25th Hour

Monty Brogan (Ed Norton) has one last day to take in everything before he heads to the slammer for the next seven years. So he makes his rounds, visiting girlfriend (Rosario Dawson), friends (Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman), and family (Brian Cox), and tries to steel himself for the endless reamings awaiting him behind bars. While this Spike Lee joint pushes it with much of its post-9/11 New York glamorization, the supplements provide one more I-heart–New York Ground Zero tribute—a collection of shots taken over a day of recovery work—without the schmaltz that’s typical of such memorials. Lee’s commentary is at times informative, though it sounds like he’s reading off cue cards—especially when recounting how he discovered aspiring actor/ex-NFLer Tony Siragusa (he thought he “had a gift” when he saw him on HBO’s Hard Knocks). Finally, there’s a run-through of Lee’s career, “The Evolution of an American Filmmaker,” with praise for the director from a variety of Hollywood heavyweights he helped early on (Denzel, Halle, and…Martin Scorsese?) over clips from his movies.