Boyhood: Blu-ray
As anyone who follows the gossip and speculation proffered in advance of the Oscar, Golden Globe and critics’ awards ceremonies already knows, Richard Linklater’s immensely ambitious family drama, Boyhood, is the favorite for many of the top honors bestowed on directors, writers, actors, cinematographers and producers. It not only deserves all of the considerations it receives, but also as large an audience upon its home-video release as possible. While I tend not to mention producers in these brief reviews – mostly because I have no clear idea of what most of them do to affect the final product — the eight men and women who worked alongside Linklater during the course of Boyhood’s 12-year gestation period deserve some applause, too. They didn’t simply show up to participate in the making-of featurette attached to the Blu-ray, anointing themselves as essential to the creative process as everyone else involved, which too often is the case in supplement materials. Without their patience, devotion and negotiating skills, Linklater might not have been free to complete the fragile, if modestly budgeted project as desired, let alone focus on School of Rock, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, Fast Food Nation, A Scanner Darkly and Bernie in the interim. Because Boyhood was shot over 45 days from May, 2002, to August, 2013, and contracts lasting more than seven years are illegal, any number of things could have prevented one or more of the key actors from going the distance. The parents of Ellar Coltrane, who, during the course of the 165-minute narrative we watch growing from boyhood to early manhood with his character, Mason, might have decided to move from Austin to Anchorage. Early on, Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei, actually did ask to be relieved of her duties as Mason’s older sister, Samantha, but changed her mind. If Linklater had died during the 12-year shoot, co-star Ethan Hawke had already agreed to take over the directorial duties, but what the other cast members follow his lead? Conversely, if the writer/director had simply tired of the exercise, how could the producers have honored their commitments to backers, cast and crew members? Blessedly, none of those things happened.

Once completed, Boyhood gathered early momentum by wowing audiences at Sundance, Berlin and SXSW, before scoring impressive numbers worldwide during its summer rollout. (This is one awards-caliber picture that wouldn’t have benefitted from a post-Thanksgiving release.) And, no, viewers and critics weren’t merely impressed by the project’s fascinating backstory. The film also features brilliantly convincing performances by Hawke and Patricia Arquette, as Mason and Samantha’s cordially estranged parents; Marco Perella and Brad Hawkins, as the children’s imperfect stepfathers; Jenni Tooley, as their seemingly flawless stepmother; Richard Robichaux and Tom McTigue, as role models who saw the potential in Mason Jr. that he tried hard to deny; Zoe Graham, his first heartbreaker; and step-grandparents Karen Jones and Richard Andrew Jones, whose deep Texas roots gave Mason Jr. a new perspective on things. Through contributions large and small, happy and sad, these actors provide a highly realistic context for at least one American boy’s life in the early 21st Century. The brilliant thing about Linklater’s vision is that nothing in the story seems forced or gratuitous, including the various inevitable introductions to inebriants, sexual awakenings and traumas that come with living in dysfunctional environments. Boyhood isn’t a morality play and Mason wasn’t drawn to represent Everyboy. Anyone who can’t enjoy a movie unless there’s a car chase, alien presence or shower scene may, instead, want to sample other titles in the New Releases/Best-Sellers section of their favorite video store. More contemplative sorts should find this surprising artistic success to be nothing short of revelatory. The Blu-ray arrives with an essential making-of featurette, interviews and a festival Q&A. I suspect that, before too long, a more complete package will be made available.

Horns: Blu-ray
A teenage boy and his girlfriend have a nasty little argument in a diner over the future of their relationship, which, at the point we meet them in Horns, has come to a crossroads. She doesn’t think that he’s sufficiently experienced in the ways of love to be considering a permanent arrangement, while he’s rarin’ to go. To the numb the pain caused by her words, Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) proceeds to get blind drunk, leaving Merrin Williams (Juno Temple) behind to find a ride home by herself. Or, do he? When, Merrin is discovered the next day, beaten to death in a B.C. rain forest, Ig immediately becomes the prime suspect. Strangely, no one in the small logging community, including Ig’s parents, believes that he is innocent. And, while viewers of such mysteries have been trained to be suspicious of pat conclusions derived in a film’s 20 minutes, the horns that begin to sprout on Ig’s head make us doubt our doubts. They emerge as tiny spikes, but quickly grow into horns that any mangy old billy goat – or Satan wannabe – would be proud to wear. He soon realizes that their power somehow drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses. If Ig hopes to clear his name, he’ll have to use his horns to butt through the gates of hell, itself, to reveal the truth behind Merrin’s ugly demise.

