December 2011 DVD & Blu-rays

"The Smurfs" are little blue creatures that live in mushroom houses in a forest inhabited mainly by their own kind.

Story centers on a headhunter who recruits a magazine editor for a job, and realizing each is too busy to find a mate, they agree to sleep together with no strings attached. However, things start to get complicated when the guy falls for the girl, who’s started dating someone else.

Luke Chisolm, a talented young golfer set on making the pro tour but his first big shot turns out to be a public disaster. Luke escapes the pressures of the game and finds himself unexpectedly stranded in Utopia, Texas. It is home to eccentric rancher Johnny Crawford who forces Luke to question not only his past choices, but his direction for the future.

A house painter's dreams of Arctic exploration prompt him to write letters to real explorers. One of them sends him a penguin, which he keeps in the icebox. Before he knows it, the painter has a litter of 12 beaked birds. They eat voraciously, leading him to form Popper's Performing Penguins, a stage act that goes on tour and creates mayhem at every stop.

Story follows a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the African-American domestic servants that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreak, all just before the Civil Rights revolution.

Follows a doctor who dies and is taken to a spirit colony where he finds out about the afterlife and reincarnation.

Set in 1800s Arizona, a battle between cowboys and Apaches is interrupted by the crash landing of a space ship. The alien commander plans to tame the Old West and enslave everyone, but the cowboys and Native Americans turn their six-guns against the alien invaders.

Twenty years after World War II's end, three Mossad agents learn that a Nazi war criminal is still alive and set out to pursue him across Europe.

Archie Williams (Gabriel Sunday) is a 17-year old media geek who has suddenly found himself the most talked-about kid in school. He has announced that he's going to kill himself - on camera - for a class project. His classmates, parents, Sierra - the most beautiful girl in school (Brooke Nevin), and a "Shady Bunch" of shrinks, doctors, pill-pushers, and counselors descend on Archie. Some are hoping to save him, some want to imitate him, others try to push him over the brink. Archie films every moment of his high school experience, hiding nothing from his audience: realities of life, death, violence, sex, drugs, and the intense media overload and hypocrisy that bombard all teenagers.

A young couple moves into an old schoolhouse on a desolate stretch of farm country. Hoping for a new beginning, their lives are instead drawn toward dark and unforeseen ends.

Set in a boarding school, four teenage girls navigate adolescence while the adults in their world, the parents and teachers, struggle with their own midlife hurdles.

A young man tries to arrange a marriage for his brother, but finds himself falling in love with the chosen fiancée.

The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America's most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life - from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age - has been less widely understood.

When the mysterious deaths of a series of loyal subjects threaten to delay the 690 A.D. inauguration of Empress Wu, China's only female leader, she calls the infamous Detective Dee back from an exile into which she cast him eight years earlier.

Lenny juggles his kids and everything else all within a midtown studio apartment in New York City. He must choose between being their father or their friend all with the idea that their two weeks together must last 6 months.

"Columbiana" is set in Latin America and the U.S. Saldana would play a young woman who, after witnessing her parents' murder as a child in Bogota, grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents' death.

A young boy befriends Winter, an injured dolphin who lost her tail in a crab trap, and motivates everyone around him to help save the dolphin by creating a prosthetic appendage to replace the dolphin's missing tail. Harry Connick Jr. plays a vet who rescues the mammal and brings her to runs the marine hospital he runs. Ashley Judd plays the boy's mother while Morgan Freeman is a doctor who creates a prosthetic limb for Winter.

A mixed-martial-arts saga about two estranged brothers on a collision course to fight in a tournament for the heavyweight championship.

The project is described as a "knowing-your-age comedy," centering on a successful author (Polish) who is forced to confront an unrequited high school crush (Ryder) when he returns home to deliver a commencement address to graduating seniors.

An old American named cowboy in Bolivia who dreams of returning to the US. crosses paths with a young Spanish mining engineer accused of robbing a mine, and the two slowly strike up a friendship.

The film tells the story of a woman slowly going blind as she investigates the mysterious death of her twin sister.

Three women are thrust into an extraordinary situation involving a psychopathic hitman, a grizzled trucker and a delusional line cook.

In the early stages of the financial crisis, eight people at large investment banks attempt to position themselves in anticipation of the coming collapse.

Senna's remarkable story, charting his physical and spiritual achievements on the track and off, his quest for perfection, and the mythical status he has since attained, is the subject of SENNA, a documentary feature that spans the racing legend's years as an F1 driver, from his opening season in 1984 to his untimely death a decade later. Far more than a film for F1 fans, Senna unfolds a remarkable story in a remarkable manner, eschewing many standard documentary techniques in favor of a more cinematic approach that makes full use of astounding footage, much of which is drawn from F1 archives and previously unseen.

The fifth installment of the franchise in which teens escape a deadly accident only to later discover that death is hunting them down. The opening scene will involve a suspension bridge and another scene reportedly involves a character undergoing laser-eye surgery.

The story follows film footage purported to have been shot by the crew of Apollo 18. This moon mission from the early 1970s was officially canceled by NASA, but according to urban legend, it actually happened. Footage shows signs of alien life, and the events of the mission are built into a thriller storyline.

Pearl Jam Twenty chronicles the years leading up to the band's formation, the chaos that ensued soon-after their rise to megastardom, their step back from center stage, and the creation of a trusted circle that would surround them-giving way to a work culture that would sustain them.

When Christine, a powerful executive (Scott Thomas), brings on a naive young ingenue, Isabelle (Sagnier), as her assistant, she delights in toying with her naivete and teaching her hard lessons in a ruthless professional philosophy. But when the protege's ideas become tempting enough for Christine to pass one as her own, she underestimates Isabelle's ambition and cunning-- and the ground is set for all out war. In this devilish, propulsive thriller, Corneau sets up a the scenery expertly and his actors devour it.

Based on a true story, an 84-year-old Kenyan fights to go to school after the country introduces universal education.

The story centers on a small-time gangster who kills a rival and finds his life in turmoil as he faces blackmail threats from a waitress (Andrea Riseborough) who knows about the murder.

After hitting rock bottom when his faithful dog is kidnapped by a loan shark, K.C. (Peter Dinklage) sets off on an unexpected and hilarious adventure of redemption and retribution when he agrees to meet up with his long-time friend Jack (Mark Boone Junior) in Los Angeles to attend the funeral of their mutual friend and hot shot Hollywood director Pete Smalls (Tim Roth).

Master horse trainer Buck Brannaman uses principles of respect and trust to tame horses and inspire their human counterparts.

The film travels with animal research and wildlife conservatist Jane Goodall across several continents from her childhood home in England, to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania.