Welcome back to This Week In DVD! After a couple of sparse weeks we’re rewarded with a bevy of worthwhile DVD releases suitable for your viewing pleasure including a Criterion edition of Being John Malkovich, the teen super power adventure Chronicle, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Woody Harrelson playing bad cop/worse cop in Rampart, and Liam Neeson going head to head with wolves in The Grey. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Michael Michael works at an insurance firm, he hangs out with co-workers, he visits his mom and sister… and he has a ten year-old boy captive in his basement. The boy isn’t in chains, in fact he’s treated quite well aside from the captivity and occasional diddling. This calmly mesmerizing little Austrian drama about a few months in the life of a pedophile isn’t a thriller in the conventional sense, but goddamn are the final fifteen minutes suspenseful as hell. It’s a methodical and beautifully acted film that gets under your skin with its normality and subtle unpredictability.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! Sadly, this is one of the worst week for new releases in decades. Decades I say! Well, in weeks anyway. Some of the mediocre titles coming out this week include the occasionally entertaining Underworld: Awakening, the frustratingly uninteresting Mother’s Day remake, the low-rent Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, and Channing Tatum’s funniest film yet, The Vow. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Front Line War films are a staple here in the US, something that’s benefited by the fact that America has dozens of wars to choose from, but not every country is as lucky (or unlucky).  South Korea was a part of only one major conflict in the modern era, but out of this trauma have come several fantastic war films including 71: Into the Fire and My Way. The Front Line is the latest and also one of the best as it focuses on one of the war’s final battles. Both the South and the North struggle to capture and recapture a particular hill as the final hours of the war wind down, but as the clock ticks forward the men (and woman) discover there’s far more at stake here than a simple plot of land. Director Hun Jang finds real suspense and spectacular battlefield action amidst the stories between friends, enemies and countrymen.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! It’s a light release week, but some of the titles include Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, the WB’s Felicity, a Bosnian dramedy, a really bad Sammo Hung movie and more! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie Ric Meyers brings his book, Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book, to life in a documentary that feels alternately like a home-made passion project and a fun, informative and enthusiastic look at martial arts cinema. Narrator Yuri Lowenthal talks with a casual and spirited voice as he walks us through the history of kung fu movies and the filmmakers both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. Clips from dozens of classic movies, new movies and movies you’ve probably never heard of are spread liberally throughout alongside animation, knowledge and personality. Meyers’ conclusions are sometimes a bit wonky, but it’s a fun and fast watch for genre fans.

There’s an unusual trend in this week’s releases in that they’re genre heavy with a high percentage of horror films for some reason. I love horror movies, but sadly only two of the six genre titles covered below are really worth your time and money. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Innkeepers The Yankee Pedlar Inn is closing its doors for good, and only two employees remain for its last few days of very light occupancy. Claire (the ridiculously adorable Sara Paxton) and Luke (the equally adorable but in a totally different way Pat Healy) wile away the late night hours hunting for the Inn’s supposed resident ghost, but what begins with a pair of overactive imaginations soon becomes a terrifying reality. Ti West’s second feature shows a deft hand at pacing, humor and scares and delivers beautifully on all three counts. Best of all, this is a rarity among genre films in that it manages to make you care for the characters and fear for their safety. And did I mention Paxton is freaking adorable?

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! You should already have the fourth Mission: Impossible film on pre-order, and other titles out this week include the very funny Bob’s Burgers, a quartet of sexy nurse movies from Roger Corman, the second season of HBO’s Treme and more. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Shame Brandon (Michael Fassbender) seems to have it all, at least on the outside. He has a high-paying job, a great Manhattan apartment and a life filled with beautiful women. That last one isn’t as fun as it sounds though as the arrival of his little sister (Carey Mulligan) pulls the lid back on his uncontrollable obsession with sex and reveals a man who loathes himself. It’s probably the most depressing, sex-filled movie you’ve seen in some time, but Fassbender’s performance is also one of the bravest. Steve McQueen’s film turns what could have been an unsympathetic condition into a mix of the pitiful and heartbreaking. Powerful, uncompromising performances and filmmaking.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! This is actually the third anniversary of my stewardship of the column, and I want to thank all of you for stopping by each and every Tuesday to check out the week’s best and worst DVD releases. I’ve discovered countless fantastic films over the last three years, and I hope some of you can claim the same. Or even just one of you. This week’s releases include an utterly terrible biopic (with great makeup!) of Margaret Thatcher, Werner Herzog’s best documentary from 2011, a bland alien invasion flick set in Moscow, a powerful boys-in-prison drama from Norway and more! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Conversation Piece Burt Lancaster plays a retired American living in Rome whose quiet life is interrupted by a quartet of rude and rambunctious neighbors. They talk their way into renting his upstairs apartment, and over the course of the months that follow they worm their way into his life with interruptions, destruction, seduction and endless conversation. Luchino Visconti’s film is a beautifully shot tale of clashing ideals and intellects unafraid to mix political discussion with homoerotic undertones and black comedy with a sexy teenage seductress. Raro Video has done a fantastic job with the film’s first widescreen, English language release in the US, and while the link here is for their new Blu-ray transfer a DVD version is also available.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! It’s a fairly calm release week, but there are a few recognizable titles hitting shelves including Steven Spielberg’s cheesy War Horse and the universally acclaimed film about a man famous for sticking his hand inside a felt anus, Being Elmo. Lesser known releases include a couple Cartoon Network shows, Bob Newhart’s unfortunate TV swan song, two European imports worth your time and more. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Tyrannosaur Joseph (Peter Mullan) leads a sad, lonely life punctuated with bouts of alcohol-fueled violence, but when he meets a charitable woman named Hannah (Olivia Colman) he discovers his humanity may yet be salvageable. “An animal can only take so much punishment and humiliation before it snaps, fights back,” he says at one point. “It’s just nature.” Paddy Considine wrote and directed this, his feature debut, and it’s clearly a personal tale inspired by the people and places he’s known. It’s a bleak, tough watch at times, but Considine surprises with a wise and unexpected ending.

Welcome back to This Week in DVD! It’s pretty slim pickings this week with the best release requiring a region-free player, but there are still a few titles worth a rental. Some of this week’s releases include David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, Angelina Jolie’s In the Land Of Blood and Honey, the 80′s shocker Don’t Go in the House and more. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Yellow Sea (UK) A man finds himself in over his head with gambling debts and decides to head to Korea to look for his wife who went there months prior. The trip’s financiers task him with an assassination to wipe his debt clean, but what should have been a simple act becomes something far more complicated and messy. This is the first Korean production to be co-financed by a major US studio (Fox), but thankfully it seems to have had no negative effect on the finished product. Hong-jon Na’s film is just as wonderful and brutal as his debut, The Chaser, but it benefits from a deeper, more political story. Not to say it shies away from the action and violence… there is some spectacular bloodletting here in addition to gun/hatchet/fist fights and chases. **NOTE – This is a region2 DVD which requires either a region-free player or the willingness to watch on your PC.**

Hey kids, it’s This Week In DVD time again! There’s a whopping six releases worth buying this week, and four of them are foreign language flicks. Make of that what you will. Look below for my recommendations on Gainsbourg, The Sitter, Hop, The Muppets, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and… Clown Hunt? As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Battle Royale It’s the near future, and Japan has grown so tired of their violently out of control youth that they’ve organized an annual event featuring a randomly chosen class forced to fight to the death on a distant island. This release has been a long time coming. The movie is over ten years old, but while it’s utterly fantastic this is the first US release for reasons of misguided political correctness. It’s wonderfully violent and bloody film that also happens to have some interesting things to say about society and the cycle of violence… but you can ignore all that if you choose and just focus on the stylishly violent encounters between kids, cliques and even friends. Anchor Bay has released the film in two versions. The single disc only includes the director’s cut, which adds some interesting character bits but is slightly inferior to the theatrical. The one listed to the right though is their beautiful four-disc set that includes the theatrical and director’s cuts plus the mediocre sequel plus multiple extras.

