DVD Update for week of March 15

Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Friday, March 15:

 

In “Hitchcock,” Anthony Hopkins captures the distinctive look and dry, doll manner of the eccentric film director with Helen Mirren as his conflicted wife, film editor Alma Reville, during the making of “Psycho” – with Scarlett Johansson as its star, Janet Leigh.

Sean Penn plays Cheyenne, a retired Goth rocker, in Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s “This Must Be the Place” with Frances McDormand as his firefighter wife. They live in a castle in Dublin, Ireland, but much of the film takes place in the southwest, where Cheyenne hunts for an ex-Nazi war criminal who tormented his late father.

Alcohol abuse is a huge problem in American today and young people – ages 18-29 – have the highest rates of alcohol abuse and dependence. In that vein, “Smashed” is a heavy-weight drama about Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a hard-working Los Angeles elementary school teacher.

Do you only associate the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem with the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”? I did until I saw “Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness,” a poignant, insightful documentary that explores how his cultural heritage evolved, elevating him to the stature of a “Jewish Mark Twain.”

In the documentary “Kumare,” filmmaker Vikram Ghandi becomes fascinated by the self-proclaimed leaders that people choose to follow, transforming himself into a phony guru named Kurmare in a “Borat”-style mission to expose religious hypocrisy.

Joshua Close and Selma Blair are terrorized in “In their Skin,” a home-invasion thriller while, in “Hellgate,” an American (Cary Elwes) faces tragedy in Bangkok when a spiritual advisor (William Hurt) explains that the souls of his recently deceased wife and son are trapped in a shadow world.

Uncle Jed, Jethro and Elly May Clampett are back in “The Return of the Beverly Hillbillies,” and the world’s favorite monkey reemerges in “Curious George Swings Into Spring.”

    PICK OF THE WEEK: Ang Lee won an Oscar for directing “Life of Pi,” the awesome, astounding screen adaptation of Yann Martel’s acclaimed novel that begins and ends in Montreal, where a writer (Rafe Spall) is interviewing middle-aged Picine Militor (Irfan Khan), who relates the incredible adventure of his life as a sensitive, coming-of-age fable and meditation on God.

 

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