TURN-ONS AND TURN-OFFS IN CURRENT HOME ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES : Excellent Good Fair Poor : VIDEOCASSETTES

“Variety.” Media. $69.95. What sly fun this near-surreal, low-budget Manhattan movie is. Director Bette Gordon’s pretty, wholesome-looking heroine (Sandy McLeod), in need of a job, becomes a box-office cashier at a Times Square porno theater, an experience that unleashes her sexual imagination. There’s a zany, intensely visual, odysseylike quality to “Variety” that recalls Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” and Susan Seidelman’s “Desperately Seeking Susan.” Indeed, John Lurie, star of the Jarmusch film and also the composer of its score, contributed “Variety” ’s new wave-ish music. “Variety” (not to be confused with the classic German silent film) is actually more complex than “Stranger Than Paradise,” especially in the challenge it raises to the usual feminist view toward pornography. Information: (213) 216-7900.