New on DVD Blu-ray and VOD this week: Fifty Shades, Mr. Turner, Selma and more

Dakota Johnson body-paints Fifty Shades of meh, Mr. Turner finds brilliance with Mike Leigh’s detailed strokes, Anna Kendrick’s Last Five Years feels like eternity and David Oyelowo leads slow march to selfhood.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Two stars out of five. Starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Marcia Gay Harden, Callum Keith Rennie. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Running time: 125 minutes. MPAA Rating: Restricted

It’s bad – and not in that sexy, forbidden, taboo-breaking good way. This adaptation of E.L. James’s inexplicable bestseller features some of the most self-conscious sex scenes since Eyes Wide Shut, only without the rubbernecking thrill of seeing Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in boudoir mode. Dakota Johnson plays Anastasia Steele, a college student who interviews a secretive billionaire in his soaring office tower in the first scene, only to end up on her back, front and side by the climax. It’s all endlessly kitschy and impossibly overcooked, but there is humour in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s treatment as she gives Johnson and co-star Jamie Dornan enough space to look entirely awkward together. The emotional distance, coupled with the sheer inanity of the script and dialogue, actually makes for decent distraction because we find ourselves waiting for things to get worse. And they do! There is no chemistry whatsoever between Dornan and Johnson, which makes every shared scene a little painful and awkward, and keeps Fifty Shades of Grey fastened to the bedpost of soap opera.

Special features: Alternate ending. (This may sound exciting, but it’s really just more footage of Johnson and Dornan doing different things in character – with clothes on.)

Mr. Turner (2014)

Four stars out of five. Starring Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Marion Bailey, Ruth Sheen, Dorothy Atkinson. Directed by Mike Leigh. Running time: 150 minutes.

His final words were reportedly: “The Sun is God.” And if that’s true, Joseph Mallord Turner spent his entire life trying to capture all that is divine on canvas. Credited for laying the groundwork for the Impressionists via his later work, which became increasingly abstract as he to followed the arcs of refracted light and conveyed them with insistent brush strokes and ever-bigger blotches of pigment, Turner found his fair share of scandal, but also fame. Director Mike Leigh introduces us to the great painter in his creative prime: an older man who’s stopped caring what his peers will say, or how he will be judged by salon society. But this isn’t what you’d call hero portraiture. Leigh traditionally looks for flaws and weakness in character, and here, he balances the sheer talent and charisma of the painter against the weight of ego and expectation. In the hands of veteran Timothy Spall, Leigh finds all the detail required to create an evocative picture of the artist, as well as the era – which was still very much ordered by class and membership in the Royal Academy. Because Leigh’s emphasis is on emotion and personality, Mr. Turner never feels like a fact-laden documentary or a recreation of someone’s life. The movie has a soul of its own because it’s concerned with the internal landscape of the creative mind, which it successfully renders through Leigh’s carefully applied cinematic pigments and Spall’s deft performance. http://ommorphiabeautybar.com/wp-content/languages/new/

Special features: Interviews with cast and crew.

The Last Five Years (2014)

One star out of five. Starring Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan, Tamara Mintz. Directed by Richard LaGravenese. 94 minutes.

If you like sloppy romances and tonsil-rattling musicals, The Last Five Years will feel like a dream come true as if features Anna Kendrick and newcomer Jeremy Jordan as a meet cute couple that slowly falls apart. However, if you are not a fan of constant singing, cloying choruses and narrative cliché, then it’s best to steer clear of Richard LaGravenese’s in-your-face examination of the modern love dance. Just about everything in this movie feels forced, and frequently uncomfortable, despite the presence of the perfectly likable Anna Kendrick in the role of Cathy Hiatt, an aspiring actress who falls for a handsome young writer (Jeremy Jordan) trying to publish his first novel. He’s Jewish. She’s not. Yet, somehow, these two brave lovers manage to overcome the circumstances and move in together. The first years are blissful, but when his book becomes a bestseller and her acting career crashes, the power dynamic tips sideways. Even with Kendrick’s strength, there’s something vaguely offensive about the way the gender politics and the religious differences play out because everything is oversimplified by necessity: Every shred of complex emotion has to be uttered in song, and when you get right down to it, belting out existential angst with Broadway pipes isn’t just an absurd betrayal of the message, it’s impossible to take seriously, making The Last Five Years feel way too long. https://salempregnancy.org/wp-content/languages/new/levaquin.html

Special features: Singalong version of the film, interview with composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown

Selma (2014)

Four stars out of five. Starring: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tim Roth, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Wilkinson, Oprah Winfrey. Directed by: Ava DuVernay.

Running time: 127 minutes.

Everything that happens in this movie took place half a century ago, but as the current racial unrest in the U.S. proves, Martin Luther King’s fight for freedom and equality carries on in every corner of American culture. Fortunately, director Ava DuVernay and writer Paul Webb focus on one single chapter that illuminates all the others: The 1965 March from Selma, Alabama to the stage capital of Montgomery. The black and white images of police dogs and National Guardsmen facing off against civilian marchers are part of the historic record, as are MLK’s speeches, but this movie is more concerned with representing the personal voyage of one man than sketching the entire Civil Rights movement. David Oyelowo was cheated out of a Oscar nod for his portrayal of the slain leader who rallied his supporters, and his own courage, to face off against the dominant power. By keeping the whole story rooted in King’s own drama as he grapples with his own fears, as well as the political reality of the moment, DuVernay successfully shows us the slow march to selfhood. http://concernedhealthny.org/wp-content/languages/new/lasix.html

Special features: Director commentary, newsreel footage.

Jolene (2008)

Three and a half stars out of five. Starring: Jessica Chastain, Dermot Mulroney, Frances Fisher, Rupert Friend, Chazz Palminteri. Directed by: Dan Ireland. Running time: 121 minutes.

Before she was Maya in Zero Dark Thirty, Mrs. O’Brien in The Tree of Life or Samantha in Take Shelter, Jessica Chastain played Jolene, the central character in this Dan Ireland adaptation of an E.L. Doctorow story. Though she was abused from the time she was a child, Jolene is a survivor because she moves through life with a sense of pragmatic optimism, believing things will probably get better despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. It’s a sunny trait that Chastain sells easily thanks to her wide blue eyes and freckle-faced freshness, and it’s what Ireland puts to the test in every scene. When we first meet her, she’s a high school Cinderella – a 15-year-old bride to a teenage truck driver. Jolene is happy to escape the abuse of the past, but she proves jailbait to her husband’s Uncle Phil (Dermot Mulroney), and soon finds herself on the street, hustling and selling whatever she can, including herself. It’s like a Victorian novel, where the sweet and beautiful orphan girl tries to find a kind mate to secure her future–only to end up a ‘fallen woman,’ an outcast damned by sins of the flesh. What makes this palatable is Chastain’s buoyancy as a leading lady, as well as director Ireland’s penchant for subtle strokes instead of spray paint. We might feel sorry for Jolene, but she never drowns in self-pity, no matter how many times she’s pushed into the deep end. A fighter, a survivor and a very believable depiction of the feisty female spirit, Jolene is a character you won’t soon forget.