DVD Watch

[Earende]

Below are the latest DVD releases for the week of July 20th.

Enjoy!

[Earende]

Losers - Director Sylvain White adapts the Vertigo comic about a team of mercenaries who wage war on the CIA after they're double-crossed in the field and left to die. Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Jensen (Chris Evans), Roque (Idris Elba), Pooch (Columbus Short), and Cougar (Óscar Jaenada) were on a black-ops mission in the Bolivian jungle when rogue CIA agent Max (Jason Patric) hung them out to dry. After beating the odds and surviving their ordeal, the team decides to strike back against Max even if it means sacrificing their own lives to do so. Aiding them on their treacherous suicide mission is sexy operative Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who has her own reasons for wanting to see Max get his just deserts. But getting to Max won't be easy, because in addition to having the CIA on his side, he's about to spark a war that could plunge the entire globe into chaos. Their time quickly running out as Max's plan kicks into overdrive, the Special Forces unit that everyone assumed dead arms themselves to the teeth and prepares to strike back with a vengeance.

Sutures - Bloody and battered, med student Sienna (Allison Lange) is found passed out on a back country road one evening, the lone survivor of a massacre that left five of her friends dead. She's interviewed in her hospital bed by police detective Zane (Jason London), at which point we flash back to what happened to the group.

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams - When this year's round of unsuspecting Northerners fail to show up for their annual Guts N' Glory Jamboree, the residents of Pleasant Valley take their cannibalistic carnival on the road and head to Iowa where they encounter spoiled heiresses Rome & Tina Sheraton and the cast and crew of their "Road Rascals" reality show. Performing "The Bloodiest Show on Earth", our Southern Maniacs prove more than ratings killers.

Cop Out - Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan team up for the Warner Bros. police buddy movie Cop Out in this Kevin Smith-directed production. From a script by Robb and Mark Cullen, the story centers around police detectives Jimmy (Willis), a no-B.S. divorced dad, and Paul (Morgan), a crazy-talking loose cannon. Despite nine years as partners, the two lawmen can still sometimes seem like polar opposites -- especially when Paul's unpredictable antics get them suspended without pay. Already strapped for cash and trying to pay for his daughter's wedding, Jimmy decides to sell a rare baseball card that's worth tens of thousands. Unfortunately, when the collector's shop is robbed and the card vanishes with the crook, Paul and Jimmy end up going rogue, tracking down the card and the drug ring behind its theft, all on their own time, and without any backup -- except for each other.

Elvis & Anabelle - A small-town beauty queen and an unlicensed mortician set out across the Texas plains on a journey of selfdiscovery in director Will Geiger's meditative road movie. Annabelle has never known what life is like outside the fiercely competitive world of beauty pageants; her mother's constant demands of physical perfection a never-ending stream of acute, soul-crushing criticism. Elvis
doesn't have his mortician's license, but that doesn't stop his eccentric father from putting him to work in the family mortuary. When the sting of her mother's words becomes too painful to endure, Annabelle flees to the town mortuary knowing that is the last place her mother would come looking for her. When Elvis discovers the beautiful Annabelle cowering among the corpses, he sweeps her away on an impromptu road trip so that the pair may free themselves from their daily drudgery long enough to discover their own identities and realize what they really want out of life.

Runaways - The story of the groundbreaking '70s female rock group the Runaways is recounted in this River Road Entertainment production focusing on the duo of guitarist/vocalist Joan Jett (portrayed by Twilight's Kristen Stewart) and lead vocalist/keyboardist Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) as they navigate a rocky road of touring and record label woes under the malevolent eye of abusive manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) during their teen years. Acclaimed video artist Floria Sigismondi directs from her own script, with Scout TaylorCompton co-starring as guitarist Lita Ford.

Town Called Panic - This unusual feature (a French-Belgian-Luxembourgian co-production) stylistically recalls the work of Art Clokey (Gumby, Davey and Goliath), with its lead cast consisting entirely of stop motion-animated children's toys. The premise concerns two such toys -- Cowboy (Stéphane Aubier) and Indian (Bruce Ellison) -- who plan to buy a birthday gift for their friend Horse (the voice of Vincent Patar) but accidentally destroy his house. A series of wacky, often hallucinatory adventures ensues that finds the trio journeying to the center of the earth, wandering across icy tundra and discovering a strange aquatic world inhabited by oddball beings with pointed heads. Benoît Poelvoorde (Man Bites Dog) provides one of the voices.

Wronged Man - A paralegal (Julia Ormond) fights a 22-year battle with the legal system to prove the innocence of an African-American family man (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) convicted of assaulting a neighborhood girl in a small Southern town. Based on a true story.