Recommended January DVD Releases

Also of Interest • DVD Release Schedules

Let's take a look at the best new movies on DVD for January 2008.

January 1, 2008

Shoot 'Em Up
Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci star in this darkly humorous, over-the-top actioner likely to offend mainstream sensibilities. Smith (Owen) happens to see a pregnant woman pursued by a gunman. She is killed, but Smith saves her baby, firing a bullet to sever the umbilical cord. He takes the newborn to a lactating prostitute called DQ (Bellucci), and they soon uncover a plot by an ailing presidential candidate to get bone marrow from infants. Giamatti plays the malevolent Hertz, a hit man who deploys a squad of goons to go after Smith and DQ.

January 8, 2008

3:10 to Yuma
Russell Crowe and Christian Bale star in this Western, a remake of a 1957 movie starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. The remake is half an hour longer than the original, but the story remains more or less the same. Ben Wade (Crowe) is a murderous outlaw who is captured and must be transported to federal custody, and Dan Evans (Bale) is a struggling rancher who is escorting Wade. The journey leads through Apache territory, and also Wade's gang is still out there. But Evans ends up in the town of Contention anxiously awaiting the train that will take Wade to Yuma.

Sunshine
This is a science-fiction movie directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Millions, 28 Days Later). The story is set in the near future when the sun has developed a problem that has turned the Earth very cold, threatening the future of humankind. An eight-person team is aboard Icarus II, which carries a gigantic nuclear device that will be detonated in an attempt to correct the problem. The team faces various problems, including receiving a distress signal from a failed earlier mission. The cast includes Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne and Cliff Curtis.

Zodiac Director's Cut
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr., this docudrama tells the story of still officially unsolved northern California serial killings. The film chronicles the murders that occurred around 1969 and the investigations that took place over the next two decades or so. Key investigators include a police detective (Ruffalo), a newspaper reporter (Downey) and cartoonist-turned-author Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal). The movie is based on Graysmith's true crime books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked.