Susan Granger’s DVD UPDATE for week of Friday, July 29:
Chilling, compelling and devastating, “Trust” is a provocative, cautionary tale that is so realistic that it’s ‘must’ viewing for families with teenagers. Directed by David Schwimmer (“Friends”), it’s about a 14 year-old girl who unwittingly is ‘friended’ by a sexual predator.
Part sequel/part variation on “Happiness” (1998), Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” follows three dysfunctional sisters (Alison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Shirley Henderson) struggling to find their places in a volatile, unpredictable world where the past haunts the present and imperils the future, particularly when a Bar Mitzvah boy (Duncan Riley Snyder) confronts a decade-old scandal.
“We Are What We Are” chronicles the struggle of a fractured family to survive after their father suddenly dies – and the horrifying twist is that this family is a brood of cannibals.
The bloody, action-packed “The Dead and the Damned” introduces a gun-slinging bounty hunter hunting for a renegade Apache warrior in the mountains outside a California gold rush town in 1849.
“The Puppet Monster Massacre” is a wild, raucous animated homage to 1980s monster films, as a group of teens accept a challenge to spend a night in a mansion on the edge of town, unaware that its owner, Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, has created a monstrosity in his basement and plans to make them the creature’s first big meal.
In English, Dutch and German with English subtitles, “Winter in Wartime” is an interesting vignette about an adolescent boy who saves a British flyer shot down near his home in occupied Holland in 1945, when Nazis controlled the villages.
For preschoolers, “Shaun The Sheep: Animal Antics” sows some seeds of barnyard fun.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Surreal and suspenseful, “Source Code” is a sci-fi thriller in which a decorated Afghanistan combat helicopter pilot (Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes part of a government mission to discover the terrorist who bombed a Chicago commuter train before he strikes again. In order to do that, he’s transplanted back in time to re-live the final eight minutes of another man’s life – over and over again – gathering clues with each subsequent recurrence.