Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Fri., May 18:
Based on Janet Evanovich’s best-seller, “One for the Money” stars Katherine Heigl as Stephanie Plum, a street-savvy Jersey gal who gets a job at her cousin’s bail bonding company and must track down her high school ex-boyfriend (Jason O’Mara).
Also set in New Jersey, “You’ll Know My Name” is a coming-of-age drama, examining an angry, entitled generation that has lost touch and can’t understand why.
In “Rampart,” Woody Harrelson plays a sleazy, bullheaded cop, working as part of the militaristic, notoriously intolerant Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1990s.
The mock documentary “Chronicle” blends adolescent fantasy with timely commentary about bullying, as three teens discover they have acquired mysterious superpowers. In the same ‘found footage’ sub-genre, “The Devil Inside” is a spooky, supernatural stunt, revolving around an American woman (Suzan Crowley) who confessed to a triple homicide and is being held by the Vatican in at a hospital for the criminally insane in Rome.
“Norman Mailer: The American” goes beyond the author on the bookshelves, examining this working-class iconoclast as a social critic, family man, filmmaker and lover, while “We Were Here” is a heartbreaking cinematic exploration of the beginning of the AIDS crisis.
For foreign film aficionados, “Michael” is a German observational chiller about a seemingly meek insurance agent who holds a 10 year-old captive in a locked room in his basement for five months.
For youngsters, there’s a new Chuggington “Wilson and the Ice Cream Fair,” as a brave trainee helps Frostini create a new flavor for the mayor’s banquet…globe-trotting hi-jinks in ”Scooby-Do! 13 Spooky Tales Around the World”…a dino-mite ride in ”Barney: Planes, Trains & Cars”…fun in the sun with “Bob the Builder: Adventures By the Sea”…and a 20-episode, 2-disc set ”Thomas & Friends: Engine Friends Classic Collection.”
PICKS OF THE WEEK: In the Victorian drama “Albert Nobbs,” Glenn Close delivers a splendid performance, creating a fascinating, if far-fetched façade as a butler in 19th century Dublin, working with Janet McTeer and courting Mia Wasikowska. And in the intense, survivalist thriller, “The Grey,” Liam Neeson plays a despondent sharpshooter stranded in the snowy Alaskan wilderness.