Week of January 29

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Bumps in the Night

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Meredith reviews
Hotel Transylvania

All the world's monsters know they're welcome at Count Dracula's (Adam Sandler) hotel in the animated Hotel Transylvania. Dracula invites all the most famous monsters (including Kevin James, Jon Lovitz, and Steve Buscemi) to celebrate the 118th birthday of his daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), but the birthday party is only part of Dracula's plan: as Mavis grows more curious about the outside world, his overprotective nature kicks in and he tries to convince her of the dangers of humans. When Hotel Transylvania admits its first human guest-- a traveler (Andy Samberg) in the woods who stumbles into their midst-- Dracula has to disguise him and help him fit in with the monsters... but having a human befriending the guests, and charming Mavis, could undo all his work to keep the human world and monsters apart. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Florence (Rebecca Hall) is a ghost hunter, exposing frauds who arrange supernatural hoaxes and fake seances in 1920s England in The Awakening. When a teacher (Dominic West) approaches her about the haunting of his boarding school, she applies her talents to help the children. For the children that are cared for at the school, nearly orphans, Florence hopes to settle the atmosphere by proving that this "haunting" is a prank and that there is nothing to fear... until she stumbles into things she cannot explain, and refuses to call the matter settled until she uncovers the whole truth. With Imelda Staunton. On DVD and Blu Ray.
Christine and Mike (Rachael Blake and Tom Butcher) settle down for an evening at home in Cherry Tree Lane, but their marital tension and household squabbles are dwarfed by three youths that invade their house. Unfolding in realtime, the couple find themselves held hostage as their adolescent captors push them for money, jewels, credit card pin numbers... anything they can get. Everyone would be safe if the robbery goes smoothly, but with tensions high, nothing goes according to plan, and survival becomes the only commodity that matters.

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Crime, Professionally

Celebrated playwrite Martin McDonagh's follow up to In Bruges is Seven Psychopaths, where struggling screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell) is having trouble with his new script. While Marty's having trouble outpacing his sub-Tarantino cliches and hacky plot and dialogue, his best friend (Sam Rockwell) suggests he use recent killings for inspiration, and his worldly consultant (Christopher Walken) has more knowledge of Marty's gangsters and killings than anything in the script. Add a killer (Woody Harrelson) hunting for them, dognapping, and the need for a climactic shootout, and Marty's real life can't help but follow his writing, no matter how ridiculous his screenplay is turning out. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Wrecking his car is Adam's (Jack O'Connell) last offense against his strict, disapproving stepfather (Peter Mullan) in The Liability-- in order to pay for the car, he's given a job driving Roy (Tim Roth) on his errands... but while Adam had suspected his stepdad might be crooked, he's completely surprised to be chauffeur to a hit man. On their first job together, Adam lets the woman (Talulah Riley) who wanders onto the scene escape, and Roy has to scramble to correct the situation and finish his day's work before Adam messes up something else.

Will (Henry Cavill) has to visit his family in Spain in The Cold Light of Day, but he's more concerned with his failing business back in San Francisco. His relationship with his father (Bruce Willis) has always been strained but soon he's all Will has left-- the rest of their family has vanished. Though his father isn't who he appears to be, Will is soon on his own, searching for his mother and brother, with a police captain (Roschdy Zem) and one of his father's old contacts (Sigourney Weaver) as leads... but Will can's be sure whether they'll help him or are responsible for his crisis. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Capes and Masks

Concluding the adaptation of the graphic novel, the second part of The Dark Knight Returns picks up where the first part left off, with Batman's (Peter Weller) re-emergence inspiring Gotham's rogues gallery to do the same: especially The Joker (Michael Emerson). The city erupts into violence as they battle, and the powers-that-be, once so pleased at Batman's retirement, will have to take action-- whether he banishes The Joker or not, the modern world won't tolerate a violent vigilante in a cape and a cowl, and the Batman must be dealt with. On DVD and Blu Ray.

In his follow-up to The FP, writer/director Jason Trost is a superhero called Charge in All Superheroes Must Die. Stripped of their powers, Charge, Cutthroat (Lucas Till), Shadow, and Manpower (Sean Whalen), are forced to play a deadly game by their arch-enemy, Rickshaw (James Remar). Tired of losing to the heroes, Rickshaw has designed a game that he will win-- they're faced with challenges that put them against nasty supervillains as civilian hostages hang in the balance, but Rickshaw wants to teach them how it feels to lose. The death of citizens isn't enough-- the game are made so the heroes must watch each other die-- but Charge isn't the kind of hero who ever loses, and nothing will stop him from taking the fight to Rickshaw. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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New this week in our TV New Releases:

	Downton Abbey Series 3	Moving forward to the early 1920s, the Crawley family and their staff adapt to their changing world and the growing strife between England and Ireland.
	Misfits Series 2	Though they've learned how to use their superpowers, the five delinquents still can't get out of community service or handle their rotating batch of possibly-evil parole officers.

Week of January 22

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The Law

LAPD officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes a camera with him to document daily life as a beat cop in South Central in End of Watch. With a handheld video camera and "button cams" on Brian and his partner Miguel Zavala (Michael Pena), they record the everyday job in a patrol car in one of Los Angeles' most dangerous neighborhoods... as well as the bond between the partners, and the family they create between Miguel, his pregnant wife (Natalie Martinez), Brian, and his developing relationship with his new girlfriend (Anna Kendrick). Over the course of filming, Brian's cameras also capture the partners' stumbling into a case that is deeper and more dangerous than they're qualified to handle. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Jack's (Zac Efron) life is turned upside-down when his brother, Ward (Matthew McConaughey), begins investigating a new case in Lee Daniels' The Paperboy. Set in Florida in the 1960s, Ward and his partner (David Oyelowo), investigative journalists, are looking into the conviction of death-row inmate Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack)... and their way into the career-making story is Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), the hyper-sexualized woman who established a prison correspondence love affair with Van Wetter. In the pressure cooker of the 60s, the film intermingles the scandalous lawlessness, sex, and race into a mix that changes young Jack's world forever. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Detective David Callahan (Stephen Dorff) is recovering from a shooting in Officer Down, and though his Captain (James Woods) is willing to do anything to keep the department's reputation spotless, David needs to take a more active approach. Callahan's life before the shooting was compromised-- doing drugs, taking bribes, neglecting his family-- and he dedicates his second chance at life to living right: cleaning up and finding out who saved his life. The mystery of his savior puts him onto a new case, and offers him a new suspect (Walton Goggins) who may not be what he seems. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Based on the transcripts of the actual trial, the courtroom drama The Chicago 8 tells the story of the landmark trial of eight men charged with conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Collecting founders of the Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (Thomas Ian Nichols and Danny Masterson), Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (Orlando Jones), elder pacifist David Dellinger (Peter Mackenzie), Port Huron Statement author Tom Hayden (David Julian Hirsh), student protest leader Rennie Davis (Bret Harrison), chemist John Froines (Jamie Elman), and quiet sociology student Lee Weiner (Aaron Abrams), defense attorney William Kunstler (Gary Cole) tries to prove his clients weren't conspirators or violent instigators to inflexible prosecutors (Steven Culp and Scott Lowell) and an old-fashioned judge (Philip Baker Hall) in one of the defining trials of the Vietnam era.

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Searching for Truth

Looking to start a new life, French Frederic Bourdin claims to be a 16-year-old kidnapping victim in Spain in the documentary The Imposter, but the halfway house in Spain needs to confirm his identity. To keep from getting caught, he spins lie upon lie until he picks up the identity of Nicholas, a missing Texas boy. Though he's older than Nicholas would be, and has brown eyes instead of blue, he's "returned" home to his family... who accepts him immediately. As the stories get stranger and stranger, the lies start to give way, but the extent of the deception and the uncertainties of all aspects on Nicholas' story hint at even deeper mysteries.

Though his two records in the early 70s never sold in the United States, Detroit folk musician Rodriguez became a sensation in South Africa. The documentary Searching for Sugar Man follows the fans' investigation into the mysterious Rodriguez... without knowing his full name, where he's from, or if there is any truth to the stories of his on-stage death. From the little information they can glean from the album covers, and hints in Rodriguez's lyrics, the fans begin the search to discover what happened to the songwriter who became an icon in South Africa.

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Comedies

Dumped by her boyfriend, Lauren (Lauren Miller) needs a new apartment in For a Good Time, Call..., and a mutual friend (Justin Long) matches her with roommate-seeking Katie (Ari Graynor). The girls have been enemies since college, and worse: Lauren looks down on Katie's job taking phone sex calls. When Lauren puts her business sense behind Katie's skills on the phone, the two begin a partnership that could make them a lot of money, and make them into friends.

