The Ringer

A comedy starring Jackass Johnny Knoxville as a guy faking a mental handicap so he can cheat in and win the Special Olympics? Produced by the Farrelly brothers (Dumb & Dumber)?  There has to be a special place in hell put aside for them for even daring to make such a movie, right? Wrong. While the story may sound outrageous, the movie itself is actually much more sweet and funny than you’d expect; it's probably the ‘nicest’ comedy the brothers have ever made. Knoxville gives a good performance as the guy who does the wrong thing for some very good reasons, and the cast – a mix of actors and Special Olympic athletes – do a fine job of supporting him. Katherine Heigl is the weak point in the film as the bland and blonde love interest, but her forgettableness is balanced nicely by a hilariously inappropriate appearance by Brian Cox.

Klondike

This enormously entertaining Discovery Channel mini-series boasts an impressive cast, including such iconic actors as Sam Shepard and Tom Roth, but it’s the performance of Abbie Cornish that steals the show. Acting against type – she’s usually cast for her good looks more than her talent in lackluster fiilms like Limitless and Sucker Punch – Cornish plays Belinda Mulrooney, a tough frontier woman out to make her fortune providing for the prospectors and other wealth seekers who have risked it all for a chance to become rich in the Alaskan wilderness. It’s a bold performance; the kind that makes everybody else on screen with her step up or get out of the way. Richard Madden, playing opposite of her as a young prospector/potential business partner/lover, is more than up for the challenge.

Date a Live: Complete Series

Thirty years ago, a disaster known as a spacequake obliterated the center of Eurasia without warning, leaving 150 million corpses in its wake. The cause of it all, a scantily clad babe called a Spirit from another planet. The only way to fight back (at least in this cuckoo anime)? Train a high school guy named Shido Itsuka how to seduce the Spirit so we can find out what her kind want with the planet and, more importantly, how to stop them. Part action anime and part dating sim, this series from director Keitaro Montonaga suffers from an identity crisis of not knowing just what it wants to be, often falling back on cleavage  and panty shots to distract viewers whenever the story stalls or gets too unbelievable. Thankfully, things move along at such a rapid pace you don’t have time to worry too much what it’s all about, Just sit back, relax and watch young Shido do his thang.

Alan Partridge

When their local radio station is taken over by a big corporation, the DJs think their biggest problem is whether or not they’ll keep their jobs. Then DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) decides he’d rather go out fighting, grabs a shotgun and barricades himself in the booth. It’s up to his coworker, Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) to talk him out of killing hostages in the name of free radio. A bit thin on plot, this film from director Declan Lowney, best known for his work on long-running British TV shows like Father Ted and Little Britain, works for one simple reason – Coogan. He’s been playing the character of Alan Partridge for almost two decades now, but he approaches this big screen adaptation without any sort of cynicism, making it as fresh and funny as when he first appeared as Partridge on The Day Today in 1994. He also plays it broad enough so people who have never heard of Alan Partridge – or even Steve Coogan – can join in the fun.

Attack on Titan

Directed by Tetsurō Araki (Death Note, High School of the Dead) this visually stunning and emotionally draining series focuses on the struggle humanity has to survive after its 100 years of peace is destroyed when the  ‘impregnable’ stone walls they live hidden behind are shattered by giant humanoid monsters called Titans. What starts out as familiar feeling story of young people banding together to face a common enemy – like you can find in just about every generic giant robot anime – quickly becomes something else, something much more meaningful, as the story moves away from the heroics of the battles to focus on the toll each battle takes on the individual humans involved. There is plenty of back-story added to the tale, but none of it feels like filler or fluff: They all have an emotional resonance that haunts each episode of the series. Sure, you could watch it just for the cool – and bloody – fights, but there’s so much more going on that you’ll want to watch it again and again.

Neverlake

You have to give director Riccardo Paoletti credit: The guy knows how to put creepy up on the big screen. Just about every frame of his movie practically drips with tension and malevolence. Unfortunately, he’s not as strong at telling the tale behind all the emotions he is creating. The film tells the story of a young girl named Jenny (Daisy Keeping) who spends her vacation from boarding school visiting her estranged dad in a small Italian village. Her efforts to get to know him there go practically unnoticed – her dad’s too busy with some sort of work to pay her much attention – so Jenny explores the surrounding countryside, discovering a strange old hospital/orphanage filled with some extremely strange kids. It’s a nice set-up for a horror flick, but it quickly unravels as we discover the secret behind her dad’s behavior, the kids at the hospital and whatever it is that lives under the lake. The end result will confuse and disappoint you, but you will still have nightmares about the creepy trip the movie takes you on to get there.

Black Out

A guy wakes up one morning with a vicious hangover and absolutely no idea how he got to bed, what he did the night before or who the guy next to him is, how he got there or who shot the guy point blank in the face. In other words, it’s the start of a very bad day for Jos Vreeswijk (Raymond Thiry), and it will only get increasingly worse as he travels around the seedier streets of Amsterdam trying to piece together what the heck happened. And, in the guiding hands of director Arne Toonen, it’s a trip you won’t want to miss. On the surface, Black Out, has all the markings of a classic noir thriller, only it’s shot in bright colors and  is filled with zany (but always believable) characters. Oh yeah…and it’s laugh-out-loud funny, especially if you like your comedy served up very black.