Its a week for low-budget independent productions on DVD, led by a family friendly musical drama.
Life Inside Out (Monarch/DVD, 2014, not rated, deleted/extended scenes, audio commentary, trailer). Maggie Baird (who wrote the screenplay with co-star Lori Nasso) stars as the wife and mother to a middle-class Southern California family with three teenage boys. She goes through a bit of a midlife crisis at age 46 when she comes across her old guitar, which she had set aside at age 19 upon the death of her mother, the person who most encouraged her singing-songwriting aspirations.
So she picks it up again, heads out to some open-mic nights and reignites a long-dormant passion. Her angst-ridden youngest son (Finneas OConnell) comes along for the ride and its soon apparent that he has inherited his mothers talent.
This is a sweet, gentle, low-key mother-son story with some nice, if not particularly memorable, songs. Its a bit too earnest and heavy-handed with a few scenes that run on too long, but overall a worthwhile, enjoyable effort.
Mysteries of the Unseen World (Virgil/Blu-ray 3-D, Blu-ray/DVD, 2015, not rated, featurette, photo gallery). Forest Whitaker narrates this tour of natural phenomena generally missed by the human eye, such as lightning strikes, a lizard running on water, plants reaching toward the sun, a rattlesnake strike, etc. Beautifully photographed with high-speed and time-lapse photography, along with special equipment to pick up minute details, this documentary short (40 minutes) was originally shown on IMAX screens in 3-D (and is available in this combo set in both 3-D and flat 2-D).
Bleaching Black Culture (Cinedigm/DVD/Digital, 2015, not rated, extended scenes, featurette, trailer). Documentary exploring how culture in the United States has been influenced by African-Americans in the arenas of music, sports, fashion, art, food, etc., and whether cultural theft has marginalized the community that is most responsible for its creation.
Supremacy (Well Go/Blu-ray/DVD, 2015, not rated, featurette, trailer). Joe Anderson plays a volatile white supremacist who's been paroled as this based-on-real-events thriller opens. His incarcerated leader sends a woman (Dawn Olivieri) to pick him up and they promptly kill a cop and break into a nearby home to hide out, taking a black family hostage. But the patriarch (Danny Glover) is an ex-con who knows how to manipulate a racist and they begin a cat-and-mouse exercise, shifting power as tension increases.
Wingman Inc. (Lionsgate/DVD/Digital/On Demand, 2015, R for sex and language, audio commentary, trailers). Raunchy comedy about a professional wingman a guy who helps single men pick up women in bars who falls in love with a woman who hires herself out to help women fend off unwanted passes from men that dont interest them.
Sweet Lorraine (Garden Thieves/DVD, 2015). Tatum ONeal, still trading on the Oscar she won 40 years ago as a 10-year-old (for Paper Moon), stars in this unfunny political satire as a woman with a past (and a pretty unsavory present) who is married to a Methodist minister running for office. Shes also a closet boxer. Steven Bauer co-stars.
Life Inside Out (Monarch/DVD, 2014, not rated, deleted/extended scenes, audio commentary, trailer). Maggie Baird (who wrote the screenplay with co-star Lori Nasso) stars as the wife and mother to a middle-class Southern California family with three teenage boys. She goes through a bit of a midlife crisis at age 46 when she comes across her old guitar, which she had set aside at age 19 upon the death of her mother, the person who most encouraged her singing-songwriting aspirations.
So she picks it up again, heads out to some open-mic nights and reignites a long-dormant passion. Her angst-ridden youngest son (Finneas OConnell) comes along for the ride and its soon apparent that he has inherited his mothers talent.
This is a sweet, gentle, low-key mother-son story with some nice, if not particularly memorable, songs. Its a bit too earnest and heavy-handed with a few scenes that run on too long, but overall a worthwhile, enjoyable effort.
Mysteries of the Unseen World (Virgil/Blu-ray 3-D, Blu-ray/DVD, 2015, not rated, featurette, photo gallery). Forest Whitaker narrates this tour of natural phenomena generally missed by the human eye, such as lightning strikes, a lizard running on water, plants reaching toward the sun, a rattlesnake strike, etc. Beautifully photographed with high-speed and time-lapse photography, along with special equipment to pick up minute details, this documentary short (40 minutes) was originally shown on IMAX screens in 3-D (and is available in this combo set in both 3-D and flat 2-D).
Bleaching Black Culture (Cinedigm/DVD/Digital, 2015, not rated, extended scenes, featurette, trailer). Documentary exploring how culture in the United States has been influenced by African-Americans in the arenas of music, sports, fashion, art, food, etc., and whether cultural theft has marginalized the community that is most responsible for its creation.
Supremacy (Well Go/Blu-ray/DVD, 2015, not rated, featurette, trailer). Joe Anderson plays a volatile white supremacist who's been paroled as this based-on-real-events thriller opens. His incarcerated leader sends a woman (Dawn Olivieri) to pick him up and they promptly kill a cop and break into a nearby home to hide out, taking a black family hostage. But the patriarch (Danny Glover) is an ex-con who knows how to manipulate a racist and they begin a cat-and-mouse exercise, shifting power as tension increases.
Wingman Inc. (Lionsgate/DVD/Digital/On Demand, 2015, R for sex and language, audio commentary, trailers). Raunchy comedy about a professional wingman a guy who helps single men pick up women in bars who falls in love with a woman who hires herself out to help women fend off unwanted passes from men that dont interest them.
Sweet Lorraine (Garden Thieves/DVD, 2015). Tatum ONeal, still trading on the Oscar she won 40 years ago as a 10-year-old (for Paper Moon), stars in this unfunny political satire as a woman with a past (and a pretty unsavory present) who is married to a Methodist minister running for office. Shes also a closet boxer. Steven Bauer co-stars.