Welcome back to This Belated Week in DVD! Last year SXSW caused me to post a lesser incarnation of this column as I had no time to check out most of the week’s releases. That didn’t go over so well, so this year I decided to simply delay the column so that I’d have time to cover the titles in my usual (ie more thorough) manner. So let’s get to it! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Young Adult 2011 was a good year for divisive film reactions as very few releases garnered anything resembling near-universal acclaim. (Even the year’s Best Picture winner experienced as much hatred as it did love.) Jason Reitman’s latest film had viewers split as well with its story of a selfish and often mean-spirited writer who returns to her home town to woo an ex-fling who’s now happily married. Charlize Theron gives a stellar performance as an unlikeable and possibly irredeemable protagonist, and Diablo Cody’s script is her most mature and intelligent effort yet. It’s funny, sad and one of the most honest films of last year.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! A wide range of movies are hitting shelves today, but the two best releases happen to be television series including HBO’s Game of Thrones and my pick of the week below. On the movie front we have the fantastic racer doc Senna, the surprisingly funny indie comedy High Road, Pedro Almodovar’s twisted thriller The Skin I Live In, Adam Sandler’s latest abortion Jack and Jill, and more! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Adventure Time: It Came from the Nightosphere A boy and his dog spend their days playing in the world of their imagination, and the result is some gloriously effed up adventures. I make no apology for loving this show. It’s like swallowing a sugar-filled grenade that explodes in your head over and over again throughout each episode’s eleven-minute run-time. Everything about the show is free-flowing and utterly weird, from the animation style to the humor to the stories themselves. This DVD features sixteen episodes including the Emmy-nominated “Nightosphere.”

Welcome back to This Week In DVD and the last day of February! Well, what should be the last day but is instead actually the 2nd to last thanks to the shenanigans of the evil and gilled Leap Dave Williams. Only one big title hits shelves this week, but it’s an Academy Award winner! Other titles that aren’t named Hugo include a few fantastic and exciting foreign films (The Front Line, Rabies, The Yellow Sea), a few less exciting foreign films (The Conformist, Tomorrow When the War Began, Mandrill) and more! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. I Melt With You Four old college friends (Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe, Christian McKay, Jeremy Piven) get together annually for a drug-fueled weekend, but their latest reunion finds each of them at the lowest point of their lives. All four leads do a fantastic job in this energetic but terribly depressing movie that examines the ideas of failure, depression and expectations at the mid-point of a man’s life. Things tease the point of over-doing it, but the lasting effect is a powerful one as the men face the lives and mistakes they’ve made. Plus Carla Gugino, Arielle Kebbel, and Sasha Grey! Director Mark Pellington has a couple solid films under his belt (Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies), but his main career focus seems to be music videos so it’s fitting that his latest film matches the stylish visuals, heavy emotional toll and powerful [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! Some fun titles are hitting shelves today, and not a single one of them rocked the box office. Of course, some of them never had the chance… but Tower Heist? Pretty sure that was intended to be a hit. Other releases this week include the Elizabeth Olsen stunner Martha Marcy May Marlene, the Korean action epic War of the Arrows, the bland Channing Tatum (redundancy alert!) thriller Son of No One, and more! As an added bonus one of the eleven entries below has been contributed by the highly educated and spry Landon Palmer! Can you guess which one? As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Retreat A couple dealing with marital issues heads to a remote island to save their relationship, but when a stranger washes up onshore with a fantastical tale of a worldwide plague the three of them enter into a deadly game of survival.This British thriller takes major cues from the superior Dead Calm, but it manages to create solid suspense, tension and uncertainty of its own. Cillian Murphy and Jamie Bell give strong, convincing performances as the husband and stranger, respectively, but Thandie Newton doesn’t fare as well. Still, this is the kind of thriller that deserves better than to get lost in the shuffle. Check out my full review here.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD, and happy Valentine’s Day you sexy sons of bitches! In honor of the holiday I’ve themed this week’s pitches to the idea of love. As in if you love the environment you should buy a copy of the re-issued The Lorax.  Or if you love your adopted Asian daughter you should check out Woody Allen: A Documentary. You get the picture. Speaking of love, if you happen to be currently unattached (or maybe your better half is just out of town) FSR has partnered with an intriguing new dating service. How About We matches people by the date itself instead of shared personality traits or surface-level preferences. I know, it’s a weird thing for a movie site to do, but sometimes you just want to go watch The Vow with someone who won’t judge. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Take Shelter Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) is a husband and father who fears he may be slowly falling victim to schizophrenia. The alternative is that a storm of end-times proportions is heading his family’s way, and he’s not sure which outcome is ideal. Writer/director Jeff Nichols’ film is a successful slowburn of a drama that rewards viewers who stay with Curtis throughout his troubles. The film explores the onset of possible mental illness as a parallel to the hardships of a down economy and daily stresses, and in addition to a powerhouse performance from [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Welcome back to This Week in DVD! Some great, good and sadly deficient releases await you including The Sunset Limited, Knuckle, season two of Rocko’s Modern Life, the second to last Twilight film and more! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Project NIM In the early 1970s a douchey professor at Columbia University set out on an experiment involving cross species communication by taking a young chimpanzee from its mother shortly after birth and placing it with a human family to be raised as one of their children. This documentary from director James Marsh is ostensibly about that chimp named Nim, but the people who pass in and out of his life are just as much the subjects here. Their motivations, actions and attitudes offer a smorgasbord of typical human behaviors that none of us should be proud of regardless of where you land on the issue of animal ethics, and the result is an oddly fascinating glimpse at the human psyche as interpreted by our closest living relative.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! Another week another ton of DVDs hitting shelves both real and virtual, and while there are several worth renting and avoiding there are only two worth buying. One is visible immediately below, and the other? One of last year’s best films. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Perfect Sense (UK) A chef (Ewan McGregor) and an epidemiologist (Eva Green) meet and fall in love just as a strange new disease begins to spread worldwide. People are struck with a strong emotional response immediately followed by the loss of one of their senses. It’s like Contagion but with heart and personality. This is a beautiful film about life, love and what it means to be human. It’s a must-see about mankind’s resilience in the face of loss and devastation. Just be sure to watch it before your vision goes. **NOTE – This is a region2 DVD which requires either a region-free player or the willingness to watch on your PC.**

