Susan’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, July 10th:
Chris Evans, Camilla Belle and Dakota Fanning join forces in “Push,” a psychic espionage thriller about eugenics experiments started by the Nazis during W.W.II in order to create superior beings. Now, a black-ops division of the Defense Dept. is determined to enhance the usefulness of these mutant mindbenders by administering mega-drug therapy. It’s long on style and short on substance, not to mention logic.
Also tracing back to Nazi evils, “The Unborn” is a cheesy horror film about a dybbuk, or demonic spirit determined to enter the body of a young woman (Odette Yustman) whose superstitious grandmother (Jane Alexander) is a Holocaust survivor and whose spiritual advisor (Gary Oldman) might be able to perform an exorcism.
The cat-and-mouse thriller “Five Fingers” is a shattering look at the shifting morals of terrorism and covert torture with Laurence Fishburne, Ryan Phillippe and Colm Meaney. And “A Day in the Life” is Onyx musician Sticky Fingaz’s rap narrative about a man who is struggling to leave the street behind but caught between two crime families.
For family viewing, there’s “The Peanuts 1960s Collection,” a six-pack of delightful Charlie Brown specials that have been re-mastered for picture and sound quality. And “The Little Red Truck” documentary chronicles participants in the Missoula Children’s Theater who travel around the country putting on musical shows with local talent.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Nicolas Cage stars in “Knowing,” a weird, far-fetched sci-fi thriller about a cryptic message from 1958 that accurately predicts the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major cataclysm of the past 50 years, along with three additional catastrophes waiting to happen, perhaps global destruction. Meanwhile, four ominous, unearthly men with shiny blond hair seem to be observing everything. And “Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes” trails America’s foremost humorist and radio commentator as he takes his “Prairie Home Companion” skits and monologues across the country, capturing Keillor on and off-stage, mingling fact with fiction as he creates his hometown, Lake Wobegon. Bonus material includes outtakes and an interview with the late Robert Altman.