "The Invisible Man," season 1; "Painkiller Jane," complete; "Party of Five," season 3; "Sliders," season 4; "Wings," season 6.