Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) - pick

101 Dalmatians (1961) - pick

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! (1970) - pick

New on DVD, Things We Lost in the Fire is Danish director Susanne Bier’s poignant, wrenching meditation on loss, frailty and healing starring Halle Berry as a grief-stricken widow named Audrey and Benicio del Toro as a painful but necessary link to her late husband.

Brian (David Duchovny) died heroically, intervening in a domestic dispute; Jerry (del Toro) was a childhood friend with whom Brian always stayed close, despite Jerry’s downward spiral into heroin addiction and squalor. Now, after years of tension, Jerry and Audrey are each the other’s closest link to Brian.

Things We Lost observes acutely how death puts life in perspective; how death is not a single traumatic event but, like a wedding, a thousand mundane tasks. Having recently lost a close family member not far in age from Brian, I found it insightful and memorable, with excellent performances from Berry and especially del Toro.

Making its DVD debut is one of the best animated films of Disney’s late golden age, 101 Dalmatians. Somewhat faithfully following the also excellent 1956 children’s novel by Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians is an effective blend of comedy and thrills, with nary a musical number in sight — other than Roger’s incidental piano plunking.

Best of all, it features one of the greatest villains, not only of the Disney canon but of all of cinema: the indelible Cruella de Vil, whose very name conjures one of those isolated musical moments: If she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will! Voiced with shrieking relish by Betty Lou Gerson, animated as all angles, popping eyeballs and long bony limbs under a shock of spiky white and black hair, she’s the stuff of nightmares, right up there with Snow White’s Wicked Queen, Ursula the Sea Witch, Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Finally, timed to coincide with next weekend’s big-screen adaptation of the same Dr. Seuss classic, Chuck Jones’s 26-minute small-screen version of Horton Hears a Who! makes its debut on DVD. Adapted by Seuss himself, it’s quite faithful to the original story, with the same parable-like light treatment of serious themes: individual conscience, resistance to social pressure, democratic involvement and of course defense of life even when small, helpless and socially disregarded — or, to put it less polysyllabically: A person’s a person, no matter how small.

The beloved story pits contentious, beleaguered Horton the Elephant against the bullying skeptics of the Jungle of Nool over the fate of the microscopic community of Whos living on a floating dust speck. With his enormous ears, Horton can hear them — but the other jungle residents don’t believe they exist.

Content advisory

Things We Lost in the Fire: Depiction of long-term drug abuse and withdrawal/recovery; some obscene language and sexual references. Mature viewing. 101 Dalmatians: Animated menace. Cruella de Vil might be too scary for very sensitive youngsters. Horton Hears a Who: Nothing objectionable. Fine family viewing.