Though there are no “big” home entertainment releases this week there are plenty of quality genre films included the convoluted thriller Unknown starring Liam Neeson, the Phillip K. Dick-based paranoid fantasy The Adjustment Bureau, the fascinating Roman Legion drama The Eagle, the character-driven comedy Cedar Rapids, the satire heavy cartoon series Rocko’s Modern Life, and Louis C.K.'s innovative comedy series Louie.

 

 

One of the more interesting cinematic developments of the past few years is the way in which Liam Neeson has become an action hero in his 50s.  The transformation began in Taken, which was the sleeper hit of 2009. This year’s Neeson action vehicle, Unknown was not as successful at the box office, but it is a better film.  Certainly Unknown (Warner Bros., “PG-13,” $29.98, BD $35.99) is one of the most interesting thrillers of the past few years with a complex plot complete with an icy blonde (played by January Jones) that would do Hitchcock proud. But what sets this film apart is itssnow-covered Berlin backdrop and what makes it truly remarkable is a superlative performance by Bruno Ganz as a sympathetic ex-Stasi agent. Nothing or no one is as they first appear in Unknown, which keeps the audience guessing with an intricate plot, but still provides plenty of the inventively staged fights and urban car chases that modern audiences seem to need. This modestly budgeted $30 million feature earned $131 million at the worldwide box office, and it’s no wonder that it is one of the most downloaded films on the Internet.

 

If Unknown eventually provides a reasonable explanation for its paranoid nightmare plot, The Adjustment Bureau (Universal, “PG-13,” $29.98, BD $39.98), which is based on a story by Phillip K. Dick, posits a world that is run like a giant paranoid conspiracy. There’s no shred of realism in this saga of a group of hat-wearing “adjusters” led by John Slattery, who looks like he just walked off the set of Mad Men, but that doesn’t mean that The Adjustment Bureau isn’t an interesting film, it just means it’s a fantasy, a paranoid fantasy. It’s also one of the more romantic films in years as a rising politician played by Matt Damon attempts to forge a relationship with a down-to-earth iconoclastic dancer played by Emily Blunt. Those who enjoy the skewed vision of Phillip K. Dick will find much to admire in The Adjustment Bureau, especially its use of doors, which act like wormholes and provide the film’s characters  at times with wildly improbable destinations.

 

Yet another fascinating genre film out this week is The Eagle (Universal, 114 min., $29.98, BD $39.99), a period movie set in Roman Britain as a celebrated Roman soldier played by Channing Tatum attempts to retrieve the emblem of the lost Ninth Legion, which invaded Scotland and never returned. The Eagle is loosely based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth. It might have been better if director Kevin Macdonald had followed the novel more closely, but The Eagle is still a very interesting and well done period military drama, that wargamers and those who like sword and sandal epics will enjoy, even though the Romans don’t employ their heavy javelins (pila)—and at least The Eagle allows Channing Tatum another military vehicle in which he can make amends for his work in G.I. Joe.

 

Also out this week is the character-driven comedy Cedar Rapids (Fox, “R,” $29.99, BD $39.99) in which Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover) plays a naïve insurance man from a small town in western Wisconsin who gets to go to a convention in the “big city” of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This is not a big laughs, gross-out comedy like The Hangover filled with absurd situations and broad slapstick. Though it’s never cloying, Cedar Rapids has a sweetness to it, as well as a tinge of sadness. Its intelligent, low-key humor is not for everyone, but it does make it delightfully different from most recent Hollywood comedies.

 

Jeff Kinney’s quasi-graphic novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid is far and away the most popular YA series going (Abrams has announced a 6 million copy print run for the next book in the series). The second Wimpy Kid movie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules (Fox, “PG,” $29.99, $39.99) is due out this week and it uses the same actors and the same approach as the first film. These inexpensively made movies have been a big hit with their target audience, and are actually some of the best live-action family fare to emerge from contemporary Hollywood.

 

 

The top U.S. TV release this week is Rocko’s Modern Life Season 1 (Shout! Factory, 286 min., $19.93), which collects the first season of the innovative 1990s Nickelodeon series that has been compared to Rocky and Bullwinkle in the way that it was able to appeal to both adults and children. The series is filled with satire including the obviously hilarious KFC-like “Chokey Chicken” restaurant where the show’s characters like to hang out in and the company controlled city known as “O-Town” where almost everybody works for the Conglom-O Corporation. Rocko however works at Kind of a Lot O’Comics, a comic store run by Mr. Smitty, a cruel toad who is only interested in racking up sales. If you missed this series back in the 90s, you might want to check it out now on DVD.

 

The other major animated release is the wacky and surreal Squidbillies Vol. 4 (Warner Bros., 124 min., $19.98), an Adult Swim animated series about an impoverished family of anthropomorphic hillbilly squids living in North Georgia.  There’s no subtlety here, but there are plenty of adolescent, Adult Swim-style laughs.