Randy (Patton Oswalt) has always loved being a scout in Nature Calls, but his brother Kirk (Johnny Knoxville) has hated scouting since they were kids. When his troupe would rather watch TV at Kirk's than go scouting, Randy makes a drastic move: he sneaks the kids out into the woods. Now Kirk, his gung-ho business partner (Rob Riggle), and one of the kids' concerned dads (Patrice O'Neal) venture into the woods to retrieve the kids... while Kirk's wife (Maura Tierney) tries to convince the rest of the troupe moms that their children have not been kidnapped.

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When young Martine (Olivia Thirlby) moves into their poolhouse, Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt) asks her husband Peter (John Krasinski) to help their new tenant in Nobody Walks. Martine is working on a short film and Peter is a sound engineer, so helping with the audio on her film makes sense... but as the laid back family man spends more time with the exciting young woman, the situation becomes more dangerous, and Julie has temptations of her own. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Cesar (Luis Tosar), the manager of an apartment building, believes he was born without the ability to be happy in Jaume Balaguero's Sleep Tight, so he believes his mission is to make others miserable. Normally, he has no trouble ruining his tenants' days, but the building's new tennant, Clara, is harder to upset. Unwilling to let her happiness interfere with his life's work, Cesar goes to stranger and more unsettling extremes to push Clara over the edge.

Picking up where the last movie left off, Death Race: Inferno finds Frankenstein (Luke Goss) with only one race left to win before earning his freedom... but the mastermind of the Death Race (Ving Rhames) is having the show taken from him by an ambitious new programmer (Dougray Scott) who wants to make the race international. Now Frankenstein and his pit crew (led by Danny Trejo) have to survive a race across Africa in a contest where all the rules have changed, where even winning might not secure their prize.

When his family is killed, John (Scott Adkins) vows revenge in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, and he places the blame on one of the original Universal Soldiers: Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme). With the operatives of the super-soldier program gunning for him, John has to infiltrate their ranks to seek justice and find Luc, but an even more dangerous Universal Soldier (Dolph Lundgren) is still active... and preparing for worldwide destruction. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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New this week in our TV New Releases:

Merlin Series 4

With Morgana turned against Camelot, Uther's spirit is broken, leaving Arthur and Merlin to hold the kingdom together as fortunes turn against them.

Week of January 15

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Banter

Woody Allen's To Rome with Love is an ensemble comedy on vacation in Italy, centered on Hayley (Alison Pill), a young woman who traveled to Rome, met a handsome Italian lawyer, and got engaged. Introducing her fiance to her parents (Woody Allen and Judy Davis), their light-romantic culture clash is echoed throughout the city, with sightseers, students, couples, locals, all embroiled in screwball misunderstandings and clever wordplay. With Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, and Roberto Benigni. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Frankenweenie
Now & Then

Young Victor (Charlie Tahan) is an ambitious scientist and movie maker in Tim Burton's stop-motion Frankenweenie, but he spends more time with his dog Sparky than with any of the kids in his neighborhood. When Sparky is killed by a car, Victor's parents (Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short) try to get him to accept the natural order of things, but Victor has a better idea: raise Sparky from the dead. Victor's Frankenstein project is a success, but his tampering unleashes a variety of classic movie-style monsters into the suburbs-- were-rats, lagoon creatures, vampire cats, and more-- and their community is overrun by cartoonish versions of monster movies. With Winona Ryder and Martin Landau. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Ryan (Liam Neeson) is taking time off after an assignment in Istanbul in Taken 2 when he's surprised by a visit from his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen). Unfortunately, their family reunion is a perfect opportunity for Murad (Rade Serbedzija), the patriarch of the family Ryan decimated in the first movie-- seeking revenge for Ryan killing his son, Murad takes Ryan and Lenore. With Ryan's cunning, and his ability to keep in contact with Kim, he has to orchestrate his escape and fight to rescue his ex-wife... but still try to stop the escalation of a war between his family and Murad's. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Working-class single mom Jamie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is frustrated with her daughter's school in Won't Back Down: her little girl can barely read, the teacher won't teach, and the system won't let her move to another class. When she sees Nona (Viola Davis), a teacher at the school, with her little boy at a charter-school lottery drawing, she may have found a kindred spirit... since neither of them win a lottery spot, and they don't want their kids in a dead-end school, they begin working toward creating the kind of school that would actually teach their kids. It's an uphill battle, against a principal (Bill Nunn) dedicated to the current system and the teacher's union president (Holly Hunter), but Jamie and Nona refuse to give up. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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A documentary on the crisis in Detroit and the effects of a crumbling economy, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady's Detropia explores the gulf between what a community once was and what it has become. The film shares the point of view of people in the failing neighborhoods of Detroit, local business owners, auto union members, and citizens working to keep living in their city, and keep their city alive.

