May 2014 DVD & Blu-rays

The Art of the Steal

Follows a retired motorcycle daredevil with a penchant for snatching art.

Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Devon Bostick, Jay Baruchel, Katheryn Winnick, Jonathan Sobol, Terence Stamp, Chris Diamantopoulos

Brightest Star

Fresh out of college, a young man (Chris Lowell) is left devastated when the girl of his dreams dumps him. Refusing to move on, he devises a plan to transform himself into the man she desires. After resigning himself to working for the head of a company in corporate mediocrity (Clark Gregg), he falls for a hipster songstress (Jessica Szohr) who likes him as he is. As his path continues to unfold unexpectedly, the counsel of a kindred spirit astronomer (Allison Janney) helps him understand how to truly carve out a place in the universe.

Allison Janney, Clark Gregg, Jessica Szohr, Chris Lowell, Peter Jacobson, Rose McIver, Maggie Kiley, Elvy Yost

Still Mine

Follows fiercely independent farmer Craig Morrison (Academy Award® nominee James Cromwell), who comes up against the system when he sets out to build a more suitable house on their 2,000 acre farm for his wife (Academy Award® nominee Geneviève Bujold), whose health is starting to fade. Although Craig Morrison is using the same methods his father, a shipbuilder, taught him, times have changed. Craig quickly gets on the wrong side of an overzealous building inspector, who finds just about everything unacceptable, including the unstamped wood Craig has milled from his own trees. As Irene becomes increasingly ill – and amidst a series of stop-work orders – Craig races to finish the house. Hauled into court and facing jail, Craig takes a final stance against the system for individual freedom and independence.

James Cromwell, Michael McGowan, Genevieve Bujold, Rick Roberts, Julie Stewart

Burn

The documentary takes audiences to the frontlines of Detroit, a city where some residents seem to think of arson as a sport. Detroit has more fires than any city in the United States: A population drop from 1.85 million in 1950 to near 700,000 today has left 80,000 abandoned structures as kindling. The result is a city with 30,000 fire calls a year — the highest fire-load in America. On average, Detroit sees 30 structure fires daily (firefighters estimate that more than 90% are set intentionally), while Los Angeles, with a population of 4 million, sees only 11 structure fires per day.

Denis Leary, Tom Putnam, Brenna Sanchez

Awful Nice

Follows estranged brothers, played by James Pumphrey and Alex Rennie, who are forced to travel to Branson together to renovate and flip the lake house they've inherited from their just-deceased father.

Todd Sklar, Alex Rennie

Veronica Mars

Based on the TV series of the same name.

Kristen Bell, Chris Lowell, Krysten Ritter, Rob Thomas, Dianne Ruggiero, Percy Daggs III, Jason Dohring, Bell Dohring

Generation War

Depicts the lives of five young German friends forced to navigate the unconscionable moral compromises of life under Hitler. Level-headed, highly decorated officer Wilhelm (Volker Bruch) goes off to the eastern front with his sensitive younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling). Deeply in love with Wilhelm is Charlotte (Miriam Stein), a young nurse who looks forward to serving in the Red Cross. Greta (Katherina Schüttler) is a talented singer who longs to become another Marlene Dietrich, while her Jewish boyfriend Viktor (Ludwig Trepte) fights for his life while hiding among members of the Polish Resistance.

Philipp Kadelbach

Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is a journey into a nightmare that’s so real, even daylight brings no relief. Scott and Penny just moved to a remote cabin to escape the pressures of the world and breathe new life into their art. Their only neighbor for miles is a strange hermit who only comes out at night, under the shroud of darkness. He never acknowledges them, never speaks – never does anything except drag his strange disturbing sculptures deep into the woods, night after night, without rest.

Jon Foster, Sarah Jones, Ross Dinerstein, Karl Mueller

Her

A satire about how world leaders plan all major events, from oil prices to future wars.

Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Portia Doubleday, Amy Adams, Samantha Morton, Megan Ellison, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze

That Awkward Moment

Based around three New York City friends who make a pact to remain single just as they start falling in love.

Miles Teller, Mackenzie Davis, Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan, Josh Pais, Tom Gormican, Kevin Turen, Imogen Poots

I, Frankenstein

The Monster evolves and learns how to control his anger and now acts as a private investigator. Dracula, meanwhile, is a kingpin of crime, and the Invisible Man is a secret operative.

