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Larger than Life
Susan (Reese Witherspoon: Rendition, S.F.W) has her wedding day ruined when she gets hit by a meteor and ends up 50 feet tall in Monsters vs. Aliens... and, since the government doesn't let giant women wander the countryside, Susan ends up locked away with a sentient but brainless blob named Bob (Seth Rogen: Donnie Darko, Knocked Up), a maniacal and superintelligent man-sized roach (Hugh Laurie: House MD, Street Kings) and the missing link (Will Arnett: Arrested Development, Semi-Pro). But when the world is threatened by a power mad alien (Rainn Wilson: The Office, The Rocker), the monsters might be able to help, and Susan finds that being a "monster" who fights aliens and saves the world might have more to offer than her normal life. On DVD and Blu-Ray.
Comedy
Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition, American Beauty) follows the heavy drama of Revolutionary Road with Away We Go, a comedy about a thirtysomething couple (John Krasinski: Leatherheads, The Office and Maya Rudolph: Idiocracy, A Prairie Home Companion) who find themselves pregnant and, when the baby's grandparents move to Europe, go on a cross-country voyage to find a place to raise a child near friends and family.
Though they have their troubles, their travels reveal that other couples, parents, friends and family members live stranger and more absurd lives than they could have ever imagined. From situation to situation, the film assembles an ensemble cast that includes Carmen Ejogo (Pride & Glory, The Brave One), Catherine O'Hara (Penelope, Waiting for Guffman), Jeff Daniels (State of Play, The Lookout), and Allison Janney (Juno, Drop Dead Gorgeous).
Steve Zahn (Shattered Glass, Strange Wilderness) plays the manager of his mother's motel in Management who develops a crush on one of his tenants (Jennifer Aniston (Marley & Me, Bruce Almighty). Though she eventually accepts his advances, the two make a strange couple in this romantic comedy, and with her ex-boyfriend (Woody Harrelson: Seven Pounds, The Walker) in the mix, and his parents (Margo Martindale: Feast of Love, Million Dollar Baby and Fred Ward: Masked and Anonymous, Abandon) and the family business... they have their work cut out for them.
Kevin Spacey (Superman Returns, K-PAX) stars as a best selling author and psychiatrist in Shrink, working in L.A. and tending to the well-being of a variety of Hollywood personalities while he self-medicates with an abundance of alcohol and marijuana. The film focuses on Spacey's strange and deviant behaviors, but includes performances by Mark Webber (Winter Solstice, Storytelling), Keke Palmer (Cleaner, Akeelah and the Bee), Saffron Burrows (The Bank Job, Troy), Jack Huston (Factory Girl, Outlander), Pell James (Fanboys, Broken Flowers), and more.
Independence
Director Rian Johnson's followup to his debut film, Brick, is the con-man movie The Brothers Bloom, about a pair of orphan brothers who discover their talents early in life: Bloom (Adrien Brody: The Jacket, The Darjeeling Limited) is uncomfortable in his own skin, but comfortable enough playing a character in his brother Stephen's (Mark Ruffalo: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Windtalkers) stories... though Stephen's plots are always elaborate grifts that
"star" his brother, he maintains that the best story is the one where everyone involved gets what they want. Unfortunately Bloom, after decades of cons, wants to live a life that isn't part of his brother's stories, and might be able to live one if they can pull one final job: Stephen writes a story around a wealthy but eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz: The Fountain, About a Boy), but if Bloom is tired of the story, and she's strange enough that she keeps wandering away from the plot, the story may not be able to come out as written.
One of director Steven Soderbergh's (Che, Traffic) smaller, partially improvised films, The Girlfriend Experience stars adult film actress Sasha Grey as an escort. Her life is complicated, as she juggles a long-term boyfriend, clients, and the business side of escort life (reviews, websites) in a struggling economy where leisure capitol is harder to come by, and the number of people who would pay for a night with an expensive woman is shrinking.
In the Spanish thriller Fermat's Room, a host invites four genius mathematicians to an intellectual gathering, only to leave them trapped in an ever-shrinking room. The brilliant captives have to answer the enigmas their captor sends them in order to stop the walls from closing in and crushing them to death... but the most challenging enigma is the one they have little time to solve: how to get out of the room.
This week's sole horror film (remember: Halloween is right around the corner) is Hills Run Red, starring William Sadler (August Rush, The Mist), Sophie Monk (London, Click), and Tad Hilgenbrink (Lost Boys: The Tribe, Disaster Movie). The story follows an avid horror fan as he tries to find a complete print of a legendary slasher film; his search leads him to a backwoods cabin where he finds out where filming was never actually completed... and he is now a cast member in a gruesome picture where the murders are all too real.
New this week to Reckless Video's TV New Releases section are the first half of the second season of the Sarah Silverman Program, the fifth season of the police procedural CSI: NY, and the complete series of the US version of Life on Mars. We also have the complete miniseries Kings with Deadwood's Ian McShane, as well as DC's animated feature Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, and the standup comedy DVD Louis CK: Shameless.


