Home video: 'Birdman'

Nominated for nine Oscars including best picture, "Birdman" (out Tuesday) inspires renewed faith in what we used to go to the movies for — original storytelling, enveloping escape, heart-stopping camera work and enough "wait, what's going on here?" to keep us intrigued from beginning to end. Surreal and darkly funny, it stars Michael Keaton as a former movie superhero trying to regain credibility as a dramatic actor on Broadway. I didn't understand the story 60 percent of the time, but I loved every bizarre moment. Movies are increasingly noisy, similar and dull, so seeing Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's tour de force is like drinking a giant margarita after an endless diet of flat Pepsi.