Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Fri., Jan. 11:
Coinciding with the theatrical release of “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden,” first seen on the National Geographic Channel, is based on true events and framed by real-time footage. In the same vein, “Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers” drops you behind enemy lines, revealing the untold story of a covert WWII military mission, concealed for nearly 70 years.
Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow and Anna Camp star in saucy, snarky, spirited “Pitch Perfect” about college competitive singing, while Channing Tatum, Justin Long and Rosario Dawson team up for the ensemble comedy “10 Years” about a group of friends at their high-school reunion who, a decade later, still haven’t quite grown up.
Taking its name from the Sanskrit word for “ever-turning wheel of life,” “Samsara” examines life, humanity and our relationship with the eternal, dispensing with dialogue and descriptive text and reuniting filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, whose award-wining “Baraka” and “Chronos” dazzled with visual artistry.
Set on a bleak, futuristic Earth that’s been wasted by wars and divided into overcrowded urban centers and filled with dreadful, dystopian, digitally-enhanced carnage, Peter Travis’s “Dredd” introduces Karl Urban as the mythical Judge and Olivia Thirlby as his psychic trainee.
In Portuguese with English subtitles, “Found Memories” is a meditation on time and memory as expressed by a young Brazilian photographer who stumbles upon a small, rural village of Jotuomba that seems to be a relic of an earlier era.
For kids, “Tiny Toon Adventures Crazy Crew Rescues!” features over five hours of Looney Tunes fun at Acme Looniversity, plus there’s “Angelina Ballerina: Dance Around the World,” “Barney: Let’s Go To
the Moon,” and “Best of Widget,” the second installment of the “Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!” series.
PICKS OF THE WEEK: For family viewing, Disney and Tim Burton’s inventive “Frankenweenie,” the morbid, macabre Gothic tale about a boy and his dog, packaged with the delightful short “Captain Sparky vs. The Flying Saucers.” For adults, “Compliance,” inspired by a chilling, true story, is a twisted moral parable set at ChickWich, a fast-food joint; it delves into just how far one might go to obey an authority figure.