Adapted from a best-selling novel by Stephen King’s son, Joseph (aka Joe Hill), Horns adopts a similar approach to supernaturally inspired young-adult fiction as the Twilight series. In the place of bushy-coated wolves and impossibly hot vampires, Horns offers serpents and a citizenry overflowing with hypocrites and creeps. Horror veteran Alexandre Aja, whose credits include The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors and High Tension, effectively milks Keith Bunin’s icy screenplay for all it’s worth, pretty much keeping us guessing for 90 of Horn’s over-generous 120-minute length, at least. If it didn’t do particularly well at the box office, it may be because Dimension Films didn’t have faith in the impish Radcliffe’s ability to sell such a tortured protagonist to legions of “Harry Potter” fans. Max Minghella, Joe Anderson, Kelli Garner, James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, Heather Graham and David Morse take their assignments seriously, though, and the beautiful Canadian scenery is nicely rendered in Blu-ray by Frederick Elmes. It comes with a pretty good making-of featurette.

The Strange Little Cat
As a close reading of the leaked Sony e-mail exchanges recently demonstrated, some Hollywood executives, at least, are beyond shame or worthy of pity. Of course, we didn’t need contraband correspondence to tell us how cynical and entitled they feel about their jobs and the general state of the industry. Their contempt for their employees and the public is hidden in plain sight in megaplexes and on television screens around the world. Because the Motion Picture Academy appears to encourage such behavior, it would interesting to see what happened if, one year, the entertainment media elected to focus more attention on the Independent Spirit Awards or BAFTA than the Oscars. ABC and AMPAS simply wouldn’t allowed such a thing to happen, of course, but, in the best of all possible worlds, dreams can come true. It appears, however, that some film festivals and critics’ groups have recognized the problem and are beginning to reward outstanding films and filmmakers that don’t have a chance in hell of being recognized by mass audiences in the U.S. Among the honors Ramon Zürcher’s beguiling The Strange Little Cat received during its festival run were Best Picture Not Released in 2013, from the International Cinephile Society, and a third-place nod in the Village Voice Film Poll as Best Undistributed Film. Being able to acknowledge small gems that fell between the cracks before arriving in DVD or VOD is one of the most satisfying things about reviewing independent, foreign and documentary products. Not only are they frequently more entertaining than the big-budget pictures studios send out between January and November each year, but audiences outside L.A. and New York should have just as much access to arthouse fare as those able to take advantage of limited releases and awards-qualifying runs. That’s why video-on-demand and other streaming services are so crucial to the advancement of the art.

Ramon Zürcher’s debut film, The Strange Little Cat, is a perfect example of a top-drawer entertainment that deserved a shot at arthouse exposure, at least, but could benefit mightily from access to niche VOD, PPV and DVD outlets. Although the point-of-view is that of a single largely stationary camera, it almost feels as if the lens is embedded in the eyes of the family cat. Like a seemingly bored feline that’s coolly and objectively absorbing everything in its field of vision – a family at the dinner table, a moth orbiting a light, the plumber rubbing up against the mother when he thinks no one is looking, a girl who wails whenever an appliance is turned on – the camera serves as a silent witness to the truth. In The Strange Little Cat, what’s captured are the activities – bizarre and otherwise – of the inhabitants of a cramped Berlin flat. At first, the family doesn’t look or act much differently than tens of thousands of others in the German capital. Eventually, though, their conversations and behavior suggest the water supply has been tainted by mind-altering drugs. And, no, the titular tabby isn’t any stranger than anyone else in the picture, only more observant and blasé. The Strange Little Cat is also informed by sounds that emanate just beyond the borders of the photographic frame, as well as random movements made by those within it. If these things don’t make sense when introduced, wait a couple of minutes and certain patterns will emerge … some leading nowhere, others to madness. Anyone who has displayed the patience necessary to watch Chantal Akerman’s far less crowded, but similarly hypnotic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles will already be conversant with Zurcher’s strategy here. (Akerman’s study of a widowed housewife, single mother and part-time prostitute, living in a tidy Brussels apartment, runs two hours longer than The Strange Little Cat, but is well worth the effort to find.) He also has borrowed some ideas from the playful mind of Jacques Tati. The DVD adds a short introduction to the film by the writer/director/editor/co-producer and a post-screening Q&A with other participants. In it, Zurcher explains how the movie fulfilled a film-school assignment, in which students were required to adapt a story written by on Franz Kafka, in this case, “Metamorphosis.”

Salvo
Among the many wonderful things about The Godfather trilogy were the transitions that occurred when the various Corleones traveled to Italy, either to show of the clan, settle an old score or seek refuge from storms overseas. The skies above Sicily, the architecture, the clothes, the food … everything looked different from the family’s blustery and gray new home in New York. The sun over Las Vegas may have felt as intense as that shining on the island, but everything else was artificial. The make-believe blood spilled in the streets of the New World looked as red on the screen as that shed by rival gangster in the Old Country, but commerce trumped ancient vendettas as the cause. Most telling, perhaps, was what happened just before Frankie Pentangeli was to testify against Michael Corleone before a Senate committee. The look on his face when he recognized his brother, Vincenzo, being escorted into the gallery by Michael and Tom Hagen, said more about the omertà code of silence than anything written by Mario Puzo in the source novel. After “Frankie Five Angels” recanted everything he had told Senate investigators, Vincenzo probably wanted nothing more than to return to their “two-mule” hometown in Sicily. Salvo and other Italian-made gangster movies set in Palermo, Naples (Gomorrah) and tiny villages in the interior where blood feuds never end describe a far different looking criminal operation than the one rhapsodized over in such American films as Mean Streets, Casino, Goodfellas and “The Sopranos.” The ruthless young men to whom we’re introduced in Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s outstanding drama, Salvo, radiate a feral intensity unmatched in American gangland entertainments. There’s nothing cool, slick or cultured about the monsters we meet killing time on street corners in their natural habitat. The Ronettes and Rolling Stones don’t share space on juke boxes with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and local favorites. If there’s honor among thieves in the movies set in Italy, it doesn’t include the murders of women and children.

As Salvo opens, the ambush of a greasy mob boss is thwarted by his titular bodyguard. Salvo (Saleh Bakri), who also serves as assassin and chauffeur, immediately takes off after the culprits, killing one and climbing over a wall to run down another. Before being executed, the wounded hoodlum is given the choice of being tortured until he gives up the name of the man who approved the hit or being spared that agony by coughing it up immediately. Either way, he’s going die, so maintaining the code of silence is more of a quaint custom than a cold reality. After sneaking into the house of the rival gangster, Salvo discovers the man’s sister hiding in the shadows. Rita (Sara Serraiocco) is blind and as frightened about her own fate as that of her brother, which has been written in stone. Although Salvo has no problem dispatching with her brother, something inexplicable happens to him while determining what to do with the young woman. He recognizes in her the same overwhelming sense of solitude and hopelessness that has begun to eat at him. At first, Rita refuses to accept this act of untypical charity from her brother’s killer and is especially unhappy about being chained to a wall in an abandoned warehouse, while Salvo lies to his boss about killing her. It doesn’t take long before the gangster learns that he’s been betrayed by his bodyguard. By siccing a gang of young toughs on Salvo, viewers are assured of a exciting showdown, as well as an even greater test of his newfound kindness. Nothing good could come of revealing how the rest of the movie shakes down, except to say that it is of a piece of what preceded it. What impressed me most about Salvo, though, is Daniele Ciprì’s splendid noir-inspired cinematography. It sets a tone that ultimately puts to rest any notion there’s anything resembling honor among thieves in Palmero or, for that matter, New York. Neither does an operatic score accompany the mindless violence that’s held Sicily captive for as long as anyone can remember, as was the case in Godfather III. The Film Movement DVD adds a lengthy interview with the filmmakers and lead actress, as well as the very different short film, “Rita,” upon which Salvo is based.

The Dark Valley
I don’t expect anyone to believe me when I say that the best Western I’ve seen in the last couple of years is a German/Austrian co-production, set deep in the Alps and featuring characters that wouldn’t be out of place in a Western by Clint Eastwood or Monte Hellman. Sergio Leone’s influence is apparent, as well, but more as an interpreter of classic genre tropes and conventions. In The Dark Valley, Andreas Prochaska’s adaptation of a novel by Thomas Willmann, an American photographer, Greider (Sam Riley), rides his horse into an isolated valley just days before the winter snows will close the mountain passes. As we learn in the narration supplied by the film’s key female character, Luzi (Paula Beer), the small town and its surroundings are controlled by a family of overbearing thugs who believe that they also own the people who live there. Greider isn’t exactly encouraged to spend the winter in the village, but, because he carries a sack full of gold coins, the Brenners volunteer one of the families to make him feel welcome in every possible way. Once Greider deploys his daguerreotype camera, however, the locals’ unfamiliarity with photography makes him something of a curiosity. Only Luzi wonders why this photographer rarely carries his camera when out on his treks through valley. The mystery he carries on his shoulders like a thick wooden yoke ultimately will be revealed when Luzi’s honor is threatened by the Brenners on her wedding night. (Anyone familiar with the medieval rite, jus primae noctis, will have a headstart on this point going into the story.) After that issue is resolved the mysterious stranger is able to go about his own business with the Brenners. One excellent use of the film’s alpine setting comes during a long scene in while logs from the top of a mountain are sent sliding down the steep incline on an icy flume, not unlike Disney’s Splash Mountain or toboggan races at the Winter Olympics. Anyone who claims to be a Western buff owes it to themselves to check out The Dark Valley. It comes with deleted scenes and an extensive background featurette.

Happy End
I suppose that it’s only natural for reviewers to compare any movie in which a pair of women – lovers or otherwise – hop in a car for a therapeutic road trip to Thelma & Louise. A similar sort of pigeon-holing began after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid added “buddy film” to the critical lexicon. Alas, only a few of them stood up to the test when matched against “T&L” and “BC/SK.” It’s fair to compare the Dutch/German road drama Happy End to “T&L,” at least, because the female buddies — Lucca (Sinha Gierke) and Valerie (Verena Wustkamp) – commit crimes and defy authority during their mission of charity for a deceased friend. During the 86-minute course of Petra Clever’s debut feature, they also become lovers, although much is left to the imagination in that regard. While Happy End would logically be listed in any catologue’s Gay & Lesbian sections, its pleasures are universal. It is far more centered on the importance of loyalty and the lengths some people go to make good on promises we make to friends. Lucca meets Valerie while fulfilling a community-service commitment incurred in a rather innocuous act of politically motivated vandalism. Lucca isn’t happy to learn that she’ll be working off her penalty at a hospice facility, but, as an aspiring lawyer, she knows what’s required to clean her slate. Valerie’s role in the hospice is more undefined. We do know that Valerie has a special fondness for an elderly patient, Herma, whose son, she believes, will go against her stated desires for a final resting place immediately after she dies. Lucca gets a better, if still incomplete idea of what makes Valerie tick after she’s invited to hear her sing torch songs in a nightclub favored by lesbians. It isn’t clear if the decidedly more mousy law student has tested the waters of girl-girl sex, but Valerie’s sultry performance and slinky stage persona definitely light a fire under her. Cut to the chase: immediately after Herma’s body is cremated, Valerie coaxes Lucca to steal the urn that contains her ashes. Hermes’ son had other plans for his mother, none of them approved while she was sufficiently lucid to know what she was being told to sign. And, so the adventure begins, with L&V being chased through the Netherlands and into a scenic patch of German soil by police, Herma’s son and granddaughter, and Lucca’s over-protective father. There’s other secrets, to be sure, but there’s nothing to be gained by revealing them here. I found Happy End to be extremely well-made and surprisingly entertaining, especially for a foreign indie whose reach could easily be relegated to niche audiences.

88
The Canadian writing/directing/acting team of April Mullen and Tim Doiron have collaborated on such low-budget genre fare as Dead Before Dawn 3D, GravyTrain and Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser. They share the distinction of having created the first fully Canadian stereoscopic 3D film and, because none of the other titles appear to have been accorded serious North American distribution, simply seem to make movies for the fun of it. Certainly, it isn’t to garner critical recognition or even stretch the boundaries of exploitation flicks. Their fourth project, 88, isn’t likely to win any awards or make much money, but it should please fans of gratuitous violence, lurid sensuality and overripe lighting and set design. Katharine Isabelle, who may be the most sexually alluring actress never to have disrobed on screen, plays a young woman, Gwen, who shows up at a roadside diner in the desert with no idea where she is or how she got there. To her astonishment, her purse contains more than a dozen jaw-breakers and a recently fired handgun. Gwen has sketchy memories of witnessing the deaths of several men, including her lover, and near-miss escapes from a gang of criminals and posse of cops.

