Movie-Holic

It’s that time again. New DVD’s and Blu-ray’s are being released! Here’s a quick rundown of the newest releases.

Down these mean streets a man must come. A hero born, murdered, and born again. When a Rookie cop named Denny Colt returns from the beyond as The Spirit, a hero whose mission is to fight against the bad forces from the shadows of Central City. The Octopus who kills anyone unfortunate enough to see his face who has other plans. He’s going to wipe out the entire city. The Spirit tracks this cold hearted killer from the city’s rundown warehouses, to the damp catacombs, to the windswept waterfront all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill the masked crusader. Get it on DVD or Blu-ray.

What is the nature of guilt–and how can the human spirit survive when confronted with deep and horrifying truths? The Reader, a hushed and haunting meditation on these knotty questions, is sorrowful and shocking, yet leavened by a deep love story that is its heart. In postwar Germany, young schoolboy Michael (German actor David Cross) meets and begins a tender romance with the older, mysterious Hanna (Kate Winslet, whose performance is a revelation). The two make love hungrily in Hanna’s shabby apartment, yet their true intimacy comes as Michael reads aloud to Hanna in bed, from his school assignments, textbooks, even comic books. Hanna delights in the readings, and Michael delights in Hanna.

Years later, the two cross paths again, and Michael (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes) learns, slowly, horrifyingly, of acts that Hanna may have been involved in during the war. There is a war crimes trial, and the accused at one point asks the panel of prosecutors: “Well, what would you have done?” It is that question–as one German professor says later: “How can the next generation of Germans come to terms with the Holocaust?”–that is both heartbreaking and unanswerable. Winslet plays every shade of gray in her portrayal of Hanna, and Fiennes is riveting as the man who must rewrite history–his own and his country’s–as he learns daily, hourly, of deeds that defy categorization, and morality. “No matter how much washing and scrubbing,” one character says matter of factly, “some sins don’t wash away.” The Reader (with nods to similar films like Sophie’s Choice and The English Patient dares to present that unnerving premise, without offering an easy solution. –A.T. Hurley Get this movie on DVD or Blu-ray.

Loosely inspired by the true story of Gang Lu, a Chinese physics student, but with substantial differences in plot and character motivation, the film stars Liu Xing (Liu Ye), as a humble, but brilliant, Chinese student, who arrives at Valley State University and makes a bumpy transition into American life with the help of Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep), a wealthy university patron who takes a liking to the young student. Xing joins a select cosmology group under the direction of his hero, the famous cosmologist Professor Jacob Reiser (Aidan Quinn). The group is working to create a model of the origins of the universe, based on Reiser’s theory. Xing’s enormous talent leads him quickly to become Reiser’s protégé, and it seems that only hard work stands between him and a bright future in science. But Xing is obsessed with the study of dark matter, an unseen substance that he believes shapes the universe, and a theory that conflicts with the Reiser model. When Xing begins to make scientific breakthroughs of his own, he begins to encounter unexpected obstacles. You can get Dark Matter on DVD.

It took hundreds of millions of years for petroleum to form on Earth. It took just 150 years for human beings to bleed the planet of roughly half of this oil.

Arresting in its honesty and erudition, CRUDE IMPACT examines the catastrophic prospect of ”world peak oil” – or the point in time when the quantity of petroleum extracted from the earth begins to irreversibly decline. The film illuminates a vicious cycle of escalating dependency and need, as well as the behaviors and patterns fueling this cycle, such as consumer fetishism and the myth of endless supply, the tremendous rise in population, and the demands of many more quickly-industrializing nations. It also surveys the devastating and far-reaching effects of the rampant pursuit of oil, including increasingly aggressive political turmoil, irreparable ecological damage, economic turbulence, and gross human rights violations.

Elegantly weaving together an alarmingly accelerating pattern of consumption and depletion, the award-winning CRUDE IMPACT reveals a frighteningly dark future that can only be averted by becoming informed, spreading awareness, and revolutionizing the way we think and live.

DVD Features: Over an hour of additional interviews on globalization, 9/11, alternative fuels and more. You can pick it up on DVD.