Best DVD & Blu-rays Released February 2014
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February 4 • February 11 • February 14 • February 18 • February 25
About Time
A young man comes from a family of time-travelers. When he learns of his unique gift from his father, he uses his newfound abilities to change situations for the better.
Margot Robbie, Vanessa Kirby, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Richard Curtis, Tim Bevan, Amelia Granger, Eric Fellner
Free Birds
Story centers on two turkeys, Reggie and Brock, who discover a time machine and travel back to the first Thanksgiving to take themselves off the menu.
Owen Wilson, Craig Mazin, Lesley Nicol, Jimmy Hayward, Cary Granat, Ed Jones, Scott Mosier, Woody Harrelson
Escape Plan
The world's foremost authority on structural security is forced to escape from the master prison of his own design and use every trick up his sleeve to find the person who put him there.
Sylvester Stallone, Randall Emmett, Vinnie Jones, 50 Cent, Mikael Hafstrom, Mark Canton, Jason Keller, Miles Chapman
Romeo and Juliet
Two young teens fall in love, but their respective families are violently feuding, keeping them apart, and leading the two to their tragic deaths.
Hailee Steinfeld, Mark Ordesky, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Paul Giamatti, Carlo Carlei, Julian Fellowes, Ileen Maisel, Holly Hunter
Mother of George
A story about a woman willing to do anything and risk everything for her marriage.
Andrew Dosunmu, Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen, Matt Parker, Carly Hugo, Darci Picoult, Chris Maybach, Isaach De Bankolé
The Dallas Buyers Club
In 1986, Ron Woodroof, a tough Texas electrician, is diagnosed with AIDS and is given six months to live. Frustrated with the lack of available medical options and unwilling to accept a death sentence, Woodroof finds a lifeline using alternative drugs and creates a lucrative smuggling business that makes the drugs available to AIDS patients. Woodroof dies in 1992.
Chase Palmer, Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jean-Marc Vallee, Nathan Ross, Steve Zahn, Denis O'Hare, David Bushell
A Case Of You
A young writer pursues his ideal girl with the help of her online profile. After he starts a relationship, he has to figure out how to keep up the facade he's created that allows him to appear her perfect match.
Keir O'Donnell, Justin Long, Cassian Elwes, Joe Roth, Brendan Fraser, Busy Phillips, Kat Coiro, Christian Long
The Inevitable Defeat Of Mister And Pete
Separated from their mothers and facing a summer in the Brooklyn projects alone, two boys hide from police and forage for food, with only each other to trust. A story of salvation through friendship and two boys against the world.
Anthony Mackie, Jeffrey Wright, Rege Lewis, George Tillman, Jr., George Tillman Jr., Michael Starrbury, Jennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks
Dark Tourist
Centers on a disturbed and troubled man whose fascination with serial killers leads him and the audience on a horrific and menacing journey through his obsessive and twisted mind as he retraces their footsteps.
Frank John Hughes, Suri Krishnamma, Suzanne DeLaurentiis, Zachery Bryan, Adam Targum, Melanie Griffith, Eddie J. Fernandez, Suzanne Quast
Baggage Claim
A single flight attendant travels around the world in search of a husband.
Trey Songz, Terrence Jenkins, David Talbert, Cary Brokaw, Taraji P. Henson, Paula Patton, Octavia Spencer, Derek Luke
The Banshee Chapter
A female journalist follows the mysterious trail of a missing friend who was experimenting with mind-altering chemicals developed in secret government drug tests.
Katia Winter, Chad Brummett, Blair Erickson, Stephanie Riggs, Corey Moosa, Ted Levine, Michael McMillian, Monique Candelaria
Cutie and the Boxer
As a rowdy young Neo-Dadaist artist in Tokyo, Ushio yearned for international recognition, so in 1969 he set sail for New York City. Nineteen-year-old Noriko came to New York to study art, where she met and fell in love with Ushio, 21 years her senior. Putting her own artistic ambitions on hold, Noriko dedicated herself to supporting her husband's career. Over the course of their marriage, the roles of assistant and artist have slowly begun to transform. Now 80, Ushio, widely known for his boxing painting, is obsessed with establishing his artistic legacy, while Noriko is at last finding her voice as an artist with a series of drawings entitled “Cutie and Bullie,” depicting her own chaotic relationship with Ushio.
Zachary Heinzerling, Lydia Dean Pilcher, Patrick Burns
The Crash Reel
The epic rivalry between half-pipe legends Kevin Pearce and Shaun White is documented in this exhilarating ride into the world of extreme snowboarding. With both practicing more and more breathtaking and dangerous tricks leading up to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, everything suddenly changes for Kevin when a horrific crash leaves him fighting for his life. When he recovers, all he wants to do is get on his snowboard again, even though medics and family fear it could kill him.