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Divorced from his wife (Kyra Sedgwick), Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) sets up a new house out of the city, hoping to provide a good home for his daughters in The Possession. Hannah (Madison Davenport) is energetic and talkative, but Em (Natasha Calis) starts behaving strangely after Clyde buys her an ornate box at a yard sale. With his daughter's behavior becoming more withdrawn and destructive, Clyde begins to suspect there is something horribly wrong with the box, and has to take extreme measures if he wants to release the box's grip on Em. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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15-year-old Lily (Juno Temple) spends her days in a run-down community, dreaming of a life in Los Angeles in Little Birds. Sullen after her father's suicide and rebelling against her drunken mother (Leslie Mann), Lily leaves the landscape of falling buildings and rusted mobile homes on a trip to the city with her best friend Alison (Kay Panabaker), but Alison is hesitant about shoplifting and scamming with LA street boys (including Kyle Gallner). Lily is drawn into her new, dangerous life and Alison wants to go home to her father (Neal McDonough)... but if Alison leaves, what will become of Lily?

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Misha (Ed Stoppard) is a powerful ad executive in Russia in Branded, but has a crisis of conscience when a rebranding-by-reality-tv scheme goes awry. He goes into exile, but is pulled back into the city by Abby (Leelee Sobieski), his ex-girlfriend and mother of his child... but when he gets back, his perspective on advertising has changed: Misha can actually see brands as if they were alien creatures, driving people to consume. With a new vision of ad-monsters controlling humanity, Misha returns to marketing with a new goal: slaying the monsters. With Jeffrey Tambor and Max von Sydow. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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New this week in our TV New Releases:

	Men of a Certain Age Season 2	A group of lifelong friends contend with the lives they're living, turning 50, and day jobs filling in for dreams of being golf pros or successful marriages.			Life's Too Short Season 1	Playing himself, Warwick Davis navigates the TV and movie landscape with the ultimate "short man's complex," leading to endless, uncomfortable comedy.
	Being Human Series 4		After the events of Series 3, Annie the ghost, werewolf George, and vampire John are charged with taking care of an infant... a baby the vampire Old Ones are very interested in.

Week of January 8

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Trapped with the Bad Guys

Adapted from the long-running comic book, Dredd stars Karl Urban as the stalwart, uncompromising Judge Dredd. In the post-apocalyptic Mega City, where Judges uphold the law as judge, jury, and executioner, Dredd is evaluating Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie Judge on her first assignment. Unfortunately for her, Anderson's first suspect (Wood Harris) is tied to a ruthless gang run by Ma Ma (Lena Headey)... who'll do anything to keep a witness from being brought in by the Judges. When Ma Ma locks down the entire block, Dredd and Anderson have to fight their way through gang members, opportunists who want to win Ma Ma's favor, and even crooked Judges to clear the block. Locked in with no support, their only way out is to find every single one of the people gunning for them and leave no one un-judged. On DVD, Blu-Ray, & 3DBlu.

Charlie (Dax Shepard) is in the Witness Protection Program, living in a little town with his girlfriend Annie (Kristen Bell) in Hit & Run. When Annie lands an important interview in Los Angeles, Charlie throws caution to the wind and leaves town, blowing his cover and drawing lots of attention. Charlie just wants to make it to LA with Annie, but now he's being chased by her jealous ex-boyfriend (Michael Rosenbaum), the marshall (Tom Arnold) assigned to protect him, and the bank robber (Bradley Cooper) Charlie testified against. On DVD and Blu Ray.

John Smith (Christian Slater) finds himself playing poker with a table full of Elvis impersonators at an Apache casino in Guns, Girls, and Gambling, but he doesn't know about the Elvis' connection to a valuable, ancient mask. With the mask stolen and the prime Elvis (Gary Oldman) missing, anyone and everyone is shooting, questioning, and taking hostages to reclaim the mask... and they're all convinced John has the answers. Between corrupt cops, a devious rancher (Powers Boothe), a girl-next-door, an Edgar Allen Poe-quoting hitwoman (Helena Mattsson), the casino-running chief, and a slew of Elvis impersonators, no one is sure who has the mask, but they'll all betray one another to get it.

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Reality

Set during the 2008 presidential elections, campaign strategist Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) has to find a way to make John McCain's (Ed Harris) campaign as captivating as Barack Obama's in Game Change. His solution: a firebrand governer from Alaska named Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore). Though Palin's fantastic in front of a crowd, Schmidt and his team (including Peter MacNicol and Jamey Sheridan) are soon struggling with damage control-- they have a "game changing" personality on the ticket, great when she stays on script, but completely unprepared for a presidential race.

Based on a prank call scam that has dozens of reported incidents, Compliance is the story of Sandra (Ann Dowd), manager of a ChickWich, who receives a call informing her of a theft. Over the phone, Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) tells her that young register girl Becky (Dreama Walker) stole from a customer, and asks Sandra to take the suspect into a back room. Over the course of the phone call, Daniels instructs Sandra to question Becky and assist the police until he arrives on scene, beginning with a strip search, and unfolding like the Milgram Experiment as the situation progresses. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Shot on 70mm film over the course of five years, in twenty-five countries, Ron Fricke's sight-and-sound tone poem Samsara cascades images of mankind, nature, technology, and footage connecting many facets of life on the planet. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Seizing the Moment

Morris Bliss (Michael C. Hall) dreams of traveling the world in The Trouble with Bliss, but he's stuck at home doing next to nothing. He's gets all of his money from his father (Peter Fonda), is dating an 18-year-old (Brie Larson) who picked him up in a store, and his best friend (Chris Messina) is incredibly unreliable. His attractive, married neighbor (Lucy Liu) might be able to jar him out of his shabby, static life... her, or an old high-school buddy (Brad William Henke) who happens to be the father of the girl he's sleeping with.

Tessa (Dakota Fanning) is a British teenager with leukemia in Now Is Good, trying to live as full a life as she can before succumbing to her terminal cancer. While Tessa meets a boy and is determined to bring him along in her adventures, crossing items off her Bucket List, her parents (Olivia Williams and Paddy Considine) try to cope with what's happening to her.

Substitute teacher Henry (Adrien Brody) doesn't get involved in Detachment: assigned to a rough school, he doesn't respond to abuse or threats, and he keeps order in his classroom until he's sent to sub at the next school. Surrounded by faculty (including Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, James Caan, and Lucy Liu), each with their own methods of dealing with the violent students, Henry does the best he can in a crumbling environment until a teenage runaway changes his perspective.

Scott (Brian Presley) is a farmer with a family who considers his life a failure in Touchback, and plans to have an "accident" so that his insurance can provide for his household. Reflecting on his past, Scott remembers his time as a football star with a bright future, the coach (Kurt Russell) that supported him, the woman (Melanie Lynskey) who would become his wife... a young man with his whole life ahead of him, until a crippling injury changed everything.

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Bad Influence

Single mom Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) and her teenage daughter Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) leave the big city for a small town, getting a great deal on a house in House at the End of the Street. They can afford the house because of the murders in the neighborhood, scandalizing the community... but while the rest of the town avoids Ryan (Max Thieriot), the only survivor of the rampage, Elissa finds him vulnerable and sweet. While Sarah doesn't want her daughter spending time with the boy from The Murder House, she also befriends the sheriff (Gil Bellows), the one person in town who stands up for Ryan. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Diane (Juno Temple) is a British girl on vacation in New York City taken by surprise by her attraction to tomboyish Jack (Riley Keough) in Jack & Diane. Their flaring passion takes physical, monstrous form, where the blush of new romance might actually see one of the girls with her heart ripped out... literally.

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New this week in our TV New Releases:

	The Hour Series 2	1950s current affairs show The Hour needs some spark, so the head of news re-enlists reporter Freddie Lyon (Ben Wishaw), despite their past troubles.			Archer Season 3	Super-spy Sterling Archer is still conducting missions for ISIS, as long as it doesn't interfere with his ego, his love life, or his mother.
	Smash Season 1		A broadway songwriter begins working on a musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe, bringing in a powerful producer (Anjelica Huston) and creating a Broadway show from the ground up.		Red Dwarf Series X	Dave Lister may be the last human in the universe, but he's still more interested in beer, curry, and annoying Arnold Rimmer than cosmic matters, kept relatively sane by Kryten and the Cat.
	Episodes Season 2		Beverly and Sean's show has mutated into a hockey comedy called "Pucks!", but the show's success means they're stuck in LA with their vain star and their compromised show.		Enlightened Season 1	Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern) emerges from rehab "spiritually awakened," but has to struggle to hold on to her new perspective as she returns to her high-powered life.
	An Idiot Abroad Series 2		Ricky Gervais forces his sheltered friend Karl out into the world, steeping him in exotic, unfamiliar cultures... whether he likes it or not.

Week of Dec 24 - Jan 1

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Science Fiction

In the year 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has a low-level gangster job in Rian Johnson's Looper: he waits for the people sent back in time by the mob... and executes them. He is paid well for this service, but Joe knows that one day his target will be his future self, "closing his loop." When the 30-years-older version of himself (Bruce Willis) does arrive, he escapes, and Joe has to find a way to survive after having failed his boss (Jeff Daniels). Old Joe has come back with an agenda, trying to change the future, but young Joe won't have a future at all unless he can out-wit the mob and find out what his future self wants. With Emily Blunt. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Cadet Thomas Lansky is training to combat insurrectionists as humans colonize deep space in Halo 4: Forward to Dawn, but he's a quiet, thoughtful student, given to questioning orders. Haunted by the death of his brother, a heroic shock trooper, Lansky is questioning if he belongs in the military at all when his base is attacked. Guided by a nameless Master Chief, Lansky and his few surviving classmates have to rise to a challenge leveled against all humankind... but first they must make it to the evacuation point, outnumbered and outgunned by alien invaders, and escape their doomed planet. With Anna Popplewell. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Morality

A successful author (Dennis Quaid) stands in front of a rapt audience and begins to tell the story of his new novel in The Words. He tells the tale of a young writer (Bradley Cooper) , supported by his father (J.K. Simons) as he works on The Great American Novel... a novel that gets rejected. When he discovers an amazing manuscript, he becomes so obsessed that he re-types the whole thing, and his wife (Zoe Saldana) sees his "new book," loves it, and sends it to the publisher, making him an instant success. When an old man (Jeremy Irons) tells him how good the book is, the young writer realizes he's sitting in the presence of the manuscript's original author, but how will the fraud affect his life from then on? As the successful author finishes his reading, a girl in the crowd (Olivia Wilde) tries to find the truth in his story. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) is a billionaire master of Wall Street, trapped in Manhattan traffic in his limousine in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis. While the streets are gridlocked due to a presidential motorcade, a rapper's funeral, and anarchist riots, Eric sits removed from the world in his mobile command center, watching his wealth evaporate by the millions. Though he has passionlessly married a rich girl that could help his finances, he finds time in the slow crawl through New York for a visit with his mistress (Juliette Binoche), an in-car examination by his doctor, and a session with his chief advisor (Samantha Morton). As the world crumbles outside his door, Eric becomes more self-destructive, and continuously ignores his head-of-security's (Kevin Durand) warnings about the growing threats to his safety. With Paul Giamatti. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Imports

Adapting another book from the author that wrote Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, director Daniel Auteuil's The Well Digger's Daughter is a return to his French-Romantic roots. Auteuil stars as the titular well digger, widowed father of six daughters. Set in the pre-WWII French countryside, Auteuil watches one of his girls turn eighteen as she's torn between the handsome son of the richest man in town and her father's kind but homely assistant. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Featured at SIFF, Putin's Kiss is the story of Masha, a 19-year-old who grew up in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Beginning with her joining Nashi, a youth organization centered on the unity of Putin's political party, Masha becomes a popular figure in the group, and soon the country. Her celebrity seems like a blessing at first, but as she becomes the public face of a political movement, Masha is slowly exposed to the reality of the party and the methods used to keep people in power.

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New this week in our TV New Releases:

Justified Season 3

Recuperating from his wounds at the end of Season 2, Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) has to contend with the power vacuum in the Frankfort Mafia as a variety of players vie for control: small timers looking for a big score, northern interests from Detroit, and even Raylan's old friend (and enemy) Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).