The DVD Beat - April 28

PICK OF THE WEEK:

The Uninvited
This one I wasn’t expecting. “The Uninvited” is not the gruesome supernatural horror film that was advertised in the trailers; it’s an absorbing psychological drama/Evil Stepmother thriller in which everyone’s sanity, including that of the protagonist, is thrown into question. Emily Browning plays Anna, who checks out of a mental institution after a botched suicide attempt. Reeling from the accidental death of her sick mother, she’s further unsettled because her novelist father (David Strathairn) is now romantically involved with his dead wife’s former live-in nurse, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks). Anna and her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) quickly become convinced that their father’s new flame is out to kill them, and although Dad brushes off their suspicions as mere delusion, everyone who seems to know anything about Rachael’s dark past ends up dead. Could Rachael have killed their mother? And could she be that evil nurse who knocks off her patients to get closer to their husbands? And are those the restless spirits of her victims haunting Anna in the night? The movie lives and dies by its construction, so if you happen to telegraph any of the twists and turns before the script throws them out, there goes the whole ball game. But “The Uninvited” is surprisingly effective, and it’s infinitely better than the countless other remakes of Asian horror pictures that have clogged the market recently (this one is loosely based on an acclaimed Korean film called “A Tale of Two Sisters”). It is merely an exercise in style and manipulation, but it is successful as such. [PG-13; 87m.]

ALSO ON DVD:

Bride Wars
Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway are naturally talented, beautiful, charming actresses, yet their characters in “Bride Wars” are shrill, annoying, stupid, shallow and unlikable. They play inseparable friends who have had their dream weddings planned out since they were little girls, but they’re at one another’s throats when their wedding days are mistakenly scheduled on the same date. Of course, they decide to thwart the other’s wedding: Hudson switches Hathaway’s bronzer at the tanning salon so she comes out with orange skin, and Hathaway tricks a stylist into coloring Hudson’s hair blue. Har-de-har. If these characters had been written with any shred of intelligence or realism, they would have solved their problems reasonably, the movie would have been over after the half hour mark and we all would have been better off. [PG; 88m.]

Nothing But the Truth
This one has been bouncing around in my head for almost a week now. Either “Nothing But the Truth” is a bleeding heart crusader for journalistic integrity, or it’s a conflicted exploration of a reporter’s unwavering attempts to forward her career. The movie works best, I think, as the latter, although I have a sneaking suspicion it may not have been intended as such. When our protagonist, Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale), discovers that a woman named Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga), a classroom mother at her son’s elementary school, is a former CIA agent, she makes it her duty to write about it in her column. Compromising the identities of covert government agents is a federal crime, but Rachel is adamant that she will not reveal her source, even if it means being thrown in prison. So, are we supposed to think that she’s dignified for upholding her honor, or that she’s deliberately stalling an investigation in order to drum up media coverage? Is she selfish or selfless? The movie left me unsure, and the ending only complicates things further. It seems to be resolute about its position, but I couldn’t quite come down on either side of the issue. [R; 108m.]