It’s rare that we ever come across a film that crosses two very different genres so seamlessly as the Finnish film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Based on the series of shorts in which a Finnish shipping company explains the best and worst ways in dealing with renegade Santa Clauses, this story tells the tale of how that fictional company came to be.

Marketed as a horror, yet played as a Joe Dante-esque holiday adventure, Exports is able to both scare the crap out of you with hundreds of naked old men, as it is able to make you smile at the ridiculousness of hundreds of naked old men running through the snow.

If you’ve got the stomach for a film in subtitles, we recommend watching this one in its original tongue. Skip the dubs so you don’t get lost in some of the performances that make this playful horror film as fun as it is.

Some may consider the film to be a bit of a slow build for what is surely an epic and explosive ending, but if you relate with the two curious boys or any of the members of the search party then you will be along for every minute of the action here.

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For those of you who loved Malevolence, Stevan Mena’s 2004 slasher film, you will love its gory prequel, Bereavement. Even if you haven’t seen Malevolence and just love horror films, you should see this film. It stands on its own as a visually stunning film and has some pretty believable characters as well.

In this film we focus on two different stories: part of the story focuses on Allison (Alexandra Daddario), a 17 year-old girl who has come to live with her uncle Jonathan (Michael Biehn) after the untimely death of her parents. On her daily run Allison passes a a seemingly abandoned home that happens to be inhabited by young Martin Bristol, a boy with a disease that renders him unable to feel physical pain, and his demented captor, Graham Sutter, a sadistic maniac who takes his orders from a mounted deer skull.

The two stories don’t cross paths until the third act. Until that time we follow Allison, who is full of teenage angst. While on another one of her runs, (She runs a lot in this movie) she comes upon William (Nolan Gerard Funk), a muscle car driving heart throb that lives in the trailer park with his paraplegic father. Obviously now we need a side story where Jonathan doesn’t approve of his niece, seeing this “lowlife,” so he does everything to try and stop their love from blossoming.

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New to DVD and Blu-Ray, The Hurt Locker is a look into the world of an elite U.S. Army E.O.D. unit (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) in their last forty days of a one year tour of duty in Baghdad during the second year of the U.S. led coalition occupation. The three man unit consists of Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty).

Renner’s character is an adrenaline junky who only feels alive when he is in the heat of battle, or when there is the threat of a suicide bomber or roadside bomb detonating. The three men form a strong bond with one another and try to survive their last forty days so they can rotate back home to their wives or loved ones.

Director Kathryn Bigelow who has directed such action films as Point Break and Strange Days gives the film a unique look as if you are a forth member of the unit and are alongside them in the urban combat zones of Baghdad. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd positions the cameras perfectly, and sets the look of the shots which makes the film a gritty documentary account of the E.O.D. unit and the everyday dangers they encounter.

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Out on DVD and Blu-Ray this week, District 9 is a new sci-fi masterpiece from writer/director Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings). The film is a documentary-style account about a race of aliens marooned on earth who have been quarantined in a shantytown, known by humans as District 9, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The film has an “apartheid” metaphor in that the aliens (referred derogatorily by humans as “Prawns” because they look like crustaceans) represent an oppressed minority, all while the humans see the aliens as a nuisance and want to be rid of them once and for all. The film mainly focuses on two main characters; a human who was the head of a relocation program for the aliens, and an alien trying to find a way to return home to his planet.

Special features for the disc include a series of interesting deleted scenes that never made it into the final cut.  Director commentary from Neill Blomkamp shows how the concept of District 9 was turned into a reality. In the special feature “Metamorphosis: The Transformation of Wikus”, we see behind the scenes footage of how the F/X team slowly turned actor Sharlto Copley from a human into a “Prawn.” Two other features include a concept design with production planners into creating the world of District 9 and the dazzling special effects that were generated for the film.

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New to DVD and Blu-Ray this week is possibly one of the best comedies of the year, and definitely one of the highest grossing one’s of all time. Of course I mean the Todd Phillips’ film The Hangover, starring Bradley Cooper (Wedding Crashers), Ed Helms (The Office), Zach Galifianakis (Out Cold), and Justin Bartha (National Treasure).

Three groomsmen (Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis) try to retrace their steps after a drunken and drug-hazed night of debauchery in Las Vegas in order to find best friend Doug (Bartha) so he can walk down the aisle at his wedding in less than 24 hours. The film is a madcap ride full of great cameos with the likes of Matt Walsh (Upright Citizens Brigade) as an ER doctor, Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) as a recently married stripper, and Ken Jeong (Community) as a Chinese mobster out to recover a bag of stolen poker chips from Doug’s pals.

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Public Enemies, the latest film from director Michael Mann (TVs Miami Vice, Manhunter, Heat, Collateral), hit DVD shelves this week, and if you were a fan of the film in the theater, you’ll want to pick it up on DVD or Blu-Ray. In the film, Johnny Depp plays Depression-era Robin Hood John Dillinger who rose to fame as a notorious bank robber and the F.B.I.’s first public enemy #1.

The film is a loose interpretation of many events such as Dillinger’s empathy for sharecroppers and out on their luck everyday individuals, his famous escape from an Indiana jail, and his eventual demise at Chicago’s Biograph Theater at the hands of F.B.I. agent Melvin Purvis and his band of intrepid G-Men.

Some exciting features on the Blu-Ray and DVD include a documentary about both Dillinger and Purvis who became media adversaries as both rose to both fame and infamy. The second involves a behind-the-scenes featurette with director Michael Mann and how he brought “Public Enemies” to the big screen.

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