The King Speaks

Almost more than tell us the real life story of King George VI and the struggles he had to go through to tame his speech impediment so he could address his subjects (after his brother Edward abdicated the thrown to marry an American divorcee), this documentary is proof of just how great a job Colin Firth did portraying the man in his Oscar-winning role in The King’s Speech. (Watch them back-to-back and see for yourself.) In addition, it features a series of interviews with past patients of Lionel Logue, the therapist whose unorthodox methods help save the King and all of England.

Rubber

If Samuel Beckett made low budget horror movies instead of writing novels and plays, he might have made this darkly hilarious film about a radial belted serial killer. Thank goodness director Quentin Dupieux has the Irish writer’s same sense of the comically absurd. Rubber is the story of an abandoned tire who wakes up one day in the desert, digs itself out of the sand and starts rolling down the road looking for things to destroy with his telekenetic powers. It doesn’t matter if it’s an empty beer bottle, a cute little rabbit or a human being. If it gets in the tire’s way, it’s going to explode. Why the tire is killing things or how it got the power to do it in the first place is beside the point. It just does.

Kaboom

This is one of the weirdest Sci-Fi movies ever made, but that’s par for the course for director Greg Araki who wouldn’t make a straight (pun intended) narrative film if you paid him. It’s the story of a bunch of beautiful horny California college students trying to decide who they are (and who they want to sleep with). Their lives get even more complicated when they discover their small college town is home to a mysterious and deadly cult. Haley Bennett and Thomas Dekker are great as the lesbian/bi-sexual best friends who discover the mystery.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The Complete First Season

Yuseke Urameshi is a jerk. His mom doesn’t like him (at least when she’s been drinking, which is often). His fellow classmates are afraid of him (except for Kayko who has known him since they were kids). His teachers hate him (except for the school principle who still has hope for him).  When Yuseke gets hit by a car and killed in the first episode, then, it’s kind of unpredictable where the story will go as the bad boy is faced with a challenge to change his ways so he can get his life back. The comedy is a bit uneven, dipping to often into just plain silliness, but the characters are always entertaining and interesting,

Screamadelica live

Unless you are already a fan of the band, Primal Scream,  you may want to start this DVD by watching the Classic Album show included in the extras. It really helps put the band, their music and their influence on 1990s pop culture in perspective. Then settle back and watch the band play all the songs from the album that made them famous, Screamadelica. Take a break and then watch the second eight-song “rock set” featuring highlights from the rest of their career. Hardcore fans will love it; best of all, even novices who have never heard Primal Scream before are in for a sonic treat.

Louvre City

Documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert uses his unique way of telling a story to show us what goes on at the Louvre in Paris after the visitors have gone home and the doors are locked. Like most of his work, it takes a while to get into the rhythm of the film since Philibert doesn’t use a narrative of any kind to tell us what we are looking at or why. Instead, he gently moves his camera through the museum’s quiet halls to show us everything from a group of workers unfolding an enormous canvas for a new exhibition to a group of employees arguing good naturedly about the way they look in their uniforms. The end result is fascinating.

Black Death

It has the look and feel of a horror movie, but this gritty film from director Christopher Smith is more historical drama than gore-fest. And that’s a good thing. There’s still plenty of action as we follow a soldier named Ulrich (Sean Bean) as he travels to a remote village to find out why the  residents haven’t succumb to the plague like almost everyone else in the movie: Is it witchcraft? An act of god? Or just dumb luck? What we guess as viewers doesn’t matter, because the real fun of the film is watching Ulrich and his gang try to figure it out for themselves before it’s to late.