One of the most exciting talents to come out of the 1970s was writer/director Terrence Malick who made two stunning films, 1973’s Badlands and 1978’s 1973’s Days of Heaven1973’s and then disappeared from the scene for two decades. His much anticipated return, 1998’s The Thin Red Line, unlike his two earlier film, was a polarizing film. Although many found it profound, others, including me, found it confusing and off-putting. The confusion came from the dropping of characters and their story lines midway through and the voice-over narration that made it difficult to tell which character was talking. The off-putting aspect of the film was the moving away from the action to concentrate on a dying bird and other objects not germane to the narrative. Still, the film was popular enough to garner seven Oscar nominations including two for Malick as both writer and director. His next film, The New World, which came seven years later received just one Oscar nomination for its cinematography. A slow-moving tale of Captain John smith and Pocahontas, the film was more nature shots intertwined with dramatic scenes. This time they made more sense, as the destruction of the environment was a key story element. It didn’t, however, make the going any less ponderous.

Now six years later, Malick’s latest film, The Tree of Life is all about the pretty pictures with little narrative drive. The story of three brothers growing up in the 1950s is muted both in scope and dialogue, but does have that gorgeous cinematography to soothe the eye if not the brain. The performances in a film like this are almost secondary, but Jessica Chastain (New York Film Critics award winner for Best Supporting Actress for this, Take Shelter and The Help) as the mother and Hunter McCracken as the oldest boy deliver fine performances despite the awkward structure of the film. Some have praised Brad Pitt’s portrayal of the father, indeed the New York Film Critics gave him their Best Actor award in conjunction with his performance in Moneyball, but I don’t see it. No one including Sean Penn himself knows what the actor is doing in a poorly written role as McCracken’s character grown up and the film’s bland rendering of the hereafter is poorly handled. I say cut out Sean Penn’s scenes and run it continuously in a museum where it seems better suited.

A film that makes perfect sense in its ode to nature is Jean Renoir’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game nearly released in a beautifully rendered Blu-ray version.

Renoir’s film can be viewed as either a farce with an underlying element of tragedy or a tragedy with comic undertones. It’s one of those films that demands to be seen more than once in order to be fully appreciated.

Released in France in July, 1939, it was met with derision by the French haute bourgeoisie (upper middle-class), cut by Renoir himself and then pulled from exhibition by the Vichy government. The original version thought destroyed in an allied bombing raid during the war, the film was released in the U.S. in its truncated form in 1950. After missing elements including a key scene near the end were found, the film was reconstructed by Renoir himself and re-released in 1959. This is the version that we know today.

The film’s most memorable scenes are the extended hunting scene in which harmless animals are cruelly shot by a blasé group of aristocrats and the dance macabre that leads to the end. Both scenes precipitate the death of the innocent at the end of the film and the seemingly inevitable fall of the world into an abyss from which it may not recover.

Comedies with serious undertones are also among this year’s releases now available on DVD.

One of the best is Jesse Pertetz’s Our Idiot Brother in which Paul Rudd is not an idiot, but a gentle soul who could well be the cousin of Peter Sellers’ character in Being There.

Rudd’s Ned takes people at face value, so that when a uniformed cop pleads with him for a bag of marijuana for medical purposes he foolishly sells him a bag leading to his interment. After leaving jail he alternates between the homes of his mother (Shirley Knight) and three sisters (Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer and Zooey Deschanel). Because he can’t tell a lie, he unwittingly causes trouble for each of his sisters, but this being a comedy, not a tragedy, it all works out for the best in the end.

A bittersweet comedy generating much critical acclaim is Mike Mills’ Beginners for which Christopher Plummer is the early favorite to win this year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

While I certainly wouldn’t deny Plummer an Oscar, his role here is not really fleshed out. He plays a 75 year-old man who comes out to his son (Ewan McGregor) as gay, and then receives a death sentence in the form of cancer. The film then follows Plummer’s slow decline, while his story line struggles to compete for screen time with McGregor’s romance with flighty Melanie Laurent. It’s worth your time if you don’t approach it expecting more than it has to offer.

Another family relationship comedy of note is Crazy, Stupid, Love, directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the duo responsible for last year’s quirky I Love You, Phillip Morris. Steve Carell is the hapless middle-aged dude whose wife (Julianne Moore) surprises him by asking for a divorce. Ryan Gosling is the smooth-talking young dude who teaches Carell the art of picking up girls in bars. Emma Stone is the object of Gosling’s affection. The whole thing is sweetly resolved in the end.

Dan Rush’s Everything Must Go provides Will Ferrell with an unusally subdued role as an out-of-work man on the brink of divorce who ends up living on his front lawn until the authorities intervene. Nicely written and acted inter-personal relationships formulate the bulk of this modest comedy/drama.

Horrible Bosses and The Change-Up come perilously close to being gross-out comedies without actually crossing the line.

Seth Gordon’s Horrible Bosses stars Jason Bateman, Jason Sudekis and Charlie Day as three hapless friends who conspire to murder each other’s bosses (Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston) with hilarious results. David Dobkin’s The Change-Up is a send-up of all those body switching comedies of yore with Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds as the two friends who get to see what live is really like for the other.

This week’s new DVD releases include The Help and The Debt.