Best DVD & Blu-rays Released May 2012
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May 1 • May 8 • May 15 • May 22 • May 29
Joyful Noise
Story centers on an unlikely partnership between two strong-minded, polar-opposites, who are forced to work together to save a small town gospel choir after budget cuts threaten to shut them down.
Michael Nathanson, Todd Graff, Joe Farrell, Catherine Paura, Andrew Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Queen Latifah, Dolly Parton
New Year's Eve
A New York-set relationship ensemble story.
Katherine Heigl, Halle Berry, Zac Efron, Abigail Breslin, Robert De Niro, Seth Meyers, Ice Cube, Garry Marshall
Haywire
A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is given a second chance to use her skills for constructive purposes.
Steven Soderbergh, Lem Dobbs, Ryan Kavanaugh, Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Gregory Jacobs, Channing Tatum, Michael Angarano
Underworld: Awakening
No plot details have been announced. However, it is rumored this fourth installment will actually be the start of a new trilogy and that the studio, Screen Gems, is looking at reprising the story of the world’s sexiest vampire, Selene (Kate Beckinsale).
Kate Beckinsale, John Hlavin, J. Michael Straczynski, Michael Ealy, Mans Marlind, Bjorn Stein, Len Wiseman, Gary Lucchesi
The Vow
The story centers a young woman who loses all recent memory in a car accident and struggles to rebuild her identity while her husband tries to win her heart for the second time.
Rachel McAdams, Michael Sucsy, Joe Gayton, Tony Gayton, Jessica Lange, Martin Shafer, Liz Glotzer, Robert Teitel
Mother's Day
Three brothers on the run from the law head for home, only to discover that their mother lost the house in a foreclosure. Mother ingeniously orchestrates her sons' escape, teaching the house's new owners and their guests a few lessons along the way.
Alexa Vega, Rebecca De Mornay, Brett Ratner, Darren Lynn Bousman, Matt O'Leary, Mark Burg, Oren Koules, Jonathan Zucker
Playback
A group of high school students make a film about a grisly crime that took place in their town 17 years ago. As they dig deeper, an ongoing horror possesses their souls and tears their lives apart.
Randall Emmett, Michael A. Nickles, Alessandra Torresani, John Bennett, Larry Robbins, Johnny Pacar, Brooke Smith, Toby Hemingway
Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
Tim and Eric are given a billion dollars to make a movie, but squander every dime and the sinister Schlaaang corporation is pissed. Their lives at stake, the guys skip town in search of a way to pay the money back.
Will Forte, Will Ferrell, Eric Wareheim, Adam McKay, Tim Heidecker, Kevin Messick, Todd Wagner, Ben Cosgrove
One for the Money
Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl), an unemployed lingerie buyer, convinces her bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie (Patrick Fischler), to give her a shot as a bounty hunter. Her first assignment is to track down a former cop, Joe Morelli (Jason O'Mara), on the run for murder -- the same man who broke her heart years before. With the help of some friends and the best bounty hunter in the business, Ranger (Daniel Sunjata), she slowly learns what it takes to be a true bounty hunter.
Other cast members include John Leguizamo as Jimmy Alpha, Ana Reeder as Connie Rossoli, Ryan Michelle Bathe as Jackie and Sherri Shepherd as dual roles playing two hookers with hearts of gold. There are no details about Shepherd's dual roles but one of them is confirmed to be Lula. Grandma Mazur will be played by Debbie Reynolds.
Sherri Shepherd, Katherine Heigl, Kirsten Kiwi Smith, Jason O'Mara, Wendy Finerman, Patrick Fischler, Ana Reeder, Debra Monk
The Grey
Story centers on a group of plane crash survivors who are stranded in the desolate forest, and are being hunted by a pack of wolves.
Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Joe Carnahan, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Ian Jeffers, Dallas Roberts
The Devil Inside
The story centers on a woman who has been led to believe her mother brutally murdered three people because she was clinically insane. After being told the murders occurred during an exorcism, she sets out to discover the truth. While documenting her experience with a film crew in Italy, she becomes involved in a series of unauthorized exorcisms.
Steven Schneider, Ionut Grama, William Brent Bell, Morris Paulson, Matthew Peterman, Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth
Chronicle
Three Portland teens contact a mysterious substance in the woods and begin to develop incredible powers. They work together to hone their skills for fun, until personal and family problems begin to turn them against one another.
Ashley Hinshaw, Adam Schroeder, Max Landis, Josh Trank, Dane DeHaan, Anna Wood, Joe Vaz, Luke Tyler
Albert Nobbs
Set in a luxury hotel in Dublin, "Albert Nobbs" is a Gosford Park-style “below stairs” drama featuring Glenn Close as a woman in Nineteenth Century Ireland who disguises herself as a man in order to survive.
Mia Wasikowska, Julie Lynn, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Brenda Fricker, Rodrigo Garcia, Bonnie Curtis, Alan Moloney, John Banville
My Perestroika
Five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times, from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia.
Robin Hessman
Man on a Mission
Richard Garriott's quest to become the first second-generation astronaut, from making his fortune to spending $30 million to reach the International Space Station via Russian rocket.
Mike Woolf
Rampart
The story centers on the widespread corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (or CRASH) anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers were implicated in varied misconduct.
