I usually don’t mention horror films here, but I am making an exception for The Cabin in the Woods, another Joss Whedon masterpiece. As always, he brings some twists to the table you never saw coming, which makes for quite an enjoyable film. Dawn of the Dragonslayer is the story of a young man out to avenge the death of his father at the hands of a dragon. I suppose in the interests of completeness I should at least mention Housewives from Another World, which does have a sci-fi premise.
There are a couple of documentaries you might want to check out. In movie format we have Adventures in Plymptoons, and as you might suspect from the title it is about Oscar nominated animator Bill Plympton. There is also Katy Perry: Part of Me The Movie, and yes, I am a Katy Perry fan. There is something about the attitude and energy she puts into her music that I just find addictively positive. There is a TV format documentary that also looks interesting, Project Earth from The Discovery Channel. This is a series of eight experiments that will give you a different perspective on our world.
Speaking of TV, Supernatural: The Complete Seventh Season also comes out this week, as does The Mentalist: The Complete Fourth Season. Yes, I know that last one isn’t genre, but it is quite an intelligent series that I really enjoy.
Anime starts out with two feature length films this time around. In King of Thorn a virus is sweeping the planet turning people into stone. A group of 160 with the disease are frozen to await a cure, but wake up to find their refuge has been overrun with thorny vines and hungry monsters, and it becomes hard for them to tell the difference between the waking world and a dream. This is from the director of Appleseed and The Big O, and has collected a number of awards on the festival circuit and elsewhere, so it should be a good one.
Venus Wars takes place in a future where a cometary impact helped terraform Venus into a world mankind can colonize. And of course, anywhere mankind goes, his darker nature follows, so it is no surprise that war breaks out. This is a classic of old school anime from 1989 being re-released, with the cometary impact in question taking place in the far future of 2003.
In TV, Fafner: The Complete Series has a group of Mecha riding students battling aliens out to assimilate the minds of all humans (yes, think Borg-like). Of course, the folks wielding the giant robots are also at risk of being absorbed.
Allison and Lillia: The Complete Collection (or Allison to Lillia depending on who is translating) tells of a world divided by mountains and rivers, where the two groups on either side of the divide have been at war forever. Now two completely different women and their two completely different male partners are doing their part to end the wars forever.
Persona 4: Collection 1 brings the first 12 episodes of this series, where a young man moves out of the city to a small town in the country. Instead of the peaceful more relaxing pace he is expecting, he finds himself up to his neck in a series of strange weather patterns and murders that lead him into a weird alternate reality where he must go up against the murderer from inside television shows.
Finally, The Tower of Druaga: The Complete Series is being released in a more cost effective S.A.V.E. edition this week as well.