SARAH'S KEY leads off the week's DVDs:

DVDs for Nov. 22 by Boo Allen

This week, we begin in wartime Paris:

Sarah’s Key (****)

Bi-lingual Kristin-Scott Thomas plays an American
journalist in Paris who discovers that the apartment where she and
her family live was once the scene of a devastating injustice. From
Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel, director Gilles Paquet-Brenner goes back
to the early 1940s, when French Jews were being rounded up for
deportation to Nazi death camps. The family of young Sarah (Melusine
Mayance) stayed behind and fought for survival even after losing her
apartment. The tale eventually leads to today, with lost and found
ancestors becoming inheritors of both property and guilt.

Rated PG-113, 111 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray,
includes an excellent 63 minute “making of” featurette with
abundant interviews and on-set footage.
Blue Velvet–25^thanniversary (****)

David Lynch’s creepy confection returns on Blu-ray for
its 25^th anniversary. Kyle MacLachlan plays young and innocent Jeffrey, who returns to his bucolic small town home when his father is hospitalized. Jeffrey finds a severed human ear in a vacant field and sets out to find the ear’s owner. His odyssey takes into a rabbit-hole where he encounters a high strung lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini) and her even more high strung gangster boyfriend (an unhinged Dennis Hopper). Lynch orchestrated a series of artificially choreographed scenes, using many master shots and striking production designs to illicit frights and maximum discomfort.

Rated R, 120 minutes. The clean new transfer includes
outtakes, 50 minutes of newly discovered lost footage, the original
review by Siskel and Ebert, and more.

Start the Revolution Without Me ( ***1/2), Damages (****)

The releases from On-Demand Warner Archives become more
and more current with two new titles. Of all the movies about that
madcap French Revolution, Start/Without Me (rated PG,
91 minutes) is undoubtedly the funniest. Gene Wilder somehow found
great humor in his double role of one of a pair of twin brothers
(with Donald Sutherland) switched at birth. Two grow up Princes and
the other two paupers. The peasant twins find themselves at
Versailles in the middle of a plot to assassinate King Louis XVI (a
hilarious Hugh Griffith). Bud Yorkin’s expert direction accentuates
the absurdities with the help of a fine, mostly British, cast. A
tongue-in-cheek Orson Welles introduces the film. Louis Malle
directed David Hare’s script for the squirm-inducing Damages,
with both unrated and R-rated on the same disc along with a 15 minute
interview with Malle. Juliette Binoche plays a fragile young woman
who falls for the father (Jeremy Irons) of her fiancé
(Rupert Graves). But dad takes it much more seriously, acting
recklessly and erratically despite his high position in government.
Malle orchestrates his narrative to squeeze out large doses of
uncomfortable drama in this finely observed tragedy.

Carjacked (**1/2)

A stressed out mother (Maria Bello) and her young son
(Connor Hill) stop at a gas station only to be carjacked by a fleeing
bank robber (Stephen Dorff). He forces them to drive to meet up with
his partner to exchange the loot. Along the way, director John Bonito
does a passable job of throwing up unexpected problems for the trio.

Rated R, 89 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray, includes
a brief “behind-the-scenes” featurette.

5 Days of War (**1/2)

Director Renny Harlin, using every available war-movie
cliché, delivers an adequately entertaining saga about the quickly
overlooked conflict caused by Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. Andy
Garcia plays the beleaguered Georgian leader who finds his country
helpless against a bigger foe. On the ground, journalists (Rupert
Friend and Richard Coyle) risk their lives to report on a war mostly
ignored in the western press because of the coinciding Olympics. But
the two also find time to help a beautiful local woman (Emmanuelle
Chriqui) and to land in several frightening man-to-man battles.

Rated R, 113 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray, contains
11 minutes of deleted scenes.

The Family Tree (**)

Bunnie (Hope Davis), a mother of two teen-agers, falls
during an extra-marital tryst and develops short term amnesia. It
takes her back to the start of her marriage to Jack (Dermot Mulrony).
She forgets her multiple affairs and the on-going conflicts both with
her husband and children. Not surprisingly, director Vivi Friedman
struggles with the material and the many sub-plots to render a
consistently satirical comedy.

Rated R, 90 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray, includes
a 10 minute “making of” featurette and 10 minutes of on-set
footage.

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (**1/2)

Robert Rodriguez’ popular franchise returns with Jessica
Alba facing off against the evil Timekeeper (Jeremy Piven) for the
fate of the world. Her spy kids (Rowan Blanchard, Mason Cook) save
the day, and the planet.

Rated PG, 88 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray and in
Combo Packs, offers deleted scenes, several featurettes, an interview
with Rodriguez, and more.
Babar and Father Christmas: The Classic Series

Babar’s children write a letter to Father Christmas
requesting he visit their Celesteville. But the letter falls into
wrong hands, causing a holiday crisis.

Not rated, 70 minutes. The DVD also offers two bonus
episodes and a holiday coloring book.

And, from this week’s TV offerings:
Being Human—season one

The 13 episodes, on three discs, of this clever series
seen on SyFy channel, feature three handsome young people, friends
and roommates, with a dilemma: they are, respectively, a vampire (Sam
Witwer), a werewolf (Sam Huntington), and a ghost (Meaghan Rath).
They discover living a double life to be fraught with peril.

Not rated, 572 minutes. The set, also on Blu-ray,
includes a “making of” featurette, a visit to comic-Con,
interviews with the cast, and an introspective segment on “What
would you choose?”
To Catch a Thief—the complete series

Handsome Robert Wagner starred as Alexander Munday, a
lovable playboy-thief who used his expertise working as a government
spy. Mundy covered the globe in his exploits, giving the series a
weekly colorful flair. The series ran between 1968 and 1970. The
digitally remastered 66 episodes, including the pilot, now arrive on
18 discs.

Not rated. Over 50 hours. The packaged set also includes
interviews with Glen Larson and Robert Wagner, as well as a
reproduced film frame, a four piece coaster set, and a retrospective
booklet. And more.
Also on DVD: Conan the Barbarian, The Devil’s Double,
Helldriver, Wild Life.