New on DVD and Blu-ray
Big Little Lies
(HBO, $40)
Reese Witherspoon pulls you in, but Nicole Kidman proves “the real showstopper” in this recent series, said NewYorker.com. A story about the secrets of three Monterey moms, it strikingly presents violence as a commonplace in women’s lives. Its murder mystery is resolved in an “electric” finale.
Colossal
(Universal, $23)
This recent indie release was not a typical Godzilla movie, said The Washington Post. Anne Hathaway plays a boozing writer who’s forced to fight her demons when she discovers she controls a monster wreaking havoc in distant Seoul. In Colossal, “everything has more than one meaning.”
The War Trilogy
(Criterion, $80)
With three 1940s films, director Roberto Rossellini dramatized World War II “with a force that forever changed narrative-film aesthetics,” said Slant.com. Paisan benefits most from the high-def transfer, while Germany Year Zero remains the film that finally achieved a sentimentality-free realism. ■