Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Week of June 28

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Swords and Guns

After adapting two comic books for the screen, Zack Snyder made his own live action graphic novel with Sucker Punch, where a girl (Emily Browning) committed to an asylum retreats into an odd burlesque fantasy where her doctor (Carla Gugino) is a madame and the head orderly (Oscar Isaac) is a sadistic director. Her plan for escape takes her and her fellow inmates (Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung) into a series of fantasy adventures, fighting steampunk Nazi zombies, dragons, and giant samurai, gathering the real world tools to win the girls' actual escape. With Scott Glenn. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

After Yang (Jang Dong Gun) establishes himself as the greatest swordsman in the world, he turns his back on his people and his legacy in The Warrior's Way when he refuses to kill the last surviving member of his rival's clan: a baby. Arriving with the child in America in the old west, he finds a place in a desolate town run by Eight Ball (Tony Cox) and his carnival folk, and befriends a cowgirl (Kate Bosworth) with tragic past and the town drunk (Geoffrey Rush)... but the town is preyed upon by the Colonel (Danny Huston) and his gang of masked outlaws. Yang has to defend his new home, but waging war means his former clan will soon find him, and the town will have both swordsmen and gunfighters loose on its streets. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) are 14th century knights who desert the Crusades, questioning the killing they've done in by church's orders in Season of the Witch. Caught as deserters, they're ordered to escort a priest (Stephen Campbell Moore) and a young girl (Claire Foy) to a remote abbey-- they girl is accused of witchcraft, and if the monks in the abbey can "cure" her, they believe it will end the plague that has ravaged europe. Accompanied by a knight (Stephen Graham) and an unscrupulous guide (Ulrich Thomsen), Behmen and Felson fight strange, supernatural occurrences to get them all to their destination, but if the girl is not a witch, will they allow another innocent's death? On DVD and Blu-Ray.

The Norwegian Max Manus: Man of War is a World War II action movie about a soldier who returns from battling the Soviets to find his homeland occupied by the Germans. Max Manus joins the underground resistance and begins a campaign against the invaders that make him a person of interest with the Gestapo. As his own personal war escalates and the body count on both sides grows, Max has to face the consequences of waging war, as it affects his friends as well as his enemies.

Actual Events

Young Jesco White (Edward Hogg) was always a problem child, discovering solvents and gas-huffing at an early age, until his father (Muse Watson) teaches him mountain dancing in White Lightnin'. At his best when he's dancing, on the road with musicians, he always felt the pull of his darker urges. As the story's told from Jesco's point of view, he recounts his time on stage, meeting the woman of his dreams (Carrie Fisher), and his lapses into bouts of substance abuse, violence, and crises of faith.

Standing up to the Soviets by hiring Jewish musicians, conductor Andrei Fillipov's greatest orchestral performance was interrupted by the Communist Party and his career was destroyed in The Concert-- thirty years later, Andrei is still working at the same Moscow orchestra... as a janitor. When he happens across the news of a concert's cancellation in Paris, Andrei sees what may be his last chance and tries to reassemble his orchestra, who haven't aged particularly well. Worse, his last-minute show insists upon an untested violinist (Melanie Laurent) who's never played the piece before, but the orchestra may play again, and recapture the show they never got to play three decades ago.

Fairy Tale

Wealthy and arrogant Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) usually treats people badly in Beastly, but when he singles out a witch (Mary-Kate Olsen) masquerading as a high school student, she gives him the Beauty and the Beast curse: he becomes ugly, twisted, and scarred, and will remain that way unless he can find someone to love him. Beginning to feel something for Vanessa Hudgens, Kyle may have found his salvation, but the road to redemption is difficult as he learns to exist without good looks, but strives not to be ugly. With Neil Patrick Harris. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

Dramas

A long walk through Barney's (Paul Giamatti) memories of his life, Barney's Version, from his idealistic youth to old age. Spanning three wives (Rachelle Lefevre, Minnie Driver, and Rosamund Pike), Barney's fiercely opinionated and politically incorrect, and his life is a chaotic mix of drinking, smoking, and womanizing, but his stories range from his relationship with his father (Dustin Hoffman), his son (Jake Hoffman), his inexplicably missing friend (Scott Speedman), and the detective (Mark Addy) that believes Barney's responsible. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

The Peruvian Undertow is the story of Miguel, a young fisherman with a beautiful wife and a baby on the way. Miguel's seemingly idyllic life is haunted by his secret love of Santiago, a painter treated poorly by the rest of the village for being gay. Miguel must face the consequences of being true to himself, and make his own difficult decisions.

Traveling to Lebanon, PA from Philadelphia, Will (Josh Hopkins) arrives in the small town to settle his father's affairs, but the small town starts to become a part of his life. As Will becomes involved with dramas and relations of the family across the street and begins to fall in love with a married schoolteacher (Samantha Mathis), he begins to shirk his high-power city life for the simpler world that his father embraced in his later years. With Mary Beth Hurt.

Documented

Filmmaker David Bond tries to remove himself from public data gathering in the documentary Erasing David. David hires private investigators to find him, and begins to scrub himself from public records. Amazed at how much data about himself is publicly available, he adapts to the information provided to the world by his Internet Service Provider, his Facebook account, his cell phone, and his car's registration. As he tries to disappear, he keeps finding new, subtle ways he's left a trail.

A recording of his standup performance, comedian Aziz Ansari's Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening is a live comedy show filmed in Los Angeles.


New this week to Reckless Video's TV New Releases is the first season of Rizzoli & Isles, a procedural centered around driven Boston Police Detective Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon) and socially awkward forensic expert Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander) as they try to track down a serial killer.

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