Lucy Walker
The Best Man Holiday
Sequel to the 1999 film, Best Man, which starred Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut, Terrence Howard, Harold Perrineau, Nia Long and Sanaa Lathan. The original followed a group of old friends that reunite for a wedding.
Malcolm D. Lee, Morris Chestnut, Harold Perrineau, Sanaa Lathan, Eddie Cibrian, Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard, Nia Long
The Counselor
Set in the Southwest, a respected lawyer thinks he can dip a toe into the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation.
Paula Mae Schwartz, Penelope Cruz, Steve Schwartz, Cormac McCarthy, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Ridley Scott, Nick Wechsler
Ender's Game
Set in a world in which humans face a serious threat from an alien race known as the Formics and begin training elite military units in response. Andrew Wiggin, also known as Ender, a child becomes a top-flight solider and helps to save Earth by fighting simulations that turn out to be real.
Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, Abigail Breslin, Roberto Orci, Harrison Ford, Brendan Meyer, Aramis Knight, Gavin Hood
Khumba
Story follows a half-striped zebra who's blamed for the lack of rain by the rest of his herd and sets out on a search for a legendary waterhole.
AnnaSophia Robb, Anthony Silverston, Jonathan Roberts, Raffaella Delle Donne, Jake T. Austin, Loretta Devine, Roger Jackson
The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box
A 15-year-old boy, Mariah Mundi, has his world torn apart by the disappearance of his parents, then the kidnapping of younger brother by unknown assailants. Aided by adventurer Captain Charity, he sets off in pursuit, arriving at the Prince Regent, a hotel hiding a fantastical underworld.
Gavin Scott, Ioan Gruffudd, Aneurin Barnard, Keeley Hawes, Jonathan Newman, Rob Sprackling, John Smith, Sam Neill
G.B.F.
Story centers on the social warfare that erupts when two gay high school boys realize they must become GBFs to the most popular girls in school to improve their social status.
Rebecca Gayheart, Horatio Sanz, Darren Stein, Richard Bever, Stephen Israel, George Northy, Megan Mullally, Natasha Lyonne
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon
A tale of Dee Renjie’s beginnings in the Imperial police force. His very first case, investigating reports of a sea monster terrorizing the town, reveals a sinister conspiracy of treachery and betrayal, leading to the highest reaches of the Imperial family.
Tsui Hark
The Armstrong Lie
In 2009 Alex Gibney was hired to make a film about Lance Armstrong's comeback to cycling. The project was shelved when the doping scandal erupted, and re-opened after Armstrong's confession. The Armstrong Lie picks up in 2013 and presents a riveting, insider's view of the unraveling of one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of sports. As Lance Armstrong himself says: "I didn't live a lot of lies, but I lived one big one."
Frank Marshall, Alex Gibney
The Summit
Documents a calamitous expedition up K2, the second-highest peak in the world. The project explores what happened to a group of 24 climbers -- 11 of whom were killed or vanished during a trek to the summit.
Nick Ryan
Life of a King
The unlikely true story of Eugene Brown and his one-man mission to give inner-city kids of Washington D.C. something he never had – a future. He discovered a multitude of life lessons through the game of chess during his 18-year incarceration for bank robbery. After his release and reentry into the workforce, Eugene developed and founded the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of due to circumstances. From his daring introductory chess lessons to group of unruly high school students in detention to the development of the Club and the teens’ first local chess competitions, this movie reveals his difficult, inspirational journey and how he changed the lives of a group of teens with no endgame.
Cuba Gooding Jr., Jake Goldberger, Dennis Haysbert, LisaGay Hamilton
Austenland
A single, thirtysomething woman has a secret obsession with Mr. Darcy -- as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The obsession is ruining her love life because no real man can compare.
Jennifer Coolidge, Jerusha Hess, Bret McKenzie, Stephenie Meyer, Meghan Hibbett, Gina Mingacci, Shannon Hale, Keri Russell
Twice Born
Tells the story of a single mother who brings her teenage son to Sarajevo, where his father died in the Bosnian conflict years before.
Emile Hirsch, Penelope Cruz, Sergio Castellitto, Mira Furlan, Jane Birkin, Saadet Aksoy, Branko Djuric
The Artist and the Model
Summer of 1943. In an occupied France, not far away from the Spanish border, a famous old sculptor who is tired of life and wars finds the desire to work on his last masterpiece when a beautiful young Spanish girl comes knocking after escaping a refugee camp in the South of France.