Robin Wright, Oren Moverman, Lawrence Inglee, Ben Foster, Ice Cube, Paul Currie, Clark Peterson, James Ellroy
Norwegian Wood
The story centers on the loves and losses of a sensitive college boy in the 1960s who is more interested in American literature than in the era's political upheavals.
Tran Anh Hung
Red Tails
A group of young WWII pilots overcome racism to form the Tuskegee Airmen, a distinguished group of fliers who broke the aviation color barrier to become the first African-American fighter pilots in U.S. military history.
Bryan Cranston, David Oyelowo, Tristan Wilds, Cuba Gooding Jr., Andre Royo, Ne-Yo, Anthony Hemingway, Rick McCallum
The Secret World of Arrietty
The Clock family, who are four-inch tall, secretly lives in another family's residence until their daughter Arrietty is discovered.
Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Frank Marshall, David Henrie, Gary Rydstrom, Kathleen Kennedy, Karey Kirkpatrick, Bridgit Mendler, Amy Poehler
This Means War
Two best friends fall in love with the same woman and then wreak havoc on Manhattan.
Reese Witherspoon, Angela Bassett, Chelsea Handler, Robert Simonds, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, Til Schweiger, McG
The Woman in Black
A young lawyer is ordered to travel to a remote village to take care of a deceased client's papers. The young man glimpses a mysterious woman dressed only in black during his stay, leading to the uncovering of a tragic secret.
Ciaran Hinds, Simon Oakes, Daniel Radcliffe, Doug Davison, James Watkins, Richard Jackson, Jane Goldman, Janet McTeer
Perfect Sense
A story about two people who fall in love just as their worlds start falling apart.
David MacKenzie, Ewan McGregor, Connie Nielsen, Eva Green, Kim Fupz Aakeson, Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane
Certified Copy
A gallery owner living in a Tuscan village attends a lecture by a British author on authenticity and fakery in art. Afterwards she invites him on a tour of the countryside during which he is mistaken for her husband.
Abbas Kiarostami, Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
Chronicles the 90-year-old icon - both onstage and off...past and present. The film is both an intimate love story and a rarefied journey inside Broadway's most glamorous era.
Dori Berinstein
Gone
One night, a young woman named Jill returns home to find her sister's bed empty. She's convinced the serial killer who kidnapped her two years before has come back to finish the job. But the police do not believe Jill, who knows time is running out. With no one to turn to, she sets off to find her sister and face her abductor once and for all.
Amanda Seyfried, Sebastian Stan, Wes Bentley, Socratis Otto, Heitor Dhalia, Sidney Kimmel, Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi
Man on a Ledge
An ex-cop-turned-con (Sam Worthington) threatens to jump to his death from a Manhattan hotel rooftop. The NYPD dispatches a female police psychologist to talk him down but, unbeknownst to the cops on the scene, the suicide attempt is a cover for a massive diamond heist.
Elizabeth Banks, Anthony Mackie, Titus Welliver, Mark Vahradian, Sam Worthington, Ed Harris, Asger Leth, Lorenzo di Bonaventura
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The movie, based on Lionel Shriver's novel, tells the story of a smart, educated New York mother who does her best to raise a son she never wanted in the first place. He turns out to be extremely difficult and is at the center of the woman's marital breakdown before going on a killing spree at his high school with a crossbow.
Steven Soderbergh, Lynne Ramsay, Tilda Swinton, Rory Stewart Kinnear, Jennifer Fox, Robert Salerno, Luc Roeg, John C. Reilly
96 Minutes
Four young people struggling to find their way in life are suddenly caught in a terrifying and deadly carjacking and abduction.
David Oyelowo, Christian Serratos, Aimee Lagos, Charlie Mason, Justin Moore-Lewy, Lee Clay, Brittany Snow, Evan Ross
Coriolanus
Coriolanus, the hero of Rome, is manipulated and out-maneuvered by politicians and even his own mother Volumnia, resulting in his banishment. He subsequently offers himself to his sworn enemy, and together they march on Rome intending to destroy the city.
Ralph Fiennes, Jessica Chastain, Gerard Butler, Eddie Marsan, Brian Cox, Gabrielle Tana, Julia Taylor-Stanley, Vanessa Redgrave
Lula, the Son of Brazil
A working class boy moves to the financial capital of Brazil and becomes one the most influential politician in Brazil's history.
Marcelo Santiago, Fabio Barreto
Take Me Home
After getting turned down by a photography agency, Thom finds his landlord throwing all of his belongings out into the hallway. With no job prospects and no place to sleep, Thom must turn to his recurring last resort: driving his illegal taxicab around the streets of New York. Fortunately for him, Claire Barrow isn't having a good day, either. First she comes home to find her husband flirting with his new secretary, then discovers her estranged father has suffered a heart attack in California. In a frenzy, Claire runs out into the night and hails what she assumes to be a cab. What she gets instead is Thom. With her life in ruins, Claire decides on a whim to pay Thom to drive her out to California. With nothing in New York to call his own, Thom reluctantly agrees.
Sam Jaeger
Sing Your Song
Told from Harry’s point of view, the film charts his life from a boy born in New York and raised in Jamaica, who returns to Harlem in his early teens where he discovers the American Negro Theater and the magic of performing.
Susanne Rostock, Harry Belafonte