Suffering from the Hollywood blockbuster blues? Have I got some indies for you! All three are newly available this week on DVD.

Kim Voynar called Vadim Perelman's The Life Before Her Eyes "a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline." The story revolves around the survivor of a school shooting; Uma Thurman plays her as an adult and Evan Rachel Wood as a teenager. Kim wrote in part: "I'd expect the director's commentary on the DVD to be intriguing." The DVD does indeed feature an audio commentary by the director, joined by production designer Maia Javan. Also included are deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and several other mini-features. A Blu-ray edition is also available.

Kim also reviewed Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime when it debuted at Sundance last year. Based on the true tragedy of teenage Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) who was "brutally beaten, burned, starved and tortured to death" in 1965 Indiana, Kim said the film was difficult to watch. "The real question ... is not just how the Sylvia Likens case could have happened, but why situations like this happen at all -- and still do." Catherine Keener and James Franco also star. The DVD doesn't appear to have any supplemental material.

On the lighter side, Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day "is a nearly perfect piece of entertainment for grownups," according to James Rocchi. Frances McDormand plays a down-on-her-luck British governess and Amy Adams essays her employer, an American singer / actress in late 1930s London. The DVD includes a "making of," deleted scenes, and "Miss Pettigrew's Long Trip to Hollywood."

The Life Before Her Eyes, the latest film by Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog), opened this weekend in limited release. In part as a response to the negative reviews by a number of critics, Perelman said recently in an interview that he's decided that it's better for audiences to know the ending going in (I did confirm with Perelman that he actually said this, because I was rather surprised that he would). And while I understand Perelman's desire to counter the critical response to the film in this way, I decided to take a look at what the negative reviews actually say.

First, I'm going to largely ignore the reviews (good and bad) that came out of the Toronto International Film Festival last year, because the cut of the film in theaters now is different. So let's look at what critics have to say about the current cut. Let's look at one titled (ever so objectively) "Hollywood and the War on Women", by Prairie Miller over on News Blaze. Miller starts her "review" of the film with a five-paragraph rant that tries to tie films about the Iraq war into a perceived "war against women" in Hollywood, going so far as to make the accusation that this war is fueled, in part, by male directors and producers whose coffers are being drained by alimony and child support payments. Uh, what?

It's been five years since Vadim Perelman's critically acclaimed feature debut with House of Sand and Fog. Now the director is back with his newest film, The Life Before Her Eyes, starring Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri. The film is about Diana, whose life starts to crumble as the 15th anniversary of the school shooting she survived nears; it flashes back and forth between older Diana (Thurman) and the younger Diana (Wood) and her best friend Maureen (Amurri) in the weeks leading up to the tragic event. Cinematical sat down with Perelman and Amurri at AFI Dallas to talk about the film, which opens in limited release this weekend.

Cinematical: Eva, can you talk about the challenges of playing this role, which is much more of "nice girl" than you've played in your previous films?

Eva Amurri: The earlier roles I'd had just happened to be more bad girls. This is the first role I'd had where the role was basically all good, this very pure, selfless girl. What's funny is that Vadim really cast us against type – in real life, I'm much more the "bad" girl, while Evan is the serious "good" girl. I was a little worried about it, but I trusted Vadim, and he did a great job guiding us through it. It was an interesting exercise.

(Editor's note: This review originally ran during AFI Dallas. It's being rerun this weekend in conjunction with the film's release.)

I loved House of Sand and Fog, and I've been waiting five long years to see what director Vadim Perelman would come up with next. His latest effort, The Life Before Her Eyes, starring Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri, is a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline. The film revolves around Diana, played as a teenager by Wood and an adult by Thurman; the younger Diana was a survivor of a high school shooting, as as the 15-year anniversary of the tragic event nears, the older Diana begins to unravel.

Perelman is not a director who hand-feeds his audience easy answers. With House of Sand and Fog he made heavy use of its moody, gray and brown pallette to set a dark and unsettling mood. With The Life Before Her Eyes, he turns to brilliantly saturated hues of flowers and water to create a sublime tone that evokes what's going on with Diana. The perfect life with professor husband Paul (Brett Cullen) and daughter Emma (Gabrielle Brennan) that she's worked so hard to create is a fairy tale fantasy built on an unstable foundation of unresolved guilt, and we know from the first frames that, hard as she works to sustain it, it's as fragile as the petals of the flowers that embower her garden.

Above is the trailer for Vadim Perelman's upcoming film, The Life Before Her Eyes. For many, this movie should be a welcome respite from Uma Thurman's recent work (My Super Ex-Girlfriend), and a blast back to the more challenging and tasty fare that made her famous -- films like Dangerous Liaisons and Henry & June. Based on Laura Kasischke's novel, the film follows Thurman as the survivor of a high school shooting (something only vaguely hinted at in the trailer), whose life unravels 15 years later. Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe) plays her as a young woman, while Eva Amurri (Saved!) plays her best friend. I must say, it's so good to see Thurman in something meatier, and if this film is half as good as the trailer, this should be a must-see pick when the feature hits theaters this April.

Meanwhile, you can head through the jump to check out an official still from the film.*

*Edited to change picture

I guess it's been a while since Elephant -- time for another movie about a school shooting, right? Luckily, we've got Bloom to fit the bill. Based on Laura Kasischke's novel The Life Before Her Eyes, the movie will be directed by Vadim Perelman (of House of Sand and Fog fame) and tells a story Variety describes as that of "a woman whose idyllic life crumbles when she survives a shooting spree at a school." Reading about the book at Amazon, however, reveals more details about the plot, and makes the whole thing sound a whole lot more disturbing. Assuming the movie follows the book's plot fairly closely, it will show the woman (to be played as an adult by Uma Thurman) as a teenager surviving the shooting -- but she survives it only because one of the killers decides to kill her friend instead of her. The story then jumps forward two decades into the woman's great adult life. Needless to say, things are not as blissful as they seem, especially when the flashbacks start.

I wonder how they're going to tell this story in the movie -- it's hard to imagine a thriller (which is what production company 2929 is calling the film) getting its suspense entirely from flashbacks, though I suppose if the movie starts in the present day and everything about the shooting is a surprise, that could build some tension. Filming starts this summer, so we should see how Perelman handles the story sometime in 2007.