By BRUCE DANCIS, Scripps Howard News Service

Two provocative films that were easy to miss during their limited theatrical runs last summer are now available on DVD.

Americans have always used the past to justify their current political desires.

Since even TiVo owners can't watch everything worthwhile on Sunday-night television, the DVD release this week of "Endgame" and "Emma" -- presentations on PBS' "Masterpiece Contemporary" and "Masterpiece Classic," respectively -- is good news indeed.

What do Americans know today about Amelia Earhart? My guess is that, if she's remembered at all, it's as a pioneering aviator in the late 1920s and 1930s who disappeared in the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while trying to fly around the world.

Three DVD boxed sets and a documentary that are off the beaten track -- or at least not on the shelves of video stores that only carry Hollywood hits -- have gotten our attention this week.

Ricky Gervais is a very funny guy. In "The Office," the brilliant British sitcom he created and wrote with Stephen Merchant, Gervais played a cringingly hilarious office manager who was a lot less intelligent or talented than he believed.

Long after the war in Iraq is over, we will probably still be debating not just the nature of the combat but the controversial run-up to the war as well. Coincidentally, both "The Hurt Locker" and "In the Loop," movies that explore these aspects of the war, are out this week on DVD. The former is a tense and realistic look at a U.S.

"For Use By Humans Only" and "No Non-Human Loitering" read the signs on the city's streets. In "District 9," one of the most original movies of the year, the aliens have already landed on Earth and we humans are not treating them very well.

In the opening sequence of "Inglourious Basterds," Quentin Tarantino directs an emotionally shattering scene with brilliant camera work, delicate performances and almost-unbearable tension as a Gestapo officer in Nazi-occupied France visits a farmhouse where he suspects Jews are being hidden.

Filmmaker Michael Mann's lofty aims have usually been matched by his significant achievements. As executive producer of TV's "Miami Vice," he modernized the police crime drama and made it hip to be an undercover police detective.