The Experiment Forest Whitaker and Adrien Brody get paid to participate in a study that has them in a prison, with Whitaker in the guard group and Brody in the unfortunate prisoner faction. Unless the characters were paid $50 million each, it probably wasn’t worth it, in this tense, dark thriller (a remake of the German Das Experiment).

The Office, Season 6 Question: I just watched The Experiment, and it scared me silly. What should I watch to lighten up? Answer: bears eat beets. That’s right, season 6 of the Office is now on DVD.

Ondine Colin Farrell stars in this whimsical tale from director Neil Jordan about a fisherman who finds a beautiful woman — or is she a mermaid? — in his fishing net. Wisely, he holds off on sending this discovery to Chicken of the Sea.

The Secret in Their Eyes This thriller from Argentina won raves — as well as a little award called the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Bored to Death, Season 1 This comedy series starring Jason Schwartzman — as a writer who decides to play detective — Ted Danson, and Zach Galifianakis has a distinctly Brooklyn flair, but has gained a following that spans way outside the fair borough.

Ajami was Oscar-nominated for best foreign language film, and has drawn raves from critics. Ajami is a neighborhood in Israel that is home to Christians, Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians alike — a community that is fraught with crime, drugs, and death, which makes for complex plot lines and gripping drama.

B is for Bounty Hunter, which pairs Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, either to create box office gold or make Brangelina jealous, depending on who is doing the speculating. Aniston is the sassy, extremely fit and tanned wife and foe to Gerard Butler’s wisecracking (and determinedly American-accented) bounty hunter.

Ricky Gervais in Cemetery Junction

C is for Chloe, in which Julianne Moore decides to “test” husband Liam Neeson and his commitment to monogamy by hiring sexy Amanda Seyfried to seduce him. It being an Atom Egoyan film (remember Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon in Where the Truth Lies?!), Moore and Seyfried end up getting cozy, which ends up as stills on the internet. There’s also Cemetery Junction, a new effort from the indefatigable Ricky Gervais, and Clash of the Titans, a nice juicy escapist special effects spectacle, and Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan.

D is for the latest season of Dexter out on DVD, a series which continues to collect rabid fans, and also the American remake of Death at a Funeral, with a huge cast including Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover, Luke Wilson, and a personal fave of ours, Keith David. Date Night does the no-brainer comedic pairing of Steve Carell and Tina Fey as suburban parents who decide to have a big romantic night in the city, with humorously unfortunate results.

There being no new releases that begin with E or F, let’s skip to Ghost Writer, the icy thriller from Roman Polanski. The majority of this film may take place at a beach house, but nothing could be chillier than the drama unfolding as Ewan McGregor attempts to assist disgraced former Prime Minister Pierce Bronsnan in penning his memoirs while Olivia Williams and an excellently subdued Kim Cattrall lurk nearby.

She doesn't look much like a loser, does she?

Ip Man is a martial-arts dazzler starring Donnie Yen as Bruce Lee’s mentor, and Kick Ass delivers plenty of colorful comic-book violence (although it’s strictly for adults only). Life, the BBC Miniseries from the makers of the phenomenal Planet Earth series, explores wildlife all over the globe with its usual breathtaking footage, eye-popping detail, and thought-provoking observations. The Losers is an action-flick about a rag-tag — yet suspiciously glam, as portrayed by the likes of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Zoe Saldana — CIA black ops team getting revenge on those who tried to kill them. There’s nothing glam, though, about the eponymous Mother, who tries to find that always elusive Real Killer after her son is arrested for murder. The term “will stop at nothing” is not only the tagline but a phrase that doubtless comes up again and again when describing Mother’s efforts in this film by Joon-Ho Bong (The Host).

Mary and Max looks at first glance like a film for children, what with its Wallace and Gromit-style claymation-looks, but it’s actually an astonishing tale for adults only, voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette. Mary is a lonely little girl living across the globe from isolated New Yorker Max, and the film spans years and years of their unusual friendship, which begins when Mary randomly tears his name and address out of a phonebook. The film is at times hilarious, always unpredictable, and may even provoke tears from its viewers (it did from this viewer!).

He doesn't really look terribly happy, does he?

We don’t have new releases in every letter of the alphabet, okay? But two films listed under T are worthy watches. Claire Danes stars in the title role as real-life wonder Temple Grandin, a doctor, professor, author, and expert in the field of animal welfare — who is also high-functioning autistic. And in the Danish noir/thriller Terribly Happy, a police officer is sent to a tiny town after his way of life in Copenhagen comes to an end under mysterious circumstances. While coping with some seriously frayed nerves, he must also adapt to a new style of police work in this strange village, as well as eccentric — and dangerous — locals and a seductive blonde who immediately begins drawing him into her own considerable drama (which may not be the best cure for what’s already ailing him).

As always, there’s more to come — maybe in letters E, F, Q, or the like….

Cortesa stars as a concentration camp survivor who assumes the identity of a fellow prisoner in order to move to San Francisco and lead the good life. But, not so fast… Along with the eponymous house comes, a baseball lovin’ son, a nanny channeling Judith Anderson, and a creepily ambitious husband played by the always wooden and weird, Basehart. Yes,  car brakes are cut,  various poisons administered, and more than one red herring is served up, as you might imagine, but ultimately it never quite heats up to true potboiler status… close, but not quite.

Ordinarily, this is a film virtually tailor made for me, but the uneven performances of the leads and the cliched situations relegates House to strictly ho-hum status. It is, however, worth a view for the beautiful black and white photography of Lucien Ballard.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was Heath Ledger’s last film; he died before it was completed and the role was filled out by Colin Farrel, Johnny Depp, and Jude Law. The whimsical film also stars Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits, and is praised by the Los Angeles Times for its “fantastical visual imagination.”

An expert at playing a guy whose world has been turned upside down, John Malkovich does just that in the critically lauded Disgrace as a professor who goes from getting busted for seducing a student to finding himself amidst the complicated world of South Africa. Both the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly put this film on their 2009 Top Ten list.

In the same razzle-dazzle vein as the glittery musical Chicago is the glittery musical Nine, which counts Daniel Day-Lewis (as Federico Fellini), Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, and Penelope Cruz among its star-studded cast, not to mention Fergie (!) and Marion Cotillard.

Jeff Bridges originally turned down the lead role in Crazy Heart, and isn’t he glad he changed his mind? The film earned him not just raves, but his first Oscar after five times up at the bat. Also starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, the film follows country music star Bad Blake and his travails as he attempts a comeback.

If you’ve seen the German film Downfall, which traced the last days of Hitler’s rein, and if you’ve seen Liam Neeson’s recent white-knuckle thriller Taken, then you can guess that a super-intense director + a super-intense actor might just result in one super-intense movie. You guessed right, and the movie is Five Minutes of Heaven, which tells the true story of a 17-year old Irish-Protestant who murders a 19-year-old Catholic and the repercussions that occur thirty years later.

If all that intensity doesn’t sound like your cup of strong tea this week, try Leap Year, a new romantic comedy that features Amy Adams being her adorable self.

Or if you just feel like an all-out horror movie, check out The Collector, in which a stealthy cat burglar finds a lot more than family jewels in a giant house booby-trapped by an evil wretch who makes Jigsaw look haphazard and lazy. The gore is over-the-top and the variations on pain to all living beings inventive — if you have a cat or a dog, put your hands over their eyes at certain key moments, or they may require sedation.

If you’re looking to fill up that yawning, empty spot where beloved characters and gripping plotlines once resided, check out Breaking Bad, the series starring Bryan Cranston which just began its third season — seasons 1 and 2 are available on DVD at Reel Life. Cranston plays Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who receives a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. To insure that his family will be well protected after his demise he begins whipping up batches of stellar crystal meth – of the chemistry nerd variety. If this sounds too maudlin for your tastes, rest assured that without Cranston the show couldn’t go on, and thus a more positive prognosis lies in his immediate future. At first, I vowed that if I was subjected to Cranston in his underwear — or any other state of undress — one more time, I would break our TV screen. But then I became hooked (on the gripping plotlines and heavy-duty tension, not on Cranston au natural), and Breaking Bad has become a funny, taut, and utterly unpredictable addition to our TV favorites.

Speaking of which, Reel Life has every episode of The Shield on DVD, and if you haven’t seen it yet, strike fast and strike hard (that’s a little Shield in-joke for you). While most people are shocked by my blasphemy, I actually loved The Shield more than The Wire (I know, I know). Suffice it to say that it’s the devastating final season — and the jaw-dropping turn of events that lead up to the shattering series finale — that finds its way into my thoughts more frequently than The Wire‘s exploits. Centering on a cop who gives new meaning to the word “corrupt,” Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chiklis) and his precinct, The Shield features an amazingly strong cast — Jay Karnes, CCH Pounder, and Walton Goggins, among them — and attracted guest stars like Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker. Reoccurring stories and characters weave their way in and out of every season, and the plotlines and bursts of violence will not only keep you hooked but make you ask “How did FX get away with this stuff?”

Mad Men Season 3

An Education
The raved-about, Oscar-nominated film starring newcomer Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard.

Brothers
Girl meets boy. Girl and Boy get married. Boy goes off to war. Girl thinks Boy is dead and gets with Boy’s brother. Boy returns home — is not dead, after all, and is in fact PISSED. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Starring Natalie Portman, Tobey McGuire, and Jake Gyllenhaal

Sherlock Holmes
Robert Downey Jr. or Basil Rathbone? Only you can decide. This blockbuster also stars Jude Law as Watson and Rachel McAdams.

Astro Boy
This animated return to a favorite futuristic character, Astro Boy, looks awesome for adults and kids alike and features the voices of Nic Cage, Charlize Theron, and Kristen Bell.

Afghan Star
Think getting dissed by Simon Cowell is hard? To get on Afghanistan’s “Pop Idol,” contestants literally risk their lives, as detailed in this extremely thought-provoking, intriguing documentary which won big at Sundance.

I Sell the Dead
This comedy featuring Lost‘s Dominic Monaghan (left) and Phantasm favorite Angus Scrimm is a must see for fans of cult films and goofy comedies alike.

Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa’s films have won prestigious awards all over the world, but haven’t always been easily accessible for filmgoers. These three films will introduce you to his work or, if you’re already a fan, provide you with three unique, much-lauded viewing experiences.