 

It turns out that this is a great week for those who enjoy absurdist humor from the small screen. In addition to those two animated series, the venerable movie laugh-fest Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back with two great episodes that make fun of two very different sorts of films representing low and high art. . In Mystery Science Theater 3000: Gunslinger (Shout Factory, 90 min., $19.99) Tom Servo and Crow. T. Robot take on the 1956 low-budget Roger Corman western, Gunslinger, in which a sheriff’s widow (Decoy’s Beverly Garland) straps on a Colt 45 and proceeds to take down her husband’s killers. In Mystery Science Theater 3000: Hamlet ( Shout Factory, 90 min, $19.99), the MST crew takes on the Bard, or at least a cheesy German 1961 TV production of Hamlet starring Maximilian Schell.

To cap off a rather brilliant week for TV humor releases, the loose, often very funny and always innovative comedy series Louie starring Louis C.K. debuts on DVD and Blu-ray with Louie: Season 1 (Fox, 300 min., $39.99, BD $39.99). 

Continuing series due this week include The Closer: The Complete 6th Season (Warner Bros., 600 min., $39.98) starring Kyra Sedgwick in the TNT police procedural series, Medium: The Complete Final 7th Season, the hokum-filled series starring Patricia Arquette, and Mister Ed: The Complete 5th Season (Shout Factory, 500 min, $35.99), the classic talking horse sitcom. 
 

Olive Films is releasing two miniseries from the 1980s, which may have been the golden age of the American mini. Sins (Olive Films, 300 min., $39.95) stars Joan Collins in a glitzy role as a French fashion entrepreneur with a dark past, but Monte Carlo (Olive Films, 188 min., $39.95), which also stars Collins along with Lauren Hutton and Malcolm McDowell in a pre-WWII spy drama, is even better.

 

The best U.K. releases of the week feature Julia McKenzie as Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth Miss Marple. Marple Series 5 (Acorn Media, 351 min., BD $69.99) presents four feature-length mysteries presented in high definition for the first time. All four mysteries are recent productions set in the 1950s with superb production values and excellent period detail. The four mysteries included in this set are The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side, The Secret of the Chimneys, The Blue Geranium, and The Pale Horse. Also being released this week by itself is The Pale Horse (Acorn, 89 min., $29.95), one of Dame Agatha’s most intriguing and spooky tales, which aired in the U.K. in August of 2010 and will air this July on the PBS Mystery. A fascinating bonus (on a second disc) is an earlier version of the story with Jean Marsh, Colin Buchanan, and Andy Serkis (The Gollum in Lord of the Rings and everyone’s favorite motion-capture actor). The earlier version of A Pale Horse along with a fascinating documentary “Agatha Christie’s Garden” are both included on the Blu-ray set.

 

Also out this week is Wired (Acorn Media, 134 min., $29.99), a financial thriller that aired on ITV in 2008. Set it the fast-paced and often corrupt world of London’s financial district, Wired presents a compelling look at corruption as an ambitious single mother finds more than she bargained for when she receives a promotion at work and becomes ensnared in a major financial fraud. No one is quite as they appear to be in this compelling 3-episode saga.

 

The top TV documentary of the week is Weapons Races (Athena, 400 min., $59.99), the Discovery Military Channel series that examines the expensive expansion of military technology during the Cold War, a war that was fought largely in the laboratory and on the proving grounds.

 

 

The top releases this week are all new Blu-ray editions of material that had been released before on standard DVD. The feature film Ghost in the Shell Solid State Society (Manga Entertainment, “13+,” 109 min., $34.98), is a 2006 stand alone feature based on the Stand Alone Complex series, which was produced by Production I.G. and directed by Kenji Kamiyama. The other GIS releases, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex—The Laughing Man (Manga Entertainment, “13+,” 106 min., $34.98), and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2ng Gig: Individual 11 (Manga Entertainment, “13+,” 106 min., $34.98) are both reworked versions of the Stand Alone Complex TV series, which had a season-long overarching narrative that was pulled together to create these “pseudo” feature films.

 

Those who enjoy Kosuke Fujishima’s You’re Under Arrest manga should check out You’re Under Arrest: Full Throttle Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 600 min., $59.98). This 23-episode series, which was produced by Studio Deen and released in Japan in 2007, was released here in 2010 in 2 parts (at $40 a pop, so getting the complete series at this price represents a 25% discount.

 

The only new to North America material out this week is the Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox OVA Collection (Media Blasters, “16+,” 60 min., $29.99), a two-part OVA from 2009 produced by Xebec and based on the harem romance comedy light novel series by Katsumi Nishino about a cute, shy high school boy who is fought over by a number of girls including two who actually are fox and wolf spirits.