Aaron Eckhart, Miranda Otto, Jai Courtney, Stuart Beattie, Gary Lucchesi, Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski, Caitlin Stasey

Dear Mr. Watterson

Calvin & Hobbes dominated the Sunday comics in thousands of newspapers for over 10 years, having a profound effect on millions of readers across the globe. When the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, retired the strip on New Year’s Eve in 1995, devoted readers everywhere felt the void left by the departure of Calvin, Hobbes, and Watterson’s other cast of characters, and many fans would never find a satisfactory replacement.

It has now been more than a decade since the end of the Calvin & Hobbes era. Bill Watterson has kept an extremely low profile during this time, living a very private life outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his quiet lifestyle, Mr. Watterson is remembered and appreciated daily by fans who still enjoy his amazing collection of work.

Mr. Watterson has inspired and influenced millions of people through Calvin & Hobbes. Newspaper readership and book sales can be tracked and recorded, but the human impact he has had and the value of his art are perhaps impossible to measure.

This film is not a quest to find Bill Watterson, or to invade his privacy. It is an exploration to discover why his 'simple' comic strip made such an impact on so many readers in the 80s and 90s, and why it still means so much to us today.

Generation Iron

Generation Iron examines the professional sport of bodybuilding today and gives the audience front row access to the lives of the top seven bodybuilders (from around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Japan, and Germany) in the sport as they train to compete in the world's most premiere bodybuilding stage - Mr. Olympia.

Vlad Yudin

Special ID

Donnie Yen is Zilong "Dragon" Chen, an undercover cop deep inside China’s most ruthless crime syndicate. The boss, Xiong (Collin Chou) swears to find every traitor and make them pay with their lives. Agents are turning up dead. His days are numbered. Desperate to protect his family and his life, Chen must risk everything to protect the SPECIAL IDENTITY he never wanted before it’s too late.

Donnie Yen, Collin Chou, Clarence Fok Yiu-leung

After Tiller

After Tiller explores the highly controversial subject of third-trimester abortions in the wake of the 2009 assassination of practitioner Dr. George Tiller. The procedure is now performed by only four doctors in the United States, all former colleagues of Dr. Tiller, who risk their lives every day in the name of their unwavering commitment toward their patients.

Lana Wilson, Martha Shane

Chlorine

The story is set in 1985 New England, where a man discovers that his wife has unwittingly put him in a local real estate deal that has him caught squarely into the savings and loan debacle.

Vincent D'Onofrio, Tom Sizemore, Elisabeth Rohm, Kyra Sedgwick, Christopher Beatty, Gary Giudice, Jay Alaimo, Matt Fiorello

Genius on Hold

Story centers on Walter L. Shaw, a prolific inventor in the telecommunications field who turned to the mob, whose bookies used his "black box" to run their gambling operations and wound up destitute before passing away in 1996. His son, embittered by his father's destruction, turned to organized crime in the 1970s and 1980s before attempting to set the record straight about his father.

Gregory Marquette

Vampire Academy

The story of Rose Hathaway, a 17-year-old half-human/half-vampire and guardian of a race of daywalking vampires.

Olga Kurylenko, Don Murphy, Zoey Deutch, Claire Foy, Lucy Fry, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Hyland, Gabriel Byrne

Pompeii

Recounts the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of the ancient Roman city.

Emily Browning, Kit Harington, Jared Harris, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jessica Lucas, Paul W.S. Anderson, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Paz Vega

About Last Night

A couple starts a romantic affair despite their friends' disapproval.

Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy, Joy Bryant, Will Gluck, Steve Pink, Leslye Headland, Adam Rodriguez

3 Days To Kill

Follows Secret Service Agent Ethan Runner who discovers he’s dying and decides to retire in order to reconnect with his estranged family but is offered access to an experimental drug that could save his life but has hallucinatory side-effects.

Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, McG, Kevin Costner, Ryan Kavanaugh, Amber Heard, Luc Besson, Tucker Tooley

The Monument's Men

During World War II, the U.S. government forms a group of international art experts to hunt down and recover artwork stolen by the Nazis.

George Clooney, Matt Damon, Paul Giamatti, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Grant Heslov, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban

Raze

A young woman is abducted by an elite, secret society and wakes to find herself in the company of fifty other women who are, just like her, forced to fight for their lives in an unimaginable hell.

Josh C. Waller, Rachel Nichols, Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms, Doug Jones, Bailey Anne Borders, Sherilyn Fenn, Bruce Thomas

In Secret

Paris,1867. Madame Raquin forces her young neice Therese into a loveless marriage with her sick, spoiled first cousin. However, Therese becomes obsessed with her husband’s friend Laurent and falls into a devastating affair that unravels all of their lives.

Elizabeth Olsen, Oscar Isaac, Matt Lucas, Tom Felton, Shirley Henderson, Mickey Liddell, William Horberg, Jessica Lange

McCanick

When narcotics detective Eugene “Mack” McCanick (David Morse) discovers that a seemingly harmless young criminal, Simon Weeks (Cory Monteith), has been released from prison, it triggers a firestorm of paranoia and violence. Unbeknownst to the chief of police (Ciaran Hinds), Mack and his partner, Floyd (Mike Vogel) mercilessly hunt down Weeks for unknown reasons over the course of one long, hot day. The closer Mack gets to his prey, the more we understand that his frenzy stems from a truth from the past, which only Weeks can expose.

Josh C. Waller, Rachel Nichols, David Morse, Cory Monteith, Trevor Morgan, Mike Vogel, Ciarán Hinds

Like Someone In Love

Like Someone in Love revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor (the wonderful 81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno, here playing his first leading role in a film) and a sociology student (Rin Takanashi) who moonlights as a high-end escort. Dispatched to the old man by her boss—one of the professor’s former students—the young woman finds her latest client less interested in sex than in cooking her soup, talking, and playing old Ella Fitzgerald records (like the one that gives the film its allusive title). Eventually, night gives way to day and a tense standoff with the student’s insanely jealous boyfriend (Ryô Kase); but as usual in Kiarostami, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface. Are these characters—who conjure in one another the specters of regret and roads not taken—meeting by chance, or is it fate? Is this love, or merely something like it?

Tadashi Okuno, Abbas Kiarostami, Ryo Kase, Rin Takanashi

The Right Kind of Wrong

Ryan Kwanten portrays a dishwasher and failed writer made famous by his ex-wife’s blog, “Why You Suck.”

Will Sasso, Robert Lantos, Sara Canning, Ryan Kwanten, Catherine O'Hara, Jeremiah Chechik, Ari Lantos, Megan Martin

Grand Piano

Follows a piano virtuoso who returns to perform after being forced into early retirement because of stage fright.

Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Allen Leech, Damien Chazelle, Tamsin Egerton, Rodrigo Cortés, Adrian Guerra, Kerry Bishe

Endless Love

A high school student's love for a 15-year-old girl is thwarted by circumstance and accident.

Josh Schwartz, Alex Pettyfer, Robert Patrick, Gabriella Wilde, Pam Abdy, Stephanie Savage, J. Miles Dale, Shana Feste

Run & Jump

Run & Jump follows Vanetia Casey (Maxine Peake), the spirited and impossibly optimistic center of the Casey family, who is struggling to get life back to normal after her 38 year-old husband, Conor (Edward MacLiam), suffers a rare stroke which changes his personality. Entering the emotional fray is buttoned-up American doctor, Ted Fielding (Will Forte), who arrives in Ireland to stay with them for two months: his research grant providing the Caseys with essential financial aid. Vanetia’s a dynamo, but with two young kids and both men in the house, she’s feeling bombarded and initially treats Ted and his study of Conor with resistance. Only when she observes Ted’s calming influence on the family does she begin to value his friendship, and, in return, Ted enjoys her heady, happy-go-lucky world. But Ted’s continued presence in the house sets the family on course for an emotional collision.

Will Forte, Maxine Peake, Sharon Horgan, Steph Green, Ailbhe Keogan, Edward MacLiam

A Birder's Guide to Everythi...

The story centers on a group of friends who head off into the woods in search of a rare bird.

Ben Kingsley, Kodi Smit-McPhee, David Frankel, James LeGros, Rob Meyer, Dan Lindau, Paul Miller, Luke Matheny

Journey to the West

The Monkey King, armed with a magic staff, journeys with a monk, a pig spirit and a fish spirit to India to retrieve Buddha's scrolls in an effort to find enlightenment.

Stephen Chow, Zhang Jizhong, Qi Shu, Show Lo, Sun Wukong, Chi-kin Kwok, Zhang Wen, Bo Huang

24 Exposures

Fetish photographer Billy (Adam Wingard) stages elaborate shoots around his fixations, photographing women in various stages of undress and death. When one of Billy's models winds up actually dead, depressed and romantically disillusioned investigator Michael (Simon Barrett), suffering through a crumbling relationship himself, knocks on his door and discovers a world he struggles to understand - in Billy's art, as well as his apparent ease at juggling professional and intimate relationships with a committed girlfriend and various models. Jealousy runs high, and meanwhile, a killer is still on the loose.

Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Sophia Takal, Helen Rogers, Caroline White