Home Video Picks & Passes 02.17.19

A classic from the 1990s gets a thumbs-up.

The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden (photo: Warner Bros.)

Lars and the Real Girl (2007) — PICK
Three Identical Strangers (2018) — PICK
The Secret Garden (1993) — PICK

 

Recent home-video releases on Blu-ray, Amazon and Netflix have been … um, kind of terrible. But on Hulu there are new arrivals worth checking out.

One of last year’s best documentaries, Three Identical Strangers, tells the true story of triplet brothers separated at birth who find one another in college. Along the way it becomes a meditation on nature vs. nurture — not incidentally, as it turns out.

Ryan Gosling stars in the surprisingly uplifting Lars and the Real Girl, a parable of sorts about a socially dysfunctional man who suffers from a bizarre delusion and is aided by his supportive rural community. Though the subject matter is uncomfortable, it works out in surprisingly sincere and even sweet fashion.

Finally, family audiences shouldn’t miss Agnieszka Holland’s splendid 1993 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, with a terrific Maggie Smith as the terrible housekeeper Mrs. Medlock.

 

Caveat Spectator: Lars and the Real Girl: Some innuendo and sexually related comments, including references to pornography and oblique references to sex dolls; a couple of profanities; an inappropriate mock event held in a church (not a simulated sacrament). Older teens and up. Three Identical Strangers: Sexual references; occasional profanity and cursing. Teens and up. The Secret Garden: Moderately scary/stressful situations. Older kids and up.