New DVD releases

"Across the Universe"

Songs by the Beatles and wild visuals crafted by director Julie Taymor take center stage in this musical romance set against the social upheaval of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. Evan Rachel Wood stars as a sheltered American teen whose eyes are gradually opened to the era's injustices and idealism, while Jim Sturgess plays a working-class Brit who comes to America searching for his father and falls for Wood.

"The Brave One"

Jodie Foster gets mad and gets even in a female variation of "Taxi Driver," the 1970s film that brought the actress her first Academy Award nomination. Foster stars as a New York radio host who turns into a vengeful vigilante prowling the streets with a gun after she's seriously injured and her fiance is killed by thugs. Terrence Howard co-stars as a cop who befriends her, unaware she's the perpetrator making headlines as judge, jury and executioner of wrongdoers.

"Elizabeth: The Golden Age"

Cate Blanchett returns to the role that made her movie career, again earning a best-actress Oscar nomination as the British monarch of centuries past. The follow-up to 1998's "Elizabeth" reunites Blanchett, co-star Geoffrey Rush and director Shekhar Kapur as the Protestant spinster queen faces a holy war with Roman Catholic Spain while engaging in a dalliance with the dashing explorer Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen).