Sometimes it pays to see a film without knowing anything about it. Such is the case with three films I viewed this week with varying degrees of satisfaction.

It was only after viewing Gangster Squad; Mama; and Safe Haven that I read the films’ reviews. I agreed with the generally excellent notices that Mama received and the mostly negative reviews Safe Haven received, but was somewhat surprised by the negativity surrounding Gangster Squad.

To be sure, Gangster Squad is no great work of art, but it’s a well-made, fast-moving gangster epic based on a real life situation. It tells the story of an elite police squad put together by Los Angeles Police Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) in 1949 to bring down mobster Mickey Cohen. The squad is led by no-nonsense Josh Brolin and tough guy ladies’ man Ryan Gosling, whose latest conquest (Emma Stone) just happens to be Cohen’s latest mistress. The generic squad includes a token black guy (Anthony Mackie); a token Hispanic (Michael Pena); a token veteran cop (Robert Patrick) and a token family man (Giovanni Ribisi). They all acquit themselves well in their generic roles, with Gosling coming off best. The film’s least effective casting, however, is a crucial one in that two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn seems out of his league, hamming it up to a fare-thee-well as Cohen. It was directed by TV veteran Ruben Fleischer.

Gangster Squad is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Produced by Guillermo del Toro, Mama is based on a three-minute short by Spanish film-maker Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara. The two co-wrote the screenplay for their full-length feature debut with Neil Cross, while Andy directed.

The prolific Jessica Chastain has another good role as the carefree rock musician who along with her artist husband agrees to raise their two young nieces who were left abandoned in the woods for five years. The title character is a ghost separated from her own child in the mid-1800s who adopts the girls as her own. Chastain’s transformation into a caring adoptive mother and the emotional growth of the girls are at the dramatic core of this very satisfying horror film.

Mama is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Films made from Nicholas Sparks’ novels are usually set in the rural Carolinas and are, without exception, picture postcard pretty. They are also generally bland albeit with an emotional peak that is lacking in Safe Haven despite being directed by the estimable Lasse Hallstrom.

The story of a young woman running away from an abusive husband, who just happens to be a cop, is hardly new. What might have made it interesting would have been a little star wattage. Alas, there is none. Dancer turned actress Julianne Hough is not a seasoned enough actress to carry it off and neither is the more experienced, but equally dull Josh Duhamel as the young widower who becomes her protector. Noah Lomax and Mimi Kirkland as Duhamel’s kids have the necessary charisma but aren’t given enough to do. If the film had been more about them instead of their boring elders it might have had something to recommend.

Safe Haven is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Life in a home for retired musicians is played out in Quartet by a writer (Ronald Harwood), director (Dustin Hoffman) and cast (Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Michael Gambon) that is well off enough not to have to end their days in such a place. Of all the films about old age, this is the lamest one I’ve seen, getting by only on the charms of its stars leading up their introduction at a fundraiser for the home. Hoffman waited until he was 75 to make his directorial debut, and he chose this?

Quartet is available now on both Blu-ray and standard DVD in the U.K. It will be released in the U.S. next month.

Among the previously released DVDs given new new life on Blu-ray are In the Name of the Father; An Officer and a Gentleman; The Verdict and The Great Escape.

Jim Sheridan and Daniel Day-Lewis, director and star of 1989’s My Left Foot for which the star won his first Oscar, reunited for 1993’s In the Name of the Father which once again earned them both nominations, Day-Lewis for Best Actor and Sheridan for Best Picture; Director and Screenplay for the riveting docudrama about the real life Gerry Conlon who spent fifteen years in a British prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Not only was the petty thief falsely arrested, tried and convicted for terrorism in the bombing of a London pub, so were his father and other innocent family members and friends. His hard working father, played by Best Supporting Actor nominee Pete Postlethwaite, was the most tragic figure, a man who died in prison while trying to have the case reopened. Emma Thompson was also nominated for her portrayal of the British attorney who uncovers crucial evidenced hidden buy the corrupt police investigators.

One of the great romantic dramas of the early 1980s, Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman is the film that proved Richard Gere was more than a pretty face – he was an actor to be reckoned with. The on-screen chemistry between Navy pilot in training Gere and factory worker Debra Winger is palpable. Winger received the first of her three Best Actress nominations for her efforts. Louis Gossett, Jr.’s portrayal of the tough drill instructor won him an Oscar, as did the film’s unforgettable theme song, “Up Where We Belong”. Hackford, Gere and the suits at Paramount were all afraid the scripted ending might prove too hokey, but when those factory worker extras spontaneously applauded with tears streaming down their faces as Gere in his Navy whites rescues Winger from her life of poverty they knew they had something, special and so did world-wide audiences who made it an international hit.

Paul Newman gave perhaps his best performance, certainly the best of his later years, as the boozy ambulance chaser who is redeemed by an uphill court battle against powerful forces in Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, which like An Officer and a Gentleman was one of the top films of 1982. It was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture; Actor; Supporting Actor (James Mason) and Director.

It’s hard to believe that John Sturges’ The Great Escape, the iconic crowd-pleasing WWII prisoner-of-war epic based on actual events, is celebrating its 50th anniversary, but it is. Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough head the memorable cast which also included Charles Bronson, Charles Coburn, James Donald, Donald Pleasance and David McCallum.

This week’s new releases include Cloud Atlas and the Blu-ray upgrades of 1950s westerns 3:10 to Yuma and Jubal.