When a film presents a leading man like Ben Kalmen, it is a daring move. He is arrogant, misogynistic, misguided and pathetic, and you probably know someone like him. Usually this would be a minor character, or possibly a villain. Yet he is the Solitary Man, the titular character, the one that audiences need to connect to. Thanks to Michael Douglas and his brilliant performance, you certainly do, even if you don’t respect him.

The Simpsons has been on television since 1989. That is truly beyond impressive, it’s downright unbelievable. And while for many, the show isn’t quite as clever as it used to be, we are talking twenty-two episodes a year for the past twenty-one years. It would be impossible to keep things completely fresh. And with the recently released “Thirteenth Season” on Blu-ray, you can see that it started to lose some of its edge as some of the episodes are not what they used to be.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is a sort of hybrid project created by producer David Lynch and director Werner Herzog, a sort of art house dream team. Add to that, the immense talent of Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny and Willem Dafoe and you have… something strange, strange and inspired by a true story.

This odd little film focuses on Brad McCullum (Shannon) who murders his mother (Lynch regular, Grace Zabriskie) in a Medea fashion after becoming obsessed by a Greek play. This slow burning tale revolves around flash backs as we learn how Brad seems to lose himself to some sort of mental illness. The police arrive and have him surrounded. They proceed cautiously as it seems he has a couple of hostages. This could have been a by the books Hollywood action thriller, but it is far from it.

Lost was a complex, brave and sometimes frustrating viewing experience for many of its fans. For six years, characters came and went, some died, and some even came back to life. Of course, the entire series could be based on a sort of purgatory, death being a constant throughout, depending on your outlook. Now, looking back at the final season, I came upon the realization that there is much to love and much that is worth re-visiting.

The USA Network sure knows a thing or two about “character”. Each one of their television series features some uniquely strange leading man who has some sort of issue. While Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) from the quirky White Collar clearly has problems like the fact that he’s a criminal, there is a lot to appreciate about him. He’s good-looking, super stylish and a genuinely nice guy… well, a nice guy who happens to be a crook, but this is TV, con men can be cool.

Ah, love is so beautiful when “forever” is written on a Converse and there are a ton of cool indie