DVDS A DARKLY DIFFERENT APPROACH TO ROYALTY.

Byline: Rob Lowman

Entertainment Editor

A fictional tale that tries to find the truth, "The Last King of Scotland" turns on Forest Whitaker's Oscar-winning performance as brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald and based on the novel by Giles Foden, "Last King" looks at Amin through the eyes of a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), who has gone to Uganda in the early '70s to help the poor. An accident of fate had put him in the path of Amin, and he was soon enamored of the charismatic dictator, a former heavyweight boxer. That Nicholas was sizing up the wife (Gillian Anderson) of the doctor he was working with goes to the slipperiness of his morals.

When Amin offers Nicholas a post inside his government, he jumps, partaking of the good life while ignoring the dictator's craziness and pretending that bad things just weren't happening.

There is a bit of the heart of darkness in the tale. Uganda is essentially a nation created from a number of tribes by its former colonial owners, the British, and set free in 1962. Nicholas is a white man who goes to Africa to fix things, and goes native. But this is not the Africa of the early 1900s. This is the '70s, and in Britain's wake, a Frankenstein's monster and his reign of terror have emerged in Uganda. By 1979, when Amin is finally ousted, he'll be responsible for some 300,000 deaths.

"The Last King of Scotland" is a potent piece of filmmaking, but does it tell Amin's story? Interestingly, with everything seen through Nicholas' eyes, Amin is a never fully realized character in the film, and that is its shortcoming.

Whitaker, however, is such a sly actor that one minute the dictator can seem a buffoon; the next, pure danger. It is a tour de force.

Extras on the DVD are a feature on the real Amin and a piece on how Whitaker went about portraying him.

'THE HISTORY BOYS'

"The History Boys" is adapted from Alan Bennett's award-winning stage play. There are complaints from those who have seen both Nicholas Hytner's film, which imports the stage cast, and the play that things are missing in the adaptation.

Having not seen the play, I say, "Get over it." Hytner's trims may take something out of character development, but the play -- set in a boys' school in Northern England in 1983 -- is essentially a cogent while entertaining argument about the importance of arts in education.

Not only arts, but of play. Hector (Richard Griffiths) is the 50-something, overweight, closet homosexual instructor who teaches a group of gifted male students whose aim is to get into the elite universities.

When Hector is seen with his hand in an inappropriate place on one of the lads, he is given co-responsibility for the students with a hotshot young professor, Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), who has a very Thatcher-era -- businesslike -- mentality.

What ensues are often brilliant, often very witty scenes with the two men taking different approaches to teaching.

It's hard to do justice to "The History Boys" in a few paragraphs, but seeing it is its own reward. Where else would lines about Wittgenstein and Thomas Hardy seem so alive?

'NOTES ON A SCANDAL'

An English school is a nasty battleground for Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, who play teachers with different things in mind in "Notes on a Scandal." Dench's Barbara wants Blanchett's Sheba in this cat-and-mouse game, while the unhappily married Sheba wants one of her 15- year-old students, who she gets.

Things get nasty. It's hard to like anyone in this elaborate game, but Blanchett and Dench are -- as you would expect -- brilliant. Both get their claws into the roles, and it's hard to look away. Philip Glass' score captures the unseemliness.

'FREEDOM WRITERS'

Two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank plays a real-life Long Beach English teacher who -- two years after the 1991 L.A. riots -- creates a project to help the lives of her racially divided students in "Freedom Writers."

It is an uplifting story, if an uneven movie, that has some good moments.

'SMOKIN' ACES'

On the other hand, "Smokin' Aces" is another "Pulp Fiction" pretender -- guns, gore, chaos, carnage and (supposed) witty throwaway lines. If this type of movie is your thing, it's not the worst or the best of clones, but it's pretty toxic.

TELEVISION

There are some who think that "Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show" is something of a rip-off because, for supposedly musical performance rights, Columbia has not been able to release the entire series. But I say any "Larry Sanders" -- my favorite comedy -- is better than nothing.

"Not Just the Best" includes 23 of the best episodes (were there any bad ones?) of the HBO series that starred Garry Shandling as a late-night talk-show host. Guest stars would come on and play weird versions of themselves. (David Duchovny had a crush on Larry, while Larry bedded Ellen DeGeneres before she came out.)

"Best" also has Shandling doing funny interviews with a number of people about the show -- Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman, Jeremy Piven Bob Odenkirk and "24's" Mary Lynn Rajskub -- as well as commentary on some episodes.

All worth it. Just bring on the rest of the 89 episodes.

Rob Lowman [phone]

[e-mail]

THE PRICES

NEW FILMS

"The Last King of Scotland" (Fox; $29.99)

"Notes on a Scandal" (Fox; $29.99)

"The History Boys" (Fox; $27.98)

"Smokin' Aces" (Universal; $29.98 or $39.98 HD)

"Freedom Writers" (Paramount $29.99)

TELEVISION

"The Venture Bros. -- Season Two" (Turner; $29.98)

"Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show" (Columbia; $49.95)

"Murder, She Wrote -- The Complete Sixth Season" (Universal; $49.98)

"Happy Days -- The Complete Second Season" (Paramount; $38.99)

"Laverne & Shirley -- The Complete Second Season" (Paramount; $38.99)

"Mork & Mindy -- The Complete Second Season" (Paramount; $38.99)

"The George Eliot Collection" ("Middlemarch"/ "Daniel Deronda" / "Silas Marner"/ "Adam Bede"/ "The Mill on the Floss") (BBC Warner; $49.98, or $14.98 individually)

"Larry King Live -- The Greatest Interviews" (Warner; $34.98)

"George Lopez -- The Complete First and Second Seasons" (Warner; $39.98)

"Masters of Horror: Family" (Anchor Bay; $14.98)

OLDER FILMS

"Spider-Man 2.1 -- Unrated, Extended Cut" (Columbia; $19.94)

"Brute Force" (Criterion; $39.95)

"True Confessions" (MGM; $14.98)

"The Game" (Universal; $29.98 for HD)

"Overlord" (Criterion; $39.95)

"Thieves Like Us" (MGM;$14.98)

"Pulp" (MGM; $14.98)

"The Chocolate War" (MGM; $14.98)

"The Dirty Dozen" (Warner; $28.99 for Blu-ray)

"School for Scoundrels" (Weinstein; $29.95 for HD)

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Forest Whitaker won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland," now out on DVD.