Every year, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its Oscar nominations, there are several potential nominees whose failure to be nominated is disappointing. This year is no exception. Only time will tell if purging the Academy of long-time members without an Oscar nomination who haven’t worked in ten years will insure more diversity. My gut feeling is it won’t. Along with the supposed dead wood, they’ll be purging some of the wise old souls who voted for the likes of Denzel Washington, Halle Berry and Samuel L. Jackson. Personally I wouldn’t have voted for the new-to-home-video Straight Outta Compton, which was part of what kicked up the fuss over the lack of diversity, but I would have voted for Idris Elba for the yet-to-be-released on home video Beasts of No Nation, which had a day-and-date streaming release with its limited theatrical run last October.

You may not be able to find Elba in Beasts of No Nation on home video but you can find him in the newly released Luther 4 as well as in the first three seasons of the British mystery series for which he won numerous awards including a Golden Globe for Luther 2. He is currently nominated for both Beasts of No Nation and Luther at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards to be held this Saturday, January 30th.

If you’re not familiar with Luther, I would say its closest U.S. cousin is Criminal Minds. Like Criminal Minds, Luther is about the hunt for serial killers. John Luther (Elba) is a brilliant but damaged veteran detective whose unorthodox methods often land him in hot water.

The impressive supporting cast includes Ruth Wilson as a femme fatale killer, Steven Mackintosh as a rogue cop, Paul McGann as Luther’s wife’s lover, and Warren Brown as Luther’s loyal young sergeant.

The basic storyline of the five hip-hop artists who form the band NWA in Straight Outta Compton is an interesting one, but it’s not a film you can watch comfortably with your 80-year-old Great-Aunt Tillie. One’s tolerance for the film depends not just on how open one is to the music, but how well one is able to handle the excessive violence depicted and the monotonous use of “m-f” and the “n” word, which total nearly 300 utterances each in the theatrical release version and even more in the unrated version. Both are included on the Blu-ray and DVD of the film directed by F. Gary Gray starring O’Shea Jackson Jr. as his real life father Ice Cube, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and Jason Mitchell as Easy-E.

Another film that won’t appeal to Great-Aunt Tillie, or most oldsters, is actress Marielle Heller’s writing and directing debut The Diary of a Teenage Girl for which she is nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards. Also nominated is Bel Powley, the 23-year-old actress who portrays a 15-year-old who is having an affair with her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend, played by Alexander Skarsgard.

The film, based on Phoebe Glockner’s novel, takes place in the San Francisco of the mid-seventies in which Powley’s mother, Kristin Wiig, is still a practicing hippie ten years after hippies went out of fashion. Christopher Meloni also gets star billing as Wiig’s second ex-husband and Powley’s ex-stepfather who is still financing her education at a private school.

The numerous sex scenes between Powley and Skarasgard, as well as Powley’s dalliances with a couple of guys her own age, are uncommonly graphic for a commercial film, but are not quite pornographic. If they make you uncomfortable, though, you can close your eyes and listen to the 70s music accompanying them on the soundtrack.

A film you can comfortably watch with Great-Aunt Tillie is Nancy Meyers’ The Intern.

From the director of Something’s Gotta Give and The Holiday comes another light comedy that contains Robert De Niro’s best work in some time. The once consistently great actor actually gives a performance in this one that doesn’t seem phoned in as a retired executive who goes to work for aspiring entrepreneur Anne Hathaway and guides her through problems both business and domestic. Rene Russo co-stars as the widowed De Niro’s surprising new girlfriend. It peters out in the end so if Great-Aunt Tillie nods off, she won’t have missed much. She will probably wake refreshed and think she had a great time watching the whole thing.

Action director Balthasar Kormakur directed Everest from a script by two-time Oscar nominee William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Gladiator), and Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire). With that kind of writing pedigree you’d think the screenplay would at least be the equal of the visuals in this examination of the 1996 climbing disaster in which twenty people were killed trying to get to the peak of the world’s highest mountain. It wasn’t. While most of the scenes were competently done, there are stretches where the film drags, including all the domestic scenes involving the women who wait.

Jason Clarke is the leader of the expedition which also includes Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sam Worthington, and Emily Watson at base command. Keira Knightley as Clarke’s wife and Robin Wright as Brolin’s wife are pretty much wasted. Brolin’s character is extremely annoying. If you really want to be annoyed, watch him in this and Sicario back to back.

On the plus side, however, the film is gorgeously shot, easily earning its Visual Effects Society nomination for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature. The film also earns its stunt ensemble nod from the Screen Actors Guild. Released in theatres on IMAX, the film is available on 3D Blu-ray as well as 2D Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include the TV phenomenon Downton Abbey Season 6 and the Blu-ray upgrade of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man.