Mullen’s conceit is to split Gwen’s search for the truth between two separate timelines and keep viewers as clueless as the girl. The co-writer/co-star/director clearly was influenced by Pulp Fiction and other non-linear thrillers in the creation of 88. The ageless Christopher Lloyd and veteran character actor Michael Ironside are the only two immediately recognizable actors, one playing the sleazoid patriarch of a motley gang of miscreants and the other a dogged sheriff. The real star of the show, however, is Isabelle. Her screen presence is every bit as formidable as Alexandra Daddario, Eva Amurri Martino and Emily Ratajkowski, a trio of ingénues whose breasts recently became overnight sensations. Sure, Isabelle has found steady work on TV, the movies and on stage since she was a wee lass of 8 years old (Cousins), but her visibility derives from being featured in the three Ginger Snaps films and recurring roles in “Hannibal” and “Being Human.” I have to wonder if her seeming unwillingness to disrobe for the camera has anything to do with her career not exploding on cue, like it might have if she appeared semi-naked on an HBO series or danced in a Robin Thicke video. Coincidentally, perhaps, Mullen shares certain physical attributes with Isabelle, as well as similar resumes and seeming reluctance to bear all. Her forte may be exploitation fare, but 88 demonstrates as much flair as any such film churned out by the more privileged gender. Curious and curiouser.

The Boys From Brazil: Blu-ray
As long as movies are made, there will always be a place for Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele. His penchant for cruelty and conducting evil experiments on human beings was only half of this loathsome geneticist’s story. The second half is still playing out, 30 years after his death was “confirmed” by American forensics experts. Speculation remains rife, even as reports of the deaths of long-hunted war criminals — Alois Brunner, among them – are being confirmed and the secret policies that allowed them to escape prosecution are being revealed in piecemeal fashion. Before the full extent of Mengele’s atrocities was formally documented, Mengele managed to slip through the hands of Allied police agencies several times. Once he reached Argentina, in 1949, using a fake Italian passport, he was protected by Nazi sympathizers and family members there and in Europe. Mengele was able to work and acquire property in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, sometimes in his own name. By 1985, generally accepted as the year Mengele died, an entire industry had been founded, based on doubt over all things related to the international search for Nazi war criminals. The longer rumors circulated, the longer conspiracy theorists were allow to prosper. By this time, of course, Hollywood had already produced two crowd-pleasing thrillers based primarily on speculation about the ability of elderly Nazis to effect change from thinly camouflaged sanctuaries in South America. Ironically, while Laurence Olivier played an escaped war criminal – a sadistic dentist – in Marathon Man, two years later, in The Boys From Brazil, he would play a dogged Nazi hunter. As it opens, Jewish sleuth Ezra Lieberman, widely discredited as a wolf-crier, learns of a mysterious plot involving 95 clones of Adolph Hitler. It’s so outlandish that even those actively making plans for a Fourth Reich decide that Mengele (Gregory Peck) had finally gone off the deep end. Once Lieberman’s source is murdered, however, the conspiracy begins to fall into place. U.S. audiences were more willing to buy into such a plot than the chief Fourth Reich promoter (James Mason) and his minions. Even if I still don’t completely understand the endgame strategy, the sight of the now-teenage boys – germinated deep in the Amazon Basin — are creepy enough to induce nightmares.

