Film & TV

This Week’s DVD Releases: In the Big Hurt Moon Departures Loop

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Not much came out on DVD last week (no, The Final Destination in 3D does not count), so the studios made up for it this week with a plethora of new releases (not to mention Kathy Griffin’s latest).  Let’s take a look a few of them, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video. (Also be sure to check out the Scarecrow staff’s picks for the top 100 films of the ’00s.)

Blue collar psychological sci-fi film Moon was criminally underseen last year.  The synopsis, in brief: Average Joe Sam Rockwell is working for an energy company on the moon, with his only companion being a HAL-like figure voiced by Kevin Spacey–until the day that he meets someone who looks exactly like him.  In a just world, Moon would be a smash hit, with Sam Rockwell (and Sam Rockwell) getting a nomination for Best Actor next month.  As it is, we’ll just have to wait for the next creepy space nugget from director Duncan Jones.

Now that we’re well in the midst of Awards Season (the Golden Globes are on this Sunday, mind you), you also need to see the thinking man’s Iraq bomb squad action flick The Hurt Locker before Kathryn Bigelow collects her Best Director Oscar.  Because that’s what’s going to happen.  Write it down.

If you like Patton Oswalt (you do), and if you like The Wrestler scribe Robert Siegel (ditto), then you should watch his directorial debut starring Oswalt, the dark sports comedy Big Fan (you will).  While you’re at it, also rent political satire (and SIFF opening night film) In the Loop, because I’m sure you missed some of the whipsmart rapid fire dialogue, due to all the laughter.

There’s a few others that also showed at SIFF out this week: last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar winner Departures, the Palestinian-American fish-out-of-water dramedy Amreeka, and Spike Lee’s documentary on Stew’s Broadway musical Passing Strange.

Deadline, one of Brittany Murphy’s final films, is out this week too.  And then of course there’s the list of new releases that you should avoid at all costs: Downloading Nancy, Fame, Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself, and The Burning Plain.

3 thoughts on “This Week’s DVD Releases: In the Big Hurt Moon Departures Loop”

  1. I really liked that movie. Blue-collar is right, there was something refreshing about that take on moon mining. Of course moon mining would be a grunt job. Mining is *always* a grunt job.

  2. I love me some Patton Oswalt but man Big Fan was boooorrrriiing.

    So you’re a bad person for recommending this movie. Oneski.

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