Oh, let’s just cop to it: We’re all suckers for novelty. It seems hypocritical that there’s so much derisive media chatter these days about the empty gimmickry of 3-D when half the reason “The Artist” (2011) caught our attention was thanks to, admit it, a gimmick. (And we swear, we’re not speaking as a mouthpiece for some conspiratorial, box-office-goosing 3-D advocacy group — we don’t like the eyestrain or the fleecing either.) Yes, this is an Academy Award winner for best picture, but still, you could sense critics’ free-pass attitude going in: “A throwback silent film? Wonderful!” Happily, European filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius delivered and then some, crafting a valentine to old Hollywood whose inherent charm is simply enhanced by its meticulously (re)captured narrative style. Oscar winner Jean Dujardin, star of Hazanavicius’s worthwhile “OSS” Bond spoofs, plays George Valentin, a suave silent-era icon whose decline intersects with the rise of equally charismatic talkies star Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). Their poignant, human-scale portrait of a fast-changing world has a resonance that’s timeless. Extras: A smart 20-minute featurette is highlighted by rehearsal footage of Dujardin and Bejo’s big dance number, a two-minute showstopper that demanded five months of training. Cast member James Cromwell is an eloquent voice in a group Q&A. And another segment rhapsodizes about period locations. (Sony, $30.99; Blu-ray, $35.99)
COMEDY/ACTION
21 JUMP STREET (2012)
The title tells us this one’s a feature remake of the dawn-of-Fox TV staple, but what’s onscreen feels more like a buddy-cop riff on the “Superbad” high school dynamic. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are the officers whose juvenile antics get them busted down to juvenile narc-ing, where their friendship is put to the test. There’s some amusing commentary on the short shelf life of teenage cool, but wow, do the filmmakers go heavy on crotch humor. Ice Cube’s captain is funnier. Extras: Cast and crew commentary; segment on cameo player (spoiler alert) Johnny Depp. (Sony, $30.99; Blu-ray, $35.99)
More
FANTASY
WRATH OF THE
TITANS (2012)
Sam Worthington returns as “Clash of the Titans” demigod Perseus, recruited in the gods’ struggle to keep molten, monolithic Kronos imprisoned. Trouble is, our roughneck hero must have used that chip on his shoulder for whittling, because the character just doesn’t feel as rousingly motivated here. He’s Complacent Rocky, when “Wrath” needs Eye-of-the-Tiger Rocky. High points: improved 3-D, and frenetically shot u-r-there combat sequences. Extras: On Blu-ray, branching featurettes geared toward geeking out to the movie from either a gods-centric vantage point or “the Path of Men.” (Warner, $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99; 3-D, $44.95)
DRAMA
ORANGES AND
SUNSHINE (2010)
Emily Watson plays real-life figure Margaret Humphreys, a British social worker who in the mid-’80s uncovered a government scheme responsible for the deportation of thousands of at-risk children from the UK to Australia decades earlier. The film is a fairly straightforward presentation of a story that’s anything but. Still, director Jim Loach (Ken’s son, not that the disc mentions it) handles the subject compellingly, and strikes a decent dramatic balance between the grown migrant children’s hurt and Humphreys’s own empathic distress. With Hugo Weaving and David Wenham. Extras: Cast and crew interviews. (Cohen Media Group, $29.95; Blu-ray, $34.95)