Sometimes you just have to ignore the critics and watch a movie they don’t like on instinct. Such is the case with Trouble With the Curve, the new Clint Eastwood film that numerous influential critics have slammed, one of them even going so far as to name it one of the five worst films of the year. It is no such thing.

The film is the first time directorial effort of Robert Lorenz, Eastwood’s long-time protégé and first assistant director on such films as Blood Work; Mystic River andMillion Dollar Baby. It’s not a great film, but it’s a much better one than Eastwood’s last three disappointing films, Invictus; Hereafter and J. Edgar, all of which had the weight of the world on their shoulders. This one, Eastwood’s first as an actor since Gran Torino tells a much simpler story. It finds the actor in a role which fits him like a glove, that of a grumpy old man, in this case an aging baseball scout. Amy Adams is also cast in a familiar role as his daughter, a feisty lawyer with whom he does not always get along.

The father-daughter relationship in the film is reminiscent of the one between real life father and daughter Henry and Jane Fonda in 1981’s On Golden Pond. Adams has taken a little time off from work to accompany Eastwood as he scouts a first draft pick for the Atlanta Braves. A former draft pick of his, Justin Timberlake, now a scout for the Boston Red Sox, looking at the same player, may or may not be the guy for relationship shy Adams.

The baseball scenes are well played even if they take a backseat to the father-daughter squabbles. There are no major surprises as everything in the film goes according to movie conventions with the good guys winning and the bad guys getting their comeuppance in the end. Nonetheless you won’t be wasting the time you spend with Clint, Amy, Justin and crew.

Trouble With the Curve is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Another first time effort from a director with another well-known actor in the lead, Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage is a film with a different point of view and a different outcome. In this one, Richard Gere is a hedge fund manager who cheats at business and cheats on his long-time wife, Susan Sarandon. He’ll get away with one but not both as Sarandon blackmails him into making things right for their daughter. In the meantime we get a tense, often gripping account of a man seemingly at his wit’s end who manages to weather more than one storm.

Tim Roth stands out in the supporting cast as a cop who will stop at nothing to get the goods on Gere, who he knows, but can’t prove, is responsible for the death of a female employee with whom he has been having an affair. Nate Parker as Gere’s patsy and Stuart Margolin as his long-time lawyer are also excellent, but the film might leave a bitter taste in your mouth if you think Gere should pay more than he does for his dspicable actions.

Arbitrage is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The same critics who have their knives sharpened for a big star like Clint Eastwood, will often cut a lot of slack when it comes to the efforts of a rising director like Lynn Shelton whose latest film, Your Sister’s Sister, has received some excellent notices.

Shelton, who also wrote the screenplay, has a penchant for long, drawn-out scenes in which the actors talk a lot. Mark Duplass, also an independent writer-producer-director, albeit a less successful one, has the central role of a young man who is still a mess a year after the death of his only brother. Emily Blunt, an ex-girlfriend of the brother and a friend of Duplass’ character, suggests he take his bike, get on a ferry and go to a nearly island off of Seattle where her father has a now-empty house. With no phone, no TV and no internet, she wants him to relax and gaze at the ocean until he finds himself. The only problem is, unbeknownst to Blunt, her sister Rosemarie DeWitt, who has just broken up with her lesbian lover, is using the house.

Duplass’ melancholy is soon forgotten in a night of drinking and sex with DeWitt. Blunt turns up the next day without warning. It is eventually revealed that Duplass and DeWitt slept together, that Blunt is in love with Duplass, Duplass is in love with Blunt and DeWitt is still a lesbian. She only slept with Duplass in order to become pregnant. Although they used a condom, she poked holes in it. How will the relationships be mended?

The actors are fine, but the story has plot holes a mile wide. For example, how can the obviously British Blunt, who makes no attempt an American dialect, and the all-American DeWitt be sisters? No explanation is given. Even more puzzling is trying to figure out why lesbian DeWitt would keep a condom in her car. Is she a traveling pharmacy goods salesperson? Could be, her job is never mentioned.

A blurb on the Internet Movie Database states that the film was shot in twelve days and is largely improvised. It looks it.

Your Sister’s Sister is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

On the heels of his Broadway triumph with Guys and Dolls, Frank Loesser composed the melodic score for Sam Goldywn’s 1952 film, Hans Christian Andersen. Fittingly, Hans Christian Andersen has become the second Goldwyn classic to be given a Blu-ray upgrade after Guys and Dolls which was the first.

Danny Kaye has his best screen role in a fictionalized account of the great children’s story-teller’s life. He gets to sing such gems as “Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen”; “Anywhere I Wander” and “No Two People”, the latter with Jeanmaire, billed as “the great French ballerina”. She wasn’t really that great. She was actually a replacement for Moira Shearer, the star of 1948 classic, The Red Shoes, based on one of Anderson’s works, who had to drop out due to pregnancy.

Joey Walsh an excellent teenage actor, excels as Andersen’s apprentice cobbler (his day job). Farley Granger plays prima ballerina Jeanmaire’s choreographer husband and Roland Petit, the choreographer who would become her husband in real life two years later, plays the prince in The Little Mermaid ballet. The film has been restored to its original release run of 1 hour and 52 seconds for the first time since its theatrical release sixty years ago.

The restored version is currently only available on Blu-ray. A standard DVD edition will be released on January 15th along with other Goldwyn classics.

Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion was written after the author’s breakout novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but filmed first.

Paul Newman directed himself, Henry Fonda, Lee Remick, Michael Sarrazin and Richard Jaeckel in a fierce tale of an anti-union Oregon logging family. Jaeckel is particularly memorable in an Oscar nominated performance as Newman’s dim-witted cousin.

The film, which was previously released on a limited edition DVD from the Universal Vault series has been given a first-rate Blu-ray upgrade.

One of the most requested films noir, 1947’s The Brasher Doubloon from Dashiell Hammett’s The High Window has finally been given a DVD release after years of wrangling over a rights issue. The problem is that this is not the restored version with commentary track prepared by Fox a decade ago, but an inferior Fox Cinema Archives release that appears to have been taken from a TV release print.

The film, a Philip Marlowe mystery, has more red herrings than you can shake a stick at, but is well worth seeking out. George Montgomery is a light but effective Marlowe, Nancy Guild a woman with a secret or two and Florence Bates in full grande dame mode as a Pasadena dowager.

New DVD releases this week include The Well-Digger’s Daughter and The Words.