TV-to-DVD
Starz!: Black Sails: Season 1: Blu-ray
PBS: Masterpiece: The Manners of Downton Abbey: Blu-ray
PBS: Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story
PBS: Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power
PBS: Sacred Journeys With Bruce Feiler
PBS: Sweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food
Nickelodeon: SpongeBob SquarePants: The Pilot and the SquareShorts: A Mini-Movie
There’s nothing like a good pirate story to get the juices flowing and that includes the ones told recently in Captain Phillips; the Danish thriller, A Hijacking; and documentary Stolen Seas. With a fifth installment of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean in its pre-production stage, it’s a good time to catch up with the Starz network’s racy and raucous mini-series, “Black Sails,” soon entering its second season. It takes place during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, 20 years prior to events described in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island.” While focusing on the tales of Captain Flint, the activities of real-life buccaneers Charles Vane, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny and Benjamin Hornigold are also monitored. The series is set on New Providence Island, which, in 1715, was largely populated by pirates, prostitutes, thieves, fortune seekers, fortune tellers and shoulder-ready parrots. It also was the perfect staging area for pirates to threaten maritime trade in the region. The numero uno target of the many pirates gathered on the island is the galleon Urca d’Lima, which, when it sails, will be loaded with all manner of New World treasures. What caught the public’s attention, at least in the series’ early episodes, was the combination of action and sex, of which there was plenty. I imagine that the story-telling aspects of the series will be pushed in the upcoming Season Two. The Blu-ray is enhanced by several short features: “Black Sails: An Inside Look,” “Dressed to Kill,” “Pirate Camp,” “Folklore Is Finished,” “A Place in History” and “Building the Behemoth.”

Each new season, the producers’ of “Downton Abbey” offer its fans what the merchants and restaurateurs of New Orleans call a lagniappe … a small gift accorded customers in addition to what they’ve already purchased. This year’s gift arrives in the form of “Masterpiece: The Manners of Downton Abbey,” which resembles the kinds of featurettes that accompany esteemed films released by Criterion Collection, RaroVideo and other distributors of high-end fare. In it, we follow the show’s historic adviser, Alastair Bruce, as he makes his rounds on and off the various lavish sets of the production. In Hollywood, such consultants are treated with the same respect accorded the employees of the catering company. Bruce wields a lot of power from his viewing platform on “Downton Abbey.” It’s his job to make sure that everything portrayed on the show is the real deal, right down to the place settings at formal dinners and the body language of the next generation of lords and ladies. Loyal followers of the show will eat it up and ask for more … and they get it in a bonus delete scene.

After SEAL Team Six was credited with taking down Osama Bin Laden in a surprise attack on his Pakistani compound, the venerable naval unit emerged from the fog of military secrecy usually associated with such operations. Bin Laden’s notoriety, in combination with our country’s overwhelming need to close one chapter on the war on terrorism, at least, ensured that the team’s profile would be raised to unprecedented heights. Not surprisingly, perhaps, individual members uncharacteristically would capitalize on the mission’s success by breaking the unit’s omerta and dilute the experience for many Americans. PBS’ “Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story” gives those warriors their due, but focuses more on a legacy that extends back to World War II, when “frogmen” were accorded the responsibility of blowing up underwater obstacles to landing craft prior to invasions. As scuba gear, sonar and intelligence-gathering technology grew more sophisticated, the frogmen of the Navy’s first special warfare units would became increasingly amphibious. (It is an acronym for Sea, Air and Land). Viewers might be surprised to learn that the name, SEAL Team Six, only represented the fighting units for about seven years, between the taking of U.S. hostages in Tehran and the emergence of the less sexy title United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. Even the name, SEAL Team Six, is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, it was hoped that Soviet intelligence gatherers would invest an inordinate amount of time investigating the roles played by SEAL Teams 1-5, which didn’t exist. Gary Sinise narrates this comprehensive history lesson, which doesn’t ignore the occasional blemish on its reputation.

Patriots come in all shapes, sizes, colors, religious and political beliefs. You can pin an American flag medallion on a sow’s ear, but that doesn’t make it any more or less patriotic than the pig in the next pen. Ever since the Vietnam War, Republicans have cornered the fake-patriotism market, simply by adding an American flag to their clothing and chastising those who don’t follow suit. Among the many interesting things we learn in PBS’ “Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power” is how the military-industry complex – President Eisenhower’s words, not mine – labored so mightily to discredit Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who routinely blew the whistle on cost overruns, overbilling and inefficient management of nuclear plants from the 1960s to the 1980s. If it weren’t for his allies in Congress – back, when it still worked – his voice would have been silenced at the dawn of the nuclear age, instead of its doldrums. When few thought it possible, then-Captain Rickover determined to harness the power of the atom to drive the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, whose trip under the polar ice pack was one of the great adventure stories of the 1950s. Later, Rickover built the world’s first nuclear aircraft carrier and the first commercial nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pa. In “Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power,” we’re given ample evidence as to how this prickly patriot became one of the most vilified public officials in the halls of Congress, the Pentagon and White House, where corruption is delivered in red, white and blue envelopes. He was able to back up his angry assertions of malfeasance with facts, science and results. While the near-miss calamity at Three Mile Island effectively put a stop sign on the approval of new corporately backed nuclear plants, Rickover’s nuclear-powered fleets scored near-perfect safety records. Besides painting a portrait of one of the great military leaders of the 20th Century, the documentary provides a primer on nuclear power and how it was shaped by the Cold War, military-industrial complex and environmentalists unwilling to buy into the lies exposed at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I’m no expert on such things, but the range of opinions forwarded in interviews and dramatizations — Tim Blake Nelson, plays the feisty admiral – seems to be fair and balanced.