Fernando Trueba, Jean Rochefort, Claudia Cardinale, Aida Folch
Grace Unplugged
20 years ago, Johnny Trey (James Denton) charted the Billboard top five single, "Misunderstood". Then, the hits stopped coming and he crash landed hard, a one hit wonder. Johnny found Christ and a new life for his family, far from the Hollywood Hills. He now serves as the praise music director of Homewood Community Church just south of Birmingham, AL. Serving alongside Johnny is his, now 18 year-old daughter, Grace (AJ Michalka).
Beautiful, extraordinarily talented and restless, Grace is so far undiscovered outside church. No longer satisfied with being dad's sidekick, she dreams of the day when she can carve her own path toward music immortality.
One day without warning, Grace leaves for Los Angeles. With the help of Johnny’s ruthless former manager, Frank “Mossy” Mostin (Kevin Pollak), she lands a record deal. Mossy sees in Grace a potential superstar and massive pay check. Grace seems prepared to walk away from her Christian faith and music to achieve her long-suppressed fantasy of pop stardom. Will she reject her faith, or rediscover it?
Shawnee Smith, A.J. Michalka, Chris Ellis, Brad J. Silverman, Russ Rice, Kevin Pollak, James Denton, Michael Welch
All Is Lost
A man braves the elements to survive.
Cassian Elwes, Robert Redford, Laura Lister, J.C. Chandor, Zachary Quinto
Jewtopia
Two childhood best friends reunite as adults when one asks the other to help him pretend to be Jewish so he can romance a woman he met during a singles mixer at temple. The gentile plumber poses as a Jewish doctor in order to land a Jewish girlfriend.
Rita Wilson, Christine Lakin, Sam Wolfson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Joel David Moore, Tom Arnold, Bryan Fogel, Andy Fickman
How I Live Now
Daisy (Saoirse Ronan), a teenager from New York, is sent to the English countryside for the summer to stay with cousins. She soon immerses herself in a dreamy pastoral idyll as she falls madly in love with Eddie (George McKay), until their perfect summer is blown apart by the sudden outbreak of a 21st century world war. Along with Eddie’s younger siblings, Isaac (Tom Holland) and Piper (Harley Bird), they are left in isolation and forced to fend for themselves. When they are violently separated Daisy must embark on a terrifying journey in order to be reunited with the boy she loves. Eddie is never far from Daisy’s mind but as her journey to find him becomes more desperate, the idea of what she may or may not find consumes her consciousness and haunts her soul.
George MacKay, Tom Holland, Kevin Macdonald, Saoirse Ronan, Harley Bird
Spinning Plates
Follows three extraordinary restaurants and the incredible people who make them what they are. These stirring stories range from Alinea, recipient of three Michelin stars and the seventh-best restaurant in the world, whose chef must battle life-threatening cancer, to a 150 year-old family restaurant in Iowa with an unbreakable bond with its community, to a fledgling Mexican restaurant whose immigrant owners risk everything to provide a better life for their young daughter.
Matthew Leutwyler, Joseph Levy, Miranda Bailey
Easy Money: Hard to Kill
JW (Joel Kinnaman), the promising business student who became an organized coke smuggler in Easy Money, is serving hard time in prison and is struggling to get back on an honest path. There are glimmers of hope in his life: some venture capitalists are interested in a new piece of trading software he’s developed, and while behind bars he’s made peace with an old enemy. This all proves to be an illusion. On leave from prison, and back in contact with his former gang, JW learns that once you’ve walked in the shoes of a criminal there just may be no going back.
Babak Najafi, Joel Kinnaman
On The Job
Inspired by a real-life corruption scandal involving the temporary release of inmates so they could work as contract killers for crooked politicians.
Erik Matti, Michiko Yamamoto
Hellbenders
Pitched as being in the vein of "The Exorcist" and "Ghostbusters," story takes place in modern day New York, where a team of holy men (consisting of ministers and priests) battle the forces of evil.
Lawrence Mattis, J.T. Petty, David Moscow, Kelly McCormick, Jon Denny, Clifton Collins, Clancy Brown, Dan Fogler
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
With infectious zeal and a voracious appetite for popular culture, Slavoj Zizek literally goes inside some truly epochal movies, all the better to explore and expose how they reinforce prevailing ideologies. As the ideology that undergirds our cinematic fantasies is revealed, striking associations emerge: What hidden Catholic teachings lurk at the heart of The Sound of Music? What are the fascist political dimensions of Jaws? Taxi Driver, Zabriskie Point, The Searchers, The Dark Knight, John Carpenter’s They Live, and propaganda epics from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Sophie Fiennes, Slavoj Zizek
Fists of Legend
On a television show billed as “the greatest fight show on Earth,” eager amateurs with lots to prove boldly step into the ring and expect to leave bloody but victorious. The ratings-hungry producers seek out “legendary” but largely forgotten streetfighters and mine their desperation for recaptured glory and redemption into ratings gold. Fists of Legend features three old friends and rivals from high school days who get their invitation to the big fight for the chance to win $200,000 and much more.
