Mud
(Lions Gate, $20)
Matthew McConaughey brings “beautifully realized angst” to the title role in this effective drama about an Arkansas drifter who enlists two teenage boys in his bid to win a woman’s heart, said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. An “excellent” Reese Witherspoon co-stars.
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The Sapphires
(Anchor Bay, $27)
This tale about a girl group in 1960s Australia is “nearly impossible to resist,” said USA Today. Bridesmaids’ Chris O’Dowd proves “a charmer” as a talent scout who convinces the young women to sing soul music, and “the transcendent vitality” of the era’s music does the rest.
Lord of the Flies
(Criterion, $30)
Theater director Peter Brook knew what he was doing when he chose to improvise his way through adapting William Golding’s novel, said the Norfolk, Va., Virginian-Pilot. In Brook’s powerful 1963 drama about schoolboys reverting to savagery on a desert island, “there is no artifice.”
