Just like it sounds, Growin’ a Beard is a documentary about a beard-growing contest. In particular, the annual St. Patrick’s Day Donegal beard-growing contest in dinky Shamrock, Texas. The Donegal beard is a mustache-less style — think leprechauns and the Amish. Starting just before New Year’s Day in 1997, director Mike Woolf focuses his camera on four longtime residents (and oft-winners), asking their strategies and secrets. A monkey wrench is thrown into the tradition when a young art director from Austin enters on a lark and threatens to usurp the regulars, even though an outsider has never won.
That man, Scotty McAfee, is the subject of the film’s funniest moment, when people who know him compare the ad man to a series of hirsute pop icons, including Grizzly Adams, the original G.I. Joe doll and Jonny Quest guardian Race Bannon.
Thirty minutes is plenty long for this doc. Although pleasant and unthreatening, its numerous shaving scenes grow tiresome and could have been, um, trimmed. The video is jerky at times, but such is to be expected for a no-budget, handheld effort — and Woolf deserves props for not making fun of his subjects. He shows them as they are, which unintentionally depressed me, because I get easily bummed out thinking about small-town life.
The real reason to check out this DVD is for a bonus short titled The 72 Oz. Steak, which packs three times the laughs and suspense in a third of the time. At the famed Big Texan in Amarillo, a friend of Woolf’s attempts to eat the titular object — plus potato, salad, shrimp cocktail and dinner roll — in an hour in order to avoid paying $50 for it. Who knew four pounds of meat could be so enthralling? —Rod Lott
Despite loads of young-French-blonde nudity courtesy of then-newcomer nymph Ludivine Sagnier, François Ozon’s 
The film is nicely shot, and I didn’t dislike it, but the ending left me with a “that’s it?” feeling. If you rent the unrated version, you get to see the girl blowing a French guy while Rampling throws rocks at them. 
In space, no one can hear you scream “Crikey!” But that’s where, in 
The two “stories” converge briefly when the agents come upon the croc in Steve’s possession and he mistakes them for poachers, putting them all on a collision course … with laughter!
Must be true, because shortly thereafter, she discovers a rotting corpse in the castle’s underground tunnels, not to mention a caged gorilla. He’s the pet of Lord James (Hiram Keller), who’s possibly insane and rumored to have killed someone, and possibly even has the power to shape-shift. And every time the titular tabby shows up, someone gets killed, thereby putting the “ow” in “meow.”