Woo-suk Kang
Thor: The Dark World
Sequel to the 2011 movie that was based on the Marvel comic character.
Zachary Levi, Alan Taylor, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgard, Anthony Hopkins
Blue Is the Warmest Color
A 15-year old, Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) has no doubt: a girl must date boys. Her life is turned upside down when she meets Emma (Léa Seydoux), a blue haired young woman, who allows her to discover desire and to assert herself as a woman and an adult.
Adele Exarchopoulos, Abdellatif Kechiche, Léa Seydoux, Salim Kechiouche, Jeremie Laheurte, Catherine Salée
Gravity
Story center on the sole surviving human member of a space mission, desperately trying to return home to Earth and her daughter.
Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Alfonso Cuarón, William Fay, David Heyman, Jonas Cuaron, Basher Savage, Thomas Tull
Nebraska
An aging alcoholic drafts his son to drive him from Montana to Nebraska so the old man can redeem his winning sweepstakes ticket. The son goes reluctantly, suspecting his dad's winning ticket is the same personalized form letter sent to millions.
Missy Doty, Bob Odenkirk, Will Forte, Albert Berger, Bob Nelson, Stacy Keach, Devin Ratray, Alexander Payne
Amber Alert
Some friends decide to follow a car they've seen posted on an Amber Alert and things soon go very wrong.
Kerry Bellessa, Joshua Oram, Summer Bellessa, Chris Hill, Jasen Wade
Mr. Nobody
"Mr. Nobody" is described as a multi-layered love story inspired by the 'butterfly effect,' the chaos-theory notion that the beat of a butterfly's wings can cause a storm thousands of miles away. Set in the not-so-distant future, the story follows Nemo Nobody (Leto) who, at 120 years old, is the last mortal surrounded by happy immortals as he relives his real and imaginary years of marriage.
Jaco Van Dormael, Rhys Ifans, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Jared Leto, Juno Temple
Muscle Shoals
The story of a small Alabama town by the Tennessee River, where a man named Rick Hall overcame crushing personal hardship to put together a recording studio and house band (the Swampers) that became legendary for its electrifying musical chemistry. Luring some of the biggest figures in 20th century pop music, like Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, theStaples Singers, the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simon and Garfunkle, the studio produced all time classic songs like “Mustang Sally,” “I Never Loved a Man,” “Wild Horses” and many more, uniting black and white musicians in the deep south during an incendiary period of racial hostility.
Greg Camalier, Stephen Badger
Narco Cultura
Follows Mexican drug cartels' influence on life and popular culture on both sides of the border.
Shaul Schwarz
Pulling Strings
Alejandro (Jaime Camil) and his loyal best friend Canicas (Omar Chaparro) are hardworking mariachi singers looking for fame in Mexico City. More than just a mariachi, Alejandro has a second full time job – he's a single dad. When Alejandro tries to secure a visa for his young daughter to visit her grandparents in the U.S. Alejandro's request is flatly denied by a young embassy worker, Rachel (Laura Ramsey.) Later that evening, Alejandro and Canicas run into Rachel while playing a gig – which turns out to be a celebration of her promotion to a post in London. Alejandro seizes the coincidental encounter as a chance to change her mind on his rejected visa, and with Canicas by his side, they whisk her into an unforgettable adventure. And, while he gets busy pulling strings for a visa, it turns out the strings of his heart are pulled too.
Tom Arnold, Pitipol Ybarra, Jaime Camil, Omar Chaparro, Stockard Channing
Adventures of the Penguin King
The film depicts the fortunes of a young male King Penguin, who returns to the place where he was born and raised. Known as Penguin City, this sub-Antarctic island is home to albatrosses, leopard seals and elephant seals—and six million penguins! Somehow our hero must earn his place among the inhabitants and fulfill his destiny by finding a mate and raising a family.
David Attenborough
You Will Be My Son
Paul de Marseul (Niels Aretrup) is the passionate, demanding proprietor of his prestigious family wine estate. But he has no faith in his son, Martin (Loran Deutsch), who works at the vineyard. Paul dreams of a harder-working, successful son—a dream that one day seemingly materializes when he meets Philip (Nicolas Bridet), the son of his dying estate manager (Patrick Chesnais). Can Paul turn against his own blood and turn Philip into the rightful heir of his family estate?
Anne Marivin, Gilles Legrand, Niels Arestrup, Patrick Chesnais