Welcome to This Week in DVD! Lots of titles hitting shelves today, and we’re covering nineteen of them below. High profiles like Real Steel and Paranormal Activity 3 are releasing alongside indies like The Woman and Beware the Gonzo. There’s also several older titles worth checking out including Punishment Park, The Arena with Pam Grier and a Criterion release of Godzilla. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Whistleblower A female cop (Rachel Weisz) from the Midwest takes a temporary but high paid job as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia and discovers despicable crimes and criminals in her midst. Her instinct as a cop is to help people and bring the guilty to justice, but the systematic corruption may be too widespread and unbeatable. Weisz gives a strong and emotional performance, and the film pulls no punches in its exploration of the sex trafficking trade that exists in Bosnia (and around the world). It manages to be both powerful and suspenseful too while never feeling the need to glamorize or Hollywood-ize the story. This isn’t the sexiest release of the week and there are some better films below, but it’s an important and well made movie with a message worth sharing.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD. I had a root canal this morning. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Redline In the very distant future a group of retro racers who still use wheel-based vehicles take part in an ultimate race called Redline while dealing with the competition, organized crime and an alien group intent on ending the tournament forever. This Japanese anime is a blast, and fans looking for that elusive crossover between Cannonball Run and Animalympics should look no further. The film opens and closes with some wildly fun race sequences while the middle works to mostly setup the main storyline and relationships between the racers and two leads. Plus boobs!

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! Not a big or high profile week of releases, but there are some solid titles just the same. And there’s even a theme! Of sorts. More than a few of the titles below far exceeded my expectations including HBO’s Boardwalk Empire which I feared would be little more than a period piece Sopranos, Anna Faris’ latest comedy (What’s Your Number?) that I never expected to be so damn funny and charming, and my pick of the week about the accounting behind the business of baseball. Because seriously, how could that not be boring as dirt? As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Moneyball Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland A’s, tries to end his team’s losing streak with an unorthodox mathematical approach to picking and playing his players. We all know baseball is the most boring team-based sport in the world, so it would seem to follow that a two-hour plus movie about the behind the scenes management of a baseball team would be a complete and utter snooze-fest. But Moneyball is a fascinating watch even when Pitt and Jonah Hill are just bouncing stats back and forth and comparing players. The end feels a bit underwhelming, but getting there is far more interesting and engaging than any baseball game.

Welcome to 2012 and the last year of your life! That’s not me threatening you by the way, it’s the Mayans. And who better to predict the end of civilization than a culture that’s long since gone extinct. This week’s DVD releases are filled with other things looking to kill you including Contagion, Shark Night, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, and a really well put together woman named Frankenhooker. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Guard A smuggling ring in a small Irish seaside town draws the attention of an FBI agent (Don Cheadle), and he’s forced to team up with a local cop (Brendan Gleeson) of dubious morality if he hopes to crack the case. John Michael McDonagh’s wonderfully foul and often witty black comedy offers a great pairing with Gleeson and Cheadle playing off of each other to perfection. Gleeson in particular shines as a rude, sarcastic and possibly racist hick who may be a better comedian than police officer. This one gets compared to the superior In Bruges for a few different reasons, but it stands quite strong on its own.