Home Video Picks & Passes 12.10.17

A documentary and historic film are picks this issue.

(photo: Shutterstock)

Aliens of the Deep (2005) — PICK

The Young Victoria (2009) — PICK


James Cameron’s Titanic may be back in theaters to celebrate its 20th anniversary, but he made a better aquatic movie that’s new on Hulu this month. No, I don’t mean Abyss.

I mean Aliens of the Deep, one of Cameron’s two G-rated Disney/Walden submarine documentaries (the other being Ghosts of the Abyss, which explores the wreck of the Titanic).

In this Aliens, Cameron partners with marine biologists and NASA scientists to explore the strange world of undersea hypothermal vents — a rare ecosystem sustaining life not dependent on solar energy.

Streaming on Amazon Prime, The Young Victoria, starring a young Emily Blunt as the young Queen Victoria and Rupert Friend as Prince Albert, is a frothy, spirited and fairly inconsequential romantic drama about love amid political machinations.

There’s no grand statement about royalty and modernity, no subversive, sexed-up revisionism.

More than anything, it reminds me of a Jane Austen story, with a careful, cautious courtship hedged by practical concerns — one that just happens to be about the woman who became the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

 

Caveat Spectator: Aliens of the Deep: Nothing objectionable. Kids and up. The Young Victoria: A couple of mild marital bedroom scenes (nothing explicit); brief violence; brief cursing. Teens and up.