Happily, the film is scheduled to be released on DVD May 18 by Oscilloscope Laboratories (www.oscilloscope.net/; $29.99 DVD; $34.99 Blu-ray; rated R).
Messenger features Foster as Will Montgomery, a decorated Army sergeant who has just returned home from Iraq only to be reassigned to work for the Army's Casualty Notification Office. Foster quickly realizes that his new job is far more emotionally taxing and dangerous than the battlefield: He and Harrelson are responsible for informing the family when a soldier is killed.
The film explores the equally intense and ambivalent attachment Foster develops with his older comrade and with the widow of a fallen soldier (Morton).
Morals and morale in the '50s
The Criterion Collection (www.criterion.com/) presents two films that take critical, at times downright acerbic, looks at the American family of the 1950s and early '60s and the family values it supposedly engendered.
Nicholas Ray's overlooked 1956 masterpiece Bigger Than Life ($39.95 DVD and Blu-ray; not rated) stars James Mason (who also produced) as a typical, loving suburban dad.
But when he is prescribed cortisone for a painful condition, the Ward Beaver-type is transformed into a sadistic, dictatorial psychopath. Loosely based on a real story, the film inspired Danish helmer Kristian Levring's 2008 family thriller, Don't Be Afraid.
Fear is at the heart of Sidney Lumet's 1960 Tennessee Williams adaptation, Fugitive Kind, also from Criterion ($39.95; not rated). A savage social critique, the film exposes the often corrupt and sadistic relationships and social interactions that bind together the inhabitants of a small town that appears idyllic from the outside. It features an incredible cast, including Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani and Maureen Stapleton.
Martial arts action
