Video Shelf

Top 5 VHS rentals:

1. Shallow Hal

2. A Beautiful Mind

3. Black Hawk Down

4. Orange County

5. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

Top 5 DVD rentals:

1. Shallow Hal

2. A Beautiful Mind

3. Black Hawk Down

4. Orange County

* New this week: “John Q.” is an all-stops-out rabble-rouser that takes aim at the HMO hell that so many Americans have experienced firsthand and drives home its message with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It also has the courage of its material and reveals what it means to be a father and a husband in the fullest, most uncompromising sense of the words. It doesn’t hurt that the husband and father in question is played by Denzel Washington, very much at the top of his considerable form. Director Nick Cassavetes and writer James Kearns know exactly how to shape their story into a dramatic form that allows a raft of first-rate actors, including Robert Duvall and Ray Liotta, to express it vividly.