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.

Another week, another pretty solid group of DVD titles released for your viewing pleasure. Our wallets and bank accounts will be a lot happier this week too as compared to last Tuesday when the number of DVDs worth buying numbered eight. Eight! That’s more than most DVD columns feature in their entirety! But like I said, this week is filled with rentals (and one title worth buying) including Crazy Stupid Love, Cars 2, Bunraku, Trespass and more. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Adventures of Mark Twain (UK) “Naked people have little to no influence in this society.” So says the always wise and wonderful Mark Twain as captured in clay in this funny and whimsical claymation adventure. The film mixes bits and pieces of several of Twain’s works, short and long, into an adventure that sees Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher join Mr Samuel Clemens himself on a steam powered airship across the sky. Twain is hoping to find Halley’s Comet so he can end his life in its flames, but the children attempt to convince him that he still has much to offer mankind and that mankind has much to offer him. Fanciful visuals and eminently quotable observations from Twain’s writing make this a fun film that speaks to kids as well as adults. **NOTE – This is a region2 DVD which requires either a region-free player or the willingness to watch on your PC.**

Happy day after the Fourth of July! I hope you got plenty of patriotic presents under the flagpole this year, but if you received gift-cards like I did you’re in luck as there are a couple DVDs worth picking up this week. Sure one’s Japanese and the other is Canadian, but that doesn’t mean they’re not pro-democracy, pro-freedom, and all kinds of awesome. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it (and help out FSR in the process). 13 Assassins A group of samurai choose honor over duty and make a stand against an evil lord who murders, rapes, and maims with impunity. Takashi Miike crafts one of his rare straight-forward films that eschews zaniness and offensive visuals for plot, character, and sincere action. Short fight scenes dot the opening hour, but most of that time is given over to the samurai coming together and planning their attack. The final hour is where it all comes together as the baker’s dozen go up against a few hundred of the lord’s soldiers with bows and arrows, swords, and trap-filled architecture. It’s an exciting and thrilling adventure filled with heroism, integrity, and bloodshed, and it’s not to be missed.