I don’t put forth much effort to hide the fact that I love genre films. I do this for several reasons, though primarily it is simply to weed out those who do not like them. I have no problem personally if someone doesn’t enjoy them, far too frequently genre films rarely attempt to cross over and gain new fans, but if someone doesn’t like genre fare I immediately know whether or not we will have somewhat comparable taste in movies. Genre films are the anchor in which all of my film interests are held together by, and I am rather proud of that.

Now my particular kryptonite of which I am powerless to resist are science fiction films. While Star Wars is probably primarily to blame, their certainly were plenty of other science fiction franchises indoctrinating my toddler brain. Since that time, if your film had a hint of futuristic technology, machines dealing with their own developing Artificial Intelligence, or even alien populated cantina bands I have probably already watched the film at one point or another.

Being a child of the 1980’s meant I was able to gorge on these types of films on a weekly basis, as the only genre seemingly more numerous was the one involving one or both of the two Coreys. But as I watched these movies, it became increasingly easy to forget just which movies I had watched as I rocketed through the genre. And all too often, I would watch a film I loved and then lose it to antiquity because I wasn’t making any effort to record which films I loved and which I didn’t.

This is the tale of one such relic, lost to the celluloid aisles, seemingly, forevermore.

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Looks like their are plenty of future guilty pleasure being released this week for me to pick from. And while I do love me some Rainn Wilson, I don’t think I am going to be able to bring myself, or more importantly Anna, to go watch The Rocker. Death Race and The House Bunny both look like they will more likely be awful then entertaining, so my choice for new releases this week is Hamlet 2. I’ll go see anything with Steve Coogan in it, and with a solid cast and the chance to be rocked by a sexy Jesus it could be a fun film.

DVD picks this week are a bit more difficult as their are several films I would like to see. The infamous Salò get’s a new release by Criterion which should have cinephiles salivating at the thought of finally getting to watch the film. Besides that Redbelt, Son of Rambow and Chicago 10 are all getting their first release on DVD this upcoming week, and all are worthy of renting.

But my DVD pick this week is a lesser known film called Dante’s Inferno. Dante’s Inferno is performed in a toy theater style using paper sets and puppets to recreate the epic poem. With voices being supplied by James Cromwell and Dermot Mulroney, Dante’s Inferno looks to be one of the more fascinating and unique film releases this year.

As always trailers are after the break!

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Last week was a bit crazy. Like seemingly most of Netflix’s subscribers, my shipments were interrupted for several days. Unlike most subscriber’s my movies were delayed for an entire week, which lead me to a slight problem, in that I had no way of watching The Devil’s Rain. Thus putting me in a bit of a bind with what to write this week. Luckily here in Minneapolis there is an outstanding video store that would come to my aid, a video store by the name of Cinema Revolution.

Now Cinema Revolution is not your average ordinary video rental store. You won’t find any video games, or used DVD’s for sale, or even candy and soda carefully distributed near the counter to spur impulse buys. No, Cinema Revolution simply has movies to rent, and what great movies they are. Dedicated to carrying only foreign and independent films, Cinema Revolution is a cinephile’s dream store. Organized by country with subcategories for directors, Cinema Revolution is designed for those who both know and love film and I was confident I would find a suitable replacement to watch and review for Monday’s column.

Then I went and joined Andrew and Kurt from Row Three on their podcast Monday night.

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