Recent DVD releases Boy A (R, 100 minutes ) A film-festival favorite, Boy A is an emotionally taut melodrama that features Andrew Garfield in a BAFTA Best Actor awardwinning performance as a young ex-convict returning to society after 14 years in a juvenile prison. Grade: 87 The Happening (R, 91 minutes ) This unscary apocalyptic film from director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense ) stars Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo as Philadelphians who, along with many others, flee their homes to escape a lethal threat of unknown origin. The DVD (available in a single widescreen version and high-definition format on Bluray with a digital copy ) includes deleted scenes, a gag reel and a making-of documentary. Grade: 78 Normal (R, 100 minutes ) A talented cast is underutilized in this confusing drama, shown at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival but hardly anywhere after that, about a mother (Carrie-Anne Moss ) who can’t get over the loss of her teenage son, killed by a drunken driver (Callum Keith Rennie ). The DVD includes closed-captioning. Grade: 72 Paranoid Park (R, 80 minutes ) Paranoid Park feels like a companion piece to director Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant as it reprises some of the same themes of teenage alienation and isolation and relies heavily on nonprofessional teenage actors. The story concerns an unsolved murder at a Portland skateboard hangout that propels a young skater into a moral quandary. Grade: 85 The Visitor (PG-13, 103 minutes ) The Visitor suggests that small acts of kindness can be heroic. It concerns a lonely widowed college professor who befriends an illegal-alien couple who end up having a lasting impact on his life. The DVD and Blu-ray versions include two featurettes, deleted scenes, and audio commentary by Richard Jenkins and director / writer Tom McCarthy. Grade: 91
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