If there’s one subject that PBS has covered like a blanket in the last 10 years, it’s the world’s prominent religions and why they matter in the 21st Century. It even stood up to the wrath of conservative Christians by airing a three-part series on the disappearance of religious faith, a.k.a., atheism. Mostly, though, we’ve meet true believers who understand the importance of tolerance and diversity in their beliefs. PBS’ “Sacred Journeys With Bruce Feiler” adds a different spin to the formula by putting a tight focus on the estimated 200 million people who cement their relationship with God in pilgrimages to holy places of their religion … or, increasingly, someone else’s. In the six-part series, we join pilgrimages to Lourdes, Jerusalem, Mecca, the Japanese island of Shikoku, the River Ganges and Osogbo, in Southern Nigeria. We arrive at Lourdes during the week set aside for men and women injured or traumatized by war. In Jerusalem, we spend less time on the differences separating Christians, Jews and Muslims than on the similarities that ought to serve to unite them. On Shikoku, believers of all backgrounds attempt the coast-hugging, 750-mile pilgrimage to 88 temples associated with the 8th Century priest Kūkai. These beautifully photographed journeys are sure to inspire viewers of faith, of course, but also tourists looking for someplace interesting to visit. Noticeably absent are the wild-eyed fanatics of all religious persuasions who murder in the name of God, subjugate women, pray for the Apocalypse and blaspheme God’s holy name by their mere existence and that’s probably a good thing.

Shown on many PBS affiliates, “Sweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food” delivers its warnings on the hazards of sugar-dependency much in the same way as Ron Popeil has sold gimmicks and gadgets to the rubes for nearly 60 years. Indeed, based on their rapt attention to Professor Robert Lustig’s every word, the audience for this lecture could have been left over from a demonstration of the Showtime Rotisserie. The message is sound, however. Robert Lustig is professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a warrior in the fight against the shocking proliferation of childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes, processed food, fructose and industry propaganda. He’s not the first such crusader, but likely the most successful in delivering his message. In the early 1970s, John Yudkin and William Duffy raised the red flag against sugar “addiction” in “Pure, White and Deadly” and “Sugar Blues,” respectively. Lustig has acknowledged the importance of those books, which were loudly derided by sugar interests as being alarmist and misleading, and his ability to take advantage of modern media platforms to counter industry arguments. One of Lustig’s most convincing arguments comes in a discussion about the inability of popular diet and low-fat products to quell the advance of obesity, diabetes and other concerns. The answer’s been right before our faces, all along.

Although the countdown to the February 6 release in 3D of The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water officially began at last summer’s San Diego Comic-Con International, fans are only now being rewarded for their patience with the re-release of vintage “SpongeBob” DVDs, give-aways and such functions as Monday’s “The SpongeBob Day of Positivity.” On February 3, the video game “SpongeBob HeroPants” will be released, as well. The movie, which combines live-action and traditional animation, describes what happens when SpongeBob and his pals embark on an on-shore quest to recover the secret recipe for Krabby Patties, stolen by Burger-Beard the Pirate (Antonio Banderas). Available this week is “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Pilot, a Mini Movie & the SquareShorts,” a collection of classic SpongeBob material that includes the original pilot episode; the mini-movie, “Truth or Square”; and more than 40 shorts, such as “SpongeBob’s Legendary Dance Party,” “Sandy’s Camera” and “Jellyfishing Safety Tips.” A trio of previously released compilations arrives next week in a single “Triple Pack”: “Heroes of Bikini Bottom,” “10 Happiest Moments” and “Legends of Bikini Bottom.” Original bonus features have been retained, as well.

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