Three fairly noteworthy DVDs came out on Tuesday, and all of them—depending on what you’re in the mood for—would make for some solid weekend Netflixing/renting. Two are only available on DVD (the Hamlet-by-way-of-Hero Legend of the Black Scorpion and the animated comic book flick Justice League: The New Frontier) while Wes Anderson’s latest, The Darjeeling Limited, hit DVD after coming out in theaters last fall. We’ve got DVD reviews of New Frontier and Black Scorpion today; tomorrow I’ll post some impressions on the Darjeeling DVD.

Legend of the Black Scorpion
(Dragon Dynasty)

Trailer, with one hell of a voice-over:

Damn, I want that narrator guy to record my voicemail message.

ANYWAY. Originally going by the classier title The Banquet, Legend of the Black Scorpion is basically Hamlet, with a little bit of kung fu and a whole lot of sumptuous cinematography. A blockbuster in China, it played with little fanfare at 2007’s PIFF, and never got wider release here, despite the fact it stars Zhang Ziyi and looks every bit as gorgeous as any other Crouching Tiger clone that’s come out in the States over the past few years.

It should reach a larger audience now that Dragon Dynasty’s put it out on DVD, though, with the packaging hyping up the action elements of the film. But if you’re a kung fu fan, don’t get too excited—despite the involvement of action choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping, there’s much more longing and/or sad gazing and melodramatic bits of dialogue than there is ass-kickery here.

Overall, it’s a mixed bag: Sometimes Black Scorpion works great as a fun, sometimes strange way of channeling all-too-familiar Shakespeare; at others, it just feels unsurprising and goofy and forced, like it’s going through Hamlet’s basic plot without adding much of its own. It’s really, really pretty, though, so there’s always that.

In terms of DVD extras, they’re pretty bland: A couple of unrevealing featurettes assembled from PR footage (“The Making of Legend of the Black Scorpion" and "A Dynasty Uncovered: Behind the Scenes on Legend of the Black Scorpion"), some trailers, interviews with co-star Daniel Wu and director Xiaogang Feng. Hong Kong film scholar and regular Dragon Dynasty contributor Bey Logan also offers up an educated commentary, too, which is largely useful in sussing out if you’ve missed anything with regards to the film’s cryptic finale.

Justice League: The New Frontier
(Warner Premiere)

Trailer, co-starring JFK:

Animated comic book movies have been really hit and miss: On one hand, you’ve got solid-enough stuff like Hellboy Animated--which isn’t spectacular by any means, but is certainly competent and enjoyable--while on the other you’ve got the flailings of Marvel, whose Ultimate Avengers and Invincible Iron Man direct-to-DVD flicks have just been cheap, dumbed-down versions of their printed counterparts.

DC Comics has recently got into the game, though, putting out a couple of decent, smart direct-to-DVD flicks. Justice League: The New Frontier is the latest (following Superman: Doomsday), and it’s a surprisingly adult and nuanced superhero cartoon. Based on Darwyn Cooke’s stylish and lauded graphic novel, New Frontier is firmly set in the past: Dealing with communism and the space race, and featuring cameos from the likes of JFK, New Frontier delves into the foundation of the Justice League and the individual stories of its major members: Sure, there's Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, but more interesting are the members of the B-team: Green Lantern, Flash, and Martian Manhunter.

The look of New Frontier is its first and best selling point--with character designs inspired by Cooke’s slick, retro linework and muted palette, the film’s stylish and cool, bearing some obvious influences from both the cartoons of Max Fleischer and the streamlined style of the ’60s. But the story’s pretty great, too, even if it flows a bit strangely and often feels like a set of CliffsNotes for Justice League 101: Each of the heroes in the League is introduced, and then they all team up to fight a giant floating island that’s a metaphor for communism. (Hooray for comic books!)

Some particularly nice touches: How Wonder Woman’s really an Amazon (she towers over Superman and Batman, and is totally badass, and will KILL YOU IF YOU LOOK AT HER WRONG); how Hal Jordan/Green Lantern’s story serves as a really solid backbone for the film; and how well done the stuff with Martian Manhunter is, perfectly capturing the angst and awkwardness of the alien character. For its 75-minute runtime, New Frontier is a fun, clever action cartoon, and thanks to its basic but effective writing and its well-earned PG-13 rating, it feels like it was made for grown-ups rather than kindergartners. (The voice acting doesn’t hurt, either: Turns from Jeremy Sisto, David Boreanaz, Doogie Howser, John Heard, Xena, Brook Shields, and Kyle McLachlan round out the package.)

Extras-wise, the two-disc set offers a few commentaries, and couple of nerdy but meaty documentaries--one on the history of the League ("Super Heroes United!: The Complete Justice League History") and one on the League’s villains ("The Legion of Doom: The Pathology of the Super Villain," which is, kind of bewilderingly, theatrically narrated by Malcolm McDowell). They're probably not terribly interesting to the average viewer, but for comic book geeks, they're great: A veritable whos-who of big-time comic book creators (even non-DC ones; Marvel’s Stan Lee shows up a few times) talk about the history of comics and what makes for good characters and villains, usually in a literary context. (“The Joker is maybe the best ‘trickster villain’ in all of literature,” Denny O’Neill, a writer and former editor at DC, notes, and that’s pretty much the tone throughout.) The doc on the villains also contains this image of Gorilla Grodd, which is just kind of amazing. Obviously.

The DVD also boasts three episodes of the Justice League animated TV show, which are decent enough, and a featurette with Cooke talking about the graphic novel in relation to the film. Overall, the extra features are better-than-average, but the film’s the thing that's really worth checking out here. There are going to be a lot more comics-to-animation DVD movies coming out in the next few years, I suspect, and thus far, this one has pretty much set the benchmark.