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Reviews: 'E.T.' DVD, 'Sum of All Fears'DVD review: 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Limited Collector's Edition'
(Entertainment Weekly) -- You know it's great. You know it's timeless (even though it might be tough to explain to today's kids why no one had a cell phone or a home-alarm system). What makes this 20th-anniversary DVD of Steven Spielberg's boy-meets-alien film worth buying is that the movie we all remember almost disappeared. For months, DVD buyers had been told that the only way to own the original, un-digitally adulterated version was to drop around $70 for a three-disc limited-edition gift set. The made-for-mortals two-disc set was to feature only the CGI-enhanced version that graced movie screens this past May. In his infinite wisdom -- and as befits one so vocal about the preservation of film history -- Spielberg reconsidered, and encouraged Universal to include the '82 cut in the two-disc set as well. What's the big deal, you ask? In practical terms, it isn't one. The movie still works amazingly well both ways; the CGI additions make what was once stiff and rubbery feel more organic, while conversely, the artificiality of the original E.T. helps to sell the idea of Elliott's unflagging belief in something that's too good to be true. Even though the set also includes a bunch of nifty retrospective/reunion featurettes, the best bonus is the film itself, the way we all fell in love with it. Grade: A -- Marc Bernardin Video review: 'The Sum of All Fears'As CIA man Jack Ryan in ''The Sum of All Fears,'' Ben Affleck inherits the Tom Clancy character Harrison Ford made his own, and reinvents him as a younger, less savvy, less macho spy. Affleck's Jack is an agency analyst who gets thrown into the middle of a U.S.-Russia missile standoff and ends up as the only guy who can stop Armageddon. At that point, his dubious action-hero qualifications actually add to the suspense. This, after all, is a job for Indiana Jones. Can the guy from ''Bounce'' pull it off? Whether Affleck's occasionally exciting derring-do is what the doctor ordered isn't the point. Where ''Sum'' grabs you is in the buildup to what was once unthinkable: a terrorist-detonated nuclear blast in a packed Baltimore football stadium. You know it's coming, yet when it happens, with shocking suddenness, it still blows your hair back. The fact that such an event is no longer unthinkable only makes the sequence more deeply unsettling than the filmmakers could have imagined while shooting it, just months before 9/11. Back then, these scenarios were still about selling popcorn. Grade: B+ -- Michael Sauter
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