Week of January 25

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Returning to their strengths

Retired super-spy Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is living a quiet life in Red, doing little besides flirting on the phone with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), a customer service agent who handles his pension checks. When he kills the team of assassins who disrupt his retirement, Frank knows his phone is tapped, everyone in his life is now a target, and he has to find and save Sarah. With a driven CIA agent (Karl Urban) tracking him every step of the way, Frank seeks the help of old colleagues John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, and Helen Mirren... all classified RED (Retired: Extremely Dangerous) and capable of showing their young opponents the value of experience. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Taking on an unironic martial arts project after his turn as Black Dynamite, Michael Jai White is Isaiah Bone in Blood and Bone. Fresh out of jail, Bone joins a street fight promoter (Dante Basco) and attracts the attention of a powerful mob boss (Eamonn Walker) and the international arms dealer (Julian Sands) that controls the street fights... but at home, Bone doesn't behave like a mercenary fighter, and quietly pursues his own agenda. With Nona Gaye.

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True Stories

Though she doesn't know anything about horse racing, Penny Chenery (Dianne Lane) takes over her ailing father's stables in Disney's Secretariat. Based on the events surrounding the 1973 Triple Crown, the film follows Penny as she carves her own path through the male-dominated world of racing, and with the help of a veteran horse trainer (John Malkovich) and groomer (Nelsan Ellis) she fights for her family's legacy... even though everyone around her wants her to be a more normal housewife and mother, and sell the stables. On DVD and Blu Ray.

The story of a young, pre-Beatles John Lennon (Aaron Johnson), Nowhere Boy begins with Lennon as a troublemaker living with his aunt (Kristin Scott Thomas). He reunites with his estranged mother (Anne-Marie Duff) who introduced John to his first instrument, begins his first band, meets Paul (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and George, and takes the first steps toward becoming a legendary figure in rock & roll.

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Solving Murders

The third and final film in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest rejoins Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) in intensive care and framed for murder. Once again, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is working to clear her name, but with a massive conspiracy working to keep Lisbeth silent, she must do whatever it takes to bring down the corrupt officials who are trying to destroy her. On DVD and Blu Ray.

In the series-concluding Saw VII, the survivors of Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) traps and puzzles face off against one another to take the place of their mentor. Returning from Saw III through VI, Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) abducts and tests a self-hep guru (Sean Patrick Flanery) and punishes him for lying about being a Jigsaw survivor, and he sends video of the tests to an internal affairs officer (Chad Donella). As the game is played and the police follow the video clues, Hoffman tries to assert himself as the next Jigsaw, but there are other Jigsaw disciples who would challenge him. With Cary Elwes.

Eric's Corner

Red Hill immediately reminded me of John Carpenter in the good ole' days. The movie might not aim for more than a quality B-movie, but it offers the vengeance against a guilty town from The Fog, the John Ford style bad-assery of Assault on Precinct 13, and the silent and unstoppable monster from Halloween. It's not going to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year, but Red Hill is a great looking picture that knows its genre-movie heritage.

Transferred to the sleepy Australian town of Red Hill, Constable Shane Cooper's (Ryan Kwanten) first day on the job goes wrong when a convicted murderer (Tom E. Lewis) escapes from prison and rides into Red Hill. The police captain (Steve Bisley) assembles a posse of locals to handle the situation, but when a nearly unstoppable killing machine comes to town, Cooper has to find out why the killer is killing, and why the locals want to shoot first and ask questions later.

Gerard Depardieu is the title character in Claude Chabrol's Inspector Bellamy. The celebrity detective Bellamy goes on vacation, but his career follows him and there is a murder to be solved. With shadowy figures haunting his life and his self-destructive brother (Clovis Cornillac) imposing on his vacation home, Inspector Bellamy must solve his case, but the film itself is a layered character piece interested in the compulsive mystery-solver that is Bellamy.

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Nature vs. Nurture

The surreal Greek drama Dogtooth tells the story of a couple that raised their family isolated from the outside world. Their children, two girls and a boy, are raised with their own take on language ("zombie" means "a small yellow flower") and a warning that disobedience will have them exiled into the strange and frightening world beyond their walls. As the children grow up and become sexually aware, they begin to develop beyond their parents' control, but in unpredictable ways.

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Documentaries

The story of New York attorney general and later governor of the state Eliot Spitzer, Alex Gibney's Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is both the story of Spitzer's career and his history as a crusader against white collar crime and impropriety on Wall Street. Recounting his time as an untouchable white knight and the scandals and indiscretions that brought him down, the film features interviews with the figures involved with Spitzer's rise and fall.

The minimalist Sweetgrass follows modern cowboys as they herd their sheep into mountains for their summer pasture. Presented without narration or music, the film presents the simple contrast of man and nature, the entire journey of a process that most people never see.

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Funny

Ari Gold is Power in The Adventures of Power, the tale of a frustrated air drummer. Living with his aunt (Jane Lynch), not respected by his father (Michael McKean), he travels to New Jersey to train in the art of air drumming and win in the local competition. Power takes his air drumming seriously, but he's threatened by a "real" drummer (Adrian Grenier), a country music millionaire who wants to compete just to prove air drumming is moronic. With Shoshannah Stern and Chiu Chi Ling.

Mike Epps is the bear Boog in Open Season 3, planning his annual Guys' Trip, but all of his male friends have other plans. Disappointed, Boog sees a circus and heads off to find new friends, but soon finds himself trapped in a strange new world... but it's not all bad: there's a talented performing lady grizzly bear that's unlike anyone he's ever met.

Our two new stand up comedy DVDs this week are Hilarious, by Louis C.K, and Douchebags and Donuts, hosted by Dennis Leary and featuring performances by Lenny Clarke, Whitney Cummings, and Adam Ferrara.

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New this week in Reckless Video's TV New Releases are part 1 of the second season of the hit musical drama Glee, as well as season 8 of the British secret agent show MI-5. We also have the first seasons of the animated Batman: The Brave & the Bold and Ricky Gervais's animated Ricky Gervais Show.

Week of January 18

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Small Spaces in War Zones

An American truck driver in Iraq, Paul (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up in a box after an attack on his convoy in Buried. When he regains consciousness, Paul finds himself sealed in a coffin and buried with a cell phone, a lighter, and a flashlight. He has to reach the outside world and find help, but with limited air and half a charge on the phone's battery, Paul doesn't have much time... and an incoming call from the people who buried him worsens his situation. On DVD and Blu Ray.

The war film Lebanon, set during Israel's war with Lebanon in 1982, takes place inside an Israeli tank. The driver, loader, gunner, and commander inside the tank experience the world through the tank's gunsight, continuing a mission to clear an area of Lebanese hostiles, but the confined space, heat, and deteriorating quality of the tank worsen their already harried and dangerous situation.

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Criminal Activity

J Cody moves in with his grandmother (Jacki Weaver), the head of a crime family, in the Australian gangster movie Animal Kingdom. Living with The Cody Boys (Ben Mendelsohn, Luke Ford, and Sullivan Stapleton), J is introduced to his family's life of crime and violence at a time when they're on the verge of war with the police. Though one officer (Guy Pearce) sees him as an innocent thrown into the wrong situation and tries to help, J's life is changed forever by his time with The Cody Boys.

The origin story to Death Race, Death Race 2 sees getaway driver Luke (Luke Goss) arrested after a failed bank robbery, landing in a prison where an immoral TV producer (Lauren Cohan) uses the inmates to stage pay-per-view gladiator battles called "Death Match." With ratings falling, Luke inspires her to make a new show: Death Race. Luke is teamed up with Tanit Phoenix in his car and Danny Trejo in his pit crew, and he has to survive not just the other racers but also a contract on his life from his crimelord boss (Sean Bean), ensuring Luke's silence. With Ving Rhames. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Fresh out of prison, Ghost (T.I.) sets up his old crew with a new armored car job in Takers. Crew leader Idris Elba assembles his men (Paul Walker, Hayden Christensen, Michael Ealy, and Chris Brown) and prepares for a $20 million caper, but a pair of cops (Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez) are tracking the crew. With a fortune on the line, they're all big figures in the underworld, targets for gangsters, police, and even each other. With Zoe Saldana.

The British Down Terrace is set in a small house where Bill, the father, runs a successful club with sidelines in drugs and girls and Karl, the son, is 34 and still living with his parents. Acquitted in court, Karl returns home as everyone in Bill's organization is a suspected informant, and paranoia wreaks havoc on the business and the family.

Edward Norton is the title character in the morality drama Stone, in prison for arson and meeting with corrections officer Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) before his parole hearing. Doing everything he can to get Jack to help with his parole, Stone convinces his wife (Milla Jovovich) to seduce the soon-to-be-retired cop, but as Stone begins to find faith, Mabry's shaken by the emptiness of his own life.

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Documentaries

Based on the bestselling book, Freakonomics is a series of theories illustrated and visualized by different directors. Featuring chapters by Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, Alex Gibney, Seth Gordon, Eugene Jarecki, and Morgan Spurlock, the documentary investigates "economic" principles that influence everyday life in unexpected places.

Researching a trio of killings in 1964, Neshoba: The Price of Freedom looks back at the murders of three Mississippi civil rights workers at the hands of the Klu Klux Clan. Forty years after the original trial yielded minimal results, the case was re-opened, and documentary filmmakers were given access to people on both sides of the tragedy, including the victims' families and the unrepentant Klansman who organized the lynch mob.

Providing footage of the American southwest, Living Temples explores the natural beauty of the water and rock with minimal narration, letting the images speak for themselves.

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Smaller Dramas

An unsuccessful novelist (Jeff Daniels) finds an unlikely friend in a teenage girl (Emma Stone) in Paper Man. They both have troubled pasts, and both have imaginary friends: she imagines a boy her own age (Kieran Culkin) who loves her and he's been supported by Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds), his own personal superhero, since he was second grade. With a little understanding and each other's help, they each may be able to go forward and move past the need for their imaginary friends.


Socially awkward Jack (Philip Seymour Hoffman) begins an unlikely romance with troubled Connie (Amy Ryan) in Jack Goes Boating. Relying on his friend (John Ortiz), Jack begins to improve his life, learning to swim, learning to cook... becoming a better man so that he can date Connie. With Daphne Rubin-Vega and Tom McCarthy.

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A group of four friends conspires to film their last virgin member's first time in The Virginity Hit. Recorded on a cheap, hand-held camera and meshed with YouTube uploads, the boys document their friend Matt's exploits as he becomes an online celebrity and the women willing to help a famous virgin with his problem.

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New this week to Reckless Video's TV New Releases are the first season of the Federal Marshal drama Justified, based on the story by Elmore Leonard and starring Timothy Olyphant, as well as the second season of the British fantasy drama Merlin. We also have the first season of Funny or Die presents and the gory preview/clip show Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell.

Week of January 11

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Accept Friend Request?

Directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network stars Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. Dumped by his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) in a painful breakup, Mark returns to his Harvard dorm and quickly launches a website that lets people rank their female classmates... overloading the school's servers, earning Mark academic probation, and discrediting him to the women on campus.

His notoriety attracts the attention of the rich and successful Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer), who employ him to work on their Harvard-exclusive dating site... while Zuckerberg has become obsessed with his own project: launching "Thefacebook" with his business partner and best friend (Andrew Garfield).

Under the guidance of Napster creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), Mark takes Facebook.com and begins to reshape himself as an entrepreneur. He discovers the price of his rise to the top, as Zuckerberg's life is overtaken by legal battles and he discovers what his striving for success has cost him. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Evil Fish & Spring Break

Piranha
Now & Then

A remake of Roger Corman's B-movie take on Jaws, 2010's Piranha cranks up Corman's exploitative style to ridiculous levels.

Sheriff Julie Foster (Elisabeth Shue) is trying to keep order in a normally quiet town on Arizona's Lake Victoria as Spring Break crowds the water with out-of-control partiers. As her son (Steven R. McQueen) and his would-be girlfriend (Jessica Szohr) board a yacht as local guides on a "Girls Gone Wild"-style filmmaker (Jerry O'Connell), Foster sets out on a police boat with Adam Scott, investigating a new underwater cave in the middle of the lake.

When the cave, opened by a recent quake, releases a school of piranha into the water, Foster and her deputy (Ving Rhames) have to clear the beaches before piranha turn Spring Break into a bloodbath. Meanwhile, her son is stranded on the other side of a piranha-infested lake. With Christopher Lloyd. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Class

Set during the sinking of the Titanic, the British drama Downton Abbey centers on a high class estate in pre-WWI northern England. Following the drama of an aristocratic family and the struggles to maintain control of the family fortune and land after the heirs-apparent perish on the Titanic, the series also develops the complicated relationships of the servants on the grounds.

Two young wolves, once childhood friends, are separated in Alpha & Omega when Kate (Hayden Panettiere) has to train lead her pack, leaving Humphrey (Justin Long) behind. Kate returns an Alpha, serious and ready to lead, while Humphrey remains a care-free, funny, and playful Omega... the kind of wolf she's not supposed to befriend. While Kate's father (Danny Glover) makes plans with the leader of a rival pack (Dennis Hopper), the future of both packs are threatened when Kate and Humphrey are sedated and transported to another park. Now they have to travel back home and save their families, but their journey together could teach them more than they thought possible.

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Extra-Marital

The Freebie is mumblecore mainstay Katie Aselton's directorial debut, where Annie (Aselton) and Darren (Dax Shepard) are a content married couple who've fallen into a rut. After a dinner with their friends, all long-term couples, they start discussing monogamy and their marital troubles when they come up with a plan: for one night, they can both go out and find a new partner. Though they hope this experiment will jump-start their love life, it could also cause trouble for them later on.

In the first season of the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland, three Los Angeles 40-something women (a former soap opera queen, a beautician, and a soon-to-be divorced mother are on their way to Paris when their plane lands unexpectedly in Cleveland. It doesn't take them long to discover that the women who struggle in LA are treated like queens in Cleveland, so they decide to stay, even though they're fish out of water in a blue collar town.

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Animated

FX's adult-themed spy show Archer is about Sterling Archer, a super-spy in the International Secret Intelligence Service, or "ISIS." Though Archer's generally incompetent, hamstrung by mother issues and overindulging in his James Bond lifestyle, the rest of ISIS manage to function in spite of him.

The light hearted and family friendly Super Hero Squad gathers some of the biggest Marvel super-heroes, including Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, and Daredevil, and teams them up against Marvel super-villains.

Week of January 4

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The Idiot Contest

Dinner for Schmucks
Now & Then

Career driven Tim (Paul Rudd) is invited to a special dinner by his boss (Bruce Greenwood) in Dinner for Schmucks -- all of the high class businessmen bring an idiot to dinner, and the person who brings the most entertaining fool "wins." Tim doesn't want to turn down his boss' invite, and, even though he's not sure about the game, he meets the perfect idiot in Barry (Steve Carell), an embarrassingly clueless and annoying IRS employee. Once invited, Barry becomes a part of Tim's world, and quickly begins to unravel Tim's life, compromising his job and alienating his girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak), but if he can survive Barry until they get to the dinner party, Tim's sure he has a winner... but does he want to win? On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Revenge

Betrayed and left for dead, super-agent Machete (Danny Trejo) is hired into a complicated plot in Robert Rodriguez's Machete, based on his trailer in the Grindhouse double feature. When a Texas businessman (Jeff Fahey) hires him to kill a corrupt senator (Robert De Niro), Machete begins to investigate the assassination plot and finds himself at the center of a conspiracy of politics, immigration, and drugs. Operating on both sides of the law, with a revolutionary (Michelle Rodriguez) on one side and an Immigrations Officer (Jessica Alba) on the other, Machete has to follow a blood soaked path to the drug kingpin (Steven Seagal) that destroyed his life so many years ago. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Restaurant head chef and cooking show host Peter (James LeGros) is dismissed from both his jobs after a scathing online review in Bitter Feast. Peter kidnaps J.T. Franks (Joshua Leonard), the blogger who ruined his life, and conducts a series of "tests" meant to measure Franks' qualifications as a food critic. With Larry Fessenden.

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Scary Kids

Social worker Emily (Renee Zellweger) rescues 10-year-old Lillith (Jodelle Ferland) from an abusive family in Case 39. Lillith's parents are institutionalized for attempting to murder her, so she stays with Emily until a foster home can be found. With the new child in her life, strange occurrences start to plague Emily, and as she becomes more and more terrified, Emily begins to wonder if Lillith's parents weren't crazy when they said the girl was evil. With Ian McShane and Bradley Cooper. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Iris Bahr is making a documentary about exorcists in The Last Exorcism, and her subject is Reverend Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who had staged exorcisms until he had a crisis of faith and conscience. Marcus and the documentary crew travel to a farm to perform an "exorcism" on a sixteen-year-old girl to expose both the insincerity of exorcists and the pageantry that help the ignorant to overcome their delusions... but after years of fake exorcisms, Reverend Marcus may have finally come up against something dangerously real. With Tony Bentley. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Actual Events

Ariel Schulman began making a documentary about his brother Nev's long distance relationship in the critically acclaimed Catfish. As Nev develops a relationship with a girl named Megan over Facebook, Ariel documents Nev's interactions with Megan and her family. Megan writes songs for Nev and her sister Abby sends him accomplished paintings, and the brothers start to investigate the talented family they've been involved with... but aren't prepared for what they'll find.

James Franco is beat poet luminary Alan Ginsberg in Howl, which splinters into the stories of the poet's early life and loves, the obscenity trial surrounding the poem "Howl," and animated interpretations of Ginsberg's poems. Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, and Jeff Daniels round out the cast of a film that is part biopic, part courtroom drama, and part poetry experiment.

A family-man Sergeant, a German-American national, a petty thief enlisted in order to avoid jail time, and wholesome farm hand with a girl back home are WWII comrades in Everyman's War. Focusing on Sgt Don Smith and the 94th Infantry Division, the film tells the story of an outnumbered unit with no communications who helped shape the outcome of The Battle of the Bulge.

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Joel Schumacher's drug and addiction drama Twelve stars Chase Crawford as White Mike, a down-on-his-luck young drug dealer serving upper-class New York teenagers. When Mike makes a connection between his supplier (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) and a wealthy (but unpopular) society boy (Rory Culkin) at a party, the violence, addiction, and heartbreak that follow could ruin the promising futures of kids who seem to have everything. With Emma Roberts.

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New this week in Reckless Video's TV New Releases are the 4th season of the Mormon drama Big Love, and the first series of Doctor Who writer Stephen Moffet's BBC detective series Sherlock.