Stars: Chris Rock, Kerry Washington

Director: Chris Rock (Head of State)

Story: This remake of the French film Chloe in the Afternoon stars Rock as a happily married man who’s getting everything he wants from his wife (Gina Torres) but sex. When he runs into the alluring ex-girlfriend (Washington) of an old friend, he has to deal with some pretty hard-to-resist temptations.

DVD Extras: deleted scenes, bloopers, director commentary, casting session

Voices: Mitchell Whitfield, James Arnold Taylor

Director: Kevin Munroe (debut)

Story: Lest ye think this is a film about dynamite or The Movie Network take a closer look at those letters, it’s the hip new acronym for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, those pizza-eating cartoon reptiles that were so popular back in the 1980s. Now CGI-animated, the turtles have grown apart, with all but Leonardo having lost interest in fighting crime. And that’s a problem, since a new villain with ancient roots (Patrick Stewart) has arrived in NYC (um, that stands for New York City).

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling

Director: Gregory Hoblit (Hart’s War)

Story: Comparisons to Hopkins’ most famous character, Hannibal Lecter, are inevitable as the Oscar-winner plays a genius psycopath who shoots his wife in the head and then uses his impressive smarts to take on a hotshot prosecutor (Gosling) at trial. Still, the film got largely good reviews, with most people eager for one more helping of Hopkins’ cold, calculating malevolence.

Stars: Laura Dern, Justin Theroux

Director: David Lynch (Mulholland Dr.)

Story: Lynch fanatics will be excited to finally see this film that’s been making its way around the festival circuit for the past year. The movie never did pick up a major distributor, so it didn’t play in theatres for more than a few days here and there. It’s another mind-messer from Lynch, the king of confusion. Dern and Theroux play actors making a movie in which their characters have an affair. But when the actors start an affair of their own their real and on-screen identities become entwined. 

Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels

Director: Scott Frank (debut)

Story: The buzz was all about Gordon-Levitt’s performance when this thriller came out last March. The former child actor from TV’s 3rd Rock From the Sun was hailed as the next Marlon Brando, among other things. He plays Chris Pratt, a former athlete whose life is changed when an accident leaves him mentally challenged. Now a janitor at a bank, he’s targeted by a group of criminals who want his help robbing that bank.

Stars: Tim Allen, John Travolta

Director: Walt Becker (Van Wilder)

Story: Four middle-aged friends (Allen, Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy) who like to tool around on motorcycles in their spare time don tough-looking leathers and hit the road.

Stars: Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (debut)

Story: The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, this German drama takes place in 1984 East Berlin, a time when the government kept a close eye on all of its citizens via the Stasi, or secret police. Captain Gerd Wiesler (Mühe) is a Stasi officer assigned to dig up dirt on the playwright Georg Dreyman (Koch), but when he can’t find anything he becomes entranced by Dreyman himself.

DVD Extras: deleted scenes, making-of featurette, interview with the director

Stars: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder

Directors: Josh Gordon, Will Speck

Story: Men’s figure skating rivals Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) think their careers are over when they’re banned from their event after getting into a brawl. Then their coach (Craig T. Nelson) realizes that if they compete together in the pairs’ competition they can circumvent the ban.

Stars: Molly Shannon, Laura Dern

Director: Mike White (debut)

Story: White, the writer behind such quirky faves as Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl and Nacho Libre, makes his directorial debut with this touching little drama about Peggy (Shannon), an office assistant who really, really loves her beagle, Pencil. When Pencil dies unexpectedly, Peggy looks for meaning in her life, and finds it primarily in the company of animals. White also wrote the script for this film that debuted at Sundance earlier this year.

DVD Extras: animal unit featurette, Molly Shannon profile, deleted scenes, gag reel

The bulk of the moviegoers who made this teen thriller the spring’s surprise hit have never heard of Rear Window, let alone seen it. Which, we guess, means the bulk of people reading this blurb have probably never heard of it either.

So a little lesson: The 1954 thriller was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Jimmy Stewart as a chap with a broken leg who’s confined to his apartment where he becomes obsessed with watching neighbourhood melodramas through his window. Then he starts to suspect that one of his neighbours has killed his wife.

Sound familiar?

Although not a literal remake, the story gets a slick update here as rising star Shia LaBeouf plays Kale, a high school student who gets house arrest as a punishment for punching out his condescending Spanish teacher.

Trying to make the best of the situation Kale becomes fascinated by the lives of his neighbours, until he sees something weird over at Mr. Turner’s (David Morse) house. Mr. Turner brings home lots of dates, but they never seem to leave. Sexy newcomer Sarah Roemer steps in as Kale’s neighbour Ashley, while the film is directed by D.J. Caruso (Two for the Money).

The DVD features four deleted scenes, a “Serial Pursuit Trivia Pop-Up Quiz,” photo gallery, music video for The World Fair’s “Don’t Make Me Wait” and a commentary track featuring Caruso, LaBeouf and Roemer.

$26

And Star Wars fanatics will be happy with a never-before-seen interview in which George Lucas recalls his days as a USC student.