Steven Soderbergh made headlines when he cast provocative porn starlet Sasha Grey in his film The Girlfriend Experience (which opened just a couple months before his next movie, The Informant!—dude is prolific!). But even though she played a high-class call girl, the surprising thing was that she actually did a pretty good job in the role. A little cold and detached, yes, but that’s what the character called for. Seen now, it’s more than ever a weird time capsule from the period it was shot in—October 2008, with McCain and Obama vying for the Presidency and the economy melting down. (It should be really interesting to watch in 10 years.) The GFE is now out on video, with a couple of deleted scenes and commentary by Grey and Soderbergh.

One of my favourite movies of the year and definitely one of the best genre flicks has got to be Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, a return to the gross-out horror he pioneered in movies like Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. Alison Lohman plays a bank employee who refuses a mortgage extension to an old Roma crone who then curses her to eternal damnation—unless she can find a loophole. Though trading in some pretty creaky stereotypes, this is a tight and incredibly fun horror show, with Raimi clearly enjoying his vacation from the massive, unwieldy Spider-Man franchise. Highly recommended for a dark and stormy night.

On the brighter side of things—literally and thematically—Warner Bros. has just released a super spiffed-up version of The Wizard of Oz, with the old fantasy classic digitally restored and available on super-sharp Blu-Ray. Maybe a little too sharp: those sets look almost too clear without the years of degradation. Available in a super-fancy gift set, you can treat yourself to a Wizard of Oz watch (yes, really), companion books and lots of special features too.