Video Shelf

* New This Week: Director Guillermo del Toro (who did “Cronos,” “Mimic” and “Blade II”) sets the fable “The Devil’s Backbone” in a remote, fortress-like boys’ school in the waning days of the Spanish Civil War. Here again, he adds a touch of the supernatural to his compelling, sometimes darkly amusing vision of the universe as a vast mechanism in which the individual is in constant peril through the workings of pride and chance. With this ambitious and ominous film, Del Toro rises to a new level of accomplishment, adding history and politics to his distinctive blend. Fernando Tielve, Federico Luppi, Marisa Paredes and Eduardo Noriega star. In Spanish, with English subtitles.

Top 5 VHS rentals:

1. Black Hawk Down

2. Kate & Leopold

3. Monster’s Ball

4. Vanilla Sky

5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Top 5 DVD rentals:

1. Black Hawk Down

2. Monster’s Ball

3. Kate & Leopold

4. The Mothman Prophecies

5. Vanilla Sky