Most recognizable for his hilarious stint as a fake-news correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Wyatt Cenac also makes his feature debut as the star of Barry Jenkins' "enlightened and tenderly beautiful new film, Medicine for Melancholy, which GreenCine's Craig Phillips called "a low-key revelation" after it screened at the SFIFF. Just before a post-screening Q&A at Columbia University last week, Aaron Hillis told Wyatt their chat -- now available as a podcast -- could be casual, so he put his feet up on the table and threatened to take his pants off. Ever the jokester, they discussed what his film is really about, the big-screen remake of a TV show he believes he should star in, and why Bush-era America may never fully be over. Read more >>

Nick & Norah's Infinite PlaylistRent  

Peter Sollett follows up his debut feature, the wonderful indie coming of age film Raising Victor Vargas, with this lesser but still charming comedy starring the most-appealing Michael Cera and Kat Dennings. "If we must have teen movies, let them all be as sweet and seductive as Sollett's smartly observed romance," wrote David Ansen in Newsweek. The template is "[f]leshed out with atmosphere, a nice blend of broad goofiness and sophistication, and two appealing leads who bring it to life," adds Michael Ordoña in the Los Angeles Times.

Bottle ShockRent  

Based on a true story, Bottle Shock posits Bill Pullman as a vintner and Alan Rickman as a businessman who both helped put California wines on the map, but, as Roger Ebert wrote, the film "is more than the story. It is also about people who love their work, care about it with passion and talk about it with knowledge." "It's a winner," adds Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. "And not just for oenophiles. Director Randall Miller, who co-wrote the script with his wife Jody Savin, keeps the plot brimming with spirit and wit."

Also out today: Secret Life of Bees; Zack and Miri Make a Porno; Days and Clouds [review coming to GC Daily soon]; Afro Samurai: Resurrection (Director's Cut); The Singing Revolution; Grindhouse Double Feature: Flesh for Fantasy; Mystery Science Theater: Volume XIV; Love Comes Lately; Our Man in Havana (classic Graham Greene based flick); Oliver and Company Anniv Edition; Drugstore Cowboy (Meridian Collection); Natalie Wood Signature Collection (except for Splendor in the Grass, all previously unreleased); Killer Movie; The Night James Brown Saved Boston; Diary (from Oxide Pang); Good Day to Be Black & Sexy [more here >>]; Inside Moves (great basketball movie); Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom; Claymore Vol. 3: Hunter Is Prey; Code Geass Leouch of the Rebellion, Pt. 3; Ghost Slayers Ayashi Part 1; Yentl; Friday the 13th (Uncut Deluxe Ed.) + Part 2 (Deluxe Edition) + Part 3 (Deluxe Edition); Gumshoe (Stephen Frears directed, starring Albert Finney).

New and Coming Releases lists | Your Queue | Discuss! | GreenCine's review blog: Guru | GC Member Reviews and Lists | New DVD Spotlight

The Lucky Ones Rent  Read 

Director/co-writer (with Dirk Wittenborn) Neil Burger (The Illusionist) has created something special with The Lucky Ones: a road/buddy movie in which one of those buddies is a gal; a film about self-discovery that makes the journey achingly real even as the destination remains ongoing; a story that quietly indicts us Americans who gave up not a thing while our countrymen died and killed fighting an "enemy" who had never attacked us. (We're giving things up now, of course: an unhappy continuation of the saga of our past eight-years.) All of the above is implicit in this movie, by the way. I have no idea on which side of the red/blue spectrum Burger resides, nor does it matter. Explicitly, he and Wittenborn (Fierce People) have given us a consistently interesting story inhabited by three wonderful characters...Read review >>

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RocknRolla Rent  Read 

Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, an inoffensively-entertaining gangland romp, is clearly an attempt to return to his earlier, Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels form which gained him a measure of fame as a kind of British Quentin Tarantino. As the writer and director, Ritchie richly envisions contemporary London as a place where real estate has supplanted drugs and other vice for the city's underworld. One imagines that this may have changed somewhat during the current global real estate meltdown....Read review >>

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Far From the Madding Crowd Rent  Read 

Adapted by Frederick Raphael from Thomas Hardy's fourth yet first commercially successful novel (1874), John Schlesinger's lavishly sweeping epic arrives on DVD for the first time, extended by three minutes to include the film's Overture, Entr'Acte, and a PETA-unfriendly cockfighting scene that was cut from the original American release. In her third outing with Schlesinger after Billy Liar and Darling, a perhaps never-lovelier Julie Christie headlines as Bathsheba Everdene, a strong-willed country heiress who coyly underestimates her power over men after becoming the sunny nexus of... Read review >>

More like this Mayor of Casterbridge | Tess

Just a head's up that GreenCine will indeed be hosting a live chat during the Oscars again this year, on February 22nd. More information about the exact online location of the Oscar live blog and its special guests to be coming soon! But we do hope you'll join us for a lighthearted evening.