Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, Oct. 16:
“Twilight” heartthrob Robert Pattinson is a British W.W.II veteran in “The Haunted Airman,” a supernatural thriller about a wounded pilot tormented by psychological terrors while confined to a wheelchair in a remote mansion in Wales. There’s more unworldly horror in “The Objective,” in which a CIA operative is sent with a U.S. Special Forces squad on a secret mission into Afghanistan to find a Muslim cleric believed to have ties to a deadly cache of weapons of mass destruction.
Intrigued by conspiracy theories? “New World Order” is a surprisingly even-handed documentary about a small but very vocal movement seeking to expose global elitists whom they claim are masterminding the breakdown of our society and economy.
“Every Little Step” chronicles the behind-the-scenes story of how the Broadway 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line” was re-cast, incorporating a semi-biography of director-choreographer Michael Bennett. Based-in-truth, “American Violet” dramatizes the fight of an African-American single mother (Nicole Beharie) against institutionalized racism.
Complex and thought-provoking, Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration” revolves around what happens when a teenager (Devon Bostick) falsely claims that his Palestinian father was responsible for the attempted terrorist bombing of an airplane.
“Land of the Lost” is a crude, tiresome, time-warped parody of the ‘70s TV show with Will Ferrell as the crackpot scientist who travels through a time portal with Anna Friel and Danny McBride into a parallel, dinosaur-infested universe.
For sports fans, “All Day With Adrian Peterson” follows one of the NFL’s brightest young stars from Draft Day through his first two seasons with the Minnesota Vikings. And for comic fans, the “Marvel Animation: 6-Film Gift Set” is a super-hero compilation including Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, Captain America and more of the mightiest names in the Marvel universe in full-length feature films.
PICK OF THE WEEK: If you like screwball comedies, “The Proposal” stars Sandra Bullock as a hard-nosed, high-powered book editor from Canada whose visa has elapsed. When she’s threatened with deportation, she pretends to be engaged to her beleaguered assistant (Ryan Reynolds) and travels to Sitka, Alaska, to meet his family.