Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Fri., April 26:
Sean Penn plays notorious Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen in “Gangster Squad” as a team of cops, led by Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling, are determined to bring him down – by any means necessary; extras include deleted scenes, gangland files, stylish tough guys and director Ruben Fleischer’s commentary.
Corruption is pervasive, particularly when it comes to energy concerns. Gus Van Sant’s “The Promised Land” stars Matt Damon as a farm boy-turned-corporate salesman dispatched to rural Pennsylvania to acquire natural gas drilling rights. He’s joined by Frances McDormand and John Krasinksi and opposed by Hal Holbrook, a high-school science teacher who challenges the benefits of fracking. It should be noted, however, that part of this film’s funding came from Image Nation Abu Dhabi, implying, perhaps, that the United Arab Emirates, the world’s third largest oil exporter, may have a vested interest in suppressing U.S. natural gas production.
Out of circulation for years, Aviva Kempner’s Peabody Award-winning “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” is a humorous, nostalgic documentary about an extraordinary baseball player who transcended religious prejudice to become an American icon; the DVD is brimming with two hours of extras about fielding and hitting in the Golden Age of Baseball.
Werner Herzog’s “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” is an unforgettable journey to the edge of civilization, where a remote culture thrives in Siberia in some of the harshest conditions on Earth.
In “Thale,” two crime-scene cleaners discover a mythical, tailed female creature in a concealed cellar; never uttering a word, she’s been held captive for decades for reasons that eventually surface.
“K-11” is a riveting jail drama about the plight of a man (Goran Visnjic) who winds up in the Los Angeles County Jail’s transgender unit; filmmaker Jules Stewart is the mother of “Twilight” star Kristen.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Oscar-nominated Naomi Watts stars in “The Impossible,” the harrowing, true story of a British family spending their Christmas holiday on Khao Lak in Thailand when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hits, sweeping them in different directions; the viscerally vigorous depiction of the tidal wave devastation is staggering. It’s a grim, gritty, graphic chronicle of disaster.