New releases: 'Spring Breakers' and 'The Gatekeepers'

New releases: ‘Spring Breakers’ and ‘The Gatekeepers’

By Noel Murray

July 6, 2013 12 AM PT

The Gatekeepers

Sony Blu-ray, $30.99; Blu-ray, $35.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

Dror Moreh’s innovative, comprehensive documentary was nominated for an Academy Award this past year and deservedly so. To tell the story of Israel’s security agency Shin Bet, Moreh gets rare interviews with six of its former heads and illustrates them with archival films and dynamic animations of old photographs, illuminating both the violence that brought Shin Bet into existence and the violence perpetrated at the agency’s behest. Both Moreh and his subjects are refreshingly evenhanded about the compromises required to keep Israel safe, honestly considering whether sometimes the cure only serves to exacerbate the disease. This documentary is a well-packaged history lesson and a keen analysis, all in one. The DVD and Blu-ray add a Moreh interview and commentary track.

Admission

Universal Blu-ray, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

Tina Fey portrays a lonely middle-aged Princeton admissions officer, and Paul Rudd’s character, who runs a rural New Hampshire high school, is touting the qualifications of an unconventional student who may be the heroine’s long-lost son. Screenwriter Karen Croner and director Paul Weitz are aiming for something a little quieter and truer to life than the typical rom-com with their adaptation of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel, but the results, while admirable, are disappointingly bland, as Fey and Rudd come off as too restrained. Ultimately, the dry tone and gimmicky plot prove irreconcilable. The DVD and Blu-ray contain a brief, perfunctory featurette.

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Blood

Available on VOD beginning Thursday

The British cop drama is a 90-minute remake of a BBC series that took six full episodes to complete in 2004, so director Nick Murphy and writer Bill Gallagher (the series’ original writer) have made a few too many compromises in streamlining the story. Nevertheless, this is a gripping and artfully conceived film, with top-drawer performances by its four main actors: Paul Bettany as a policeman willing to break the rules to exact justice; Stephen Graham as his conscience-plagued brother; Brian Cox as their senile, tough-guy father; and Mark Strong as the diligent colleague who could ruin the family. The movie may be too brisk, but it smartly conveys how guilt and uncertainty can weigh on men paid to enforce the law.

Spring Breakers

Lionsgate, $21.98; Blu-ray, $27.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

Conceptually, Harmony Korine’s trashy art-film (or arty trash-film) is near-brilliant, taking pretty, Disney-approved young actresses and running them through a violent story about cash-strapped college kids committing crimes to take part in the drunken debauchery of spring break in Florida. But aside from a charismatic supporting performance by James Franco as a rapping gangster, “Spring Breakers” is repetitive and obvious, making the same point over and over about our age of rampant, pop-culture-stoked materialism. In a way the special features on the DVD and Blu-ray are more meaningful than the movie, with Korine’s commentary track and the closer looks at spring break itself (as well as the making of the film) exploring the same themes, but less tediously.

And…

Dead Man Down

Sony, $26.99; Blu-ray, $35.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

The Host

Universal, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

The Power of Few

Vivendi, $19.97; Blu-ray, $24.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

Tyler Perry’s Temptation

Lionsgate, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99