DVD guide

Nine Lives (R)

Poignant, sometimes startling, each of the film's nine vignettes offers a snapshot of a woman struggling. Sandra, a jailed mother, becomes hysterical then enraged when she can't hear her daughter's voice through the prison phone. Diana (Robin Wright Penn), pregnant and married, bumps into a former lover at the supermarket. It takes only the briefest exchange to shatter her belief that she's moved on. Samantha shuttles back and forth between her disabled father and her exhausted mother. In little more than 10 minutes, filmed in one shot and real time, each story manages to capture the essence of a life. Extras: The extraordinary ensemble cast of women, including Glenn Close and Sissy Spacek, discuss their characters. Grade: A-
- Teresa Méndez

Jonathan Larson's "La Bohème"-inspired rock opera tells the story of a community of artists living in New York at the end of the 1980s. The friends - including Adam Pascal and Rosario Dawson - struggle to pay rent, be true to their art, and find love against the gritty backdrop of homelessness, poverty, and the AIDS epidemic. Extras: Included is the story of how Larson worked obsessively on "Rent" for seven years before dying only hours after the play's final dress rehearsal. The deleted scenes contain the heart of the production: the gut-wrenching "Goodbye Love," which director Chris Columbus had cut from the film. Grade: B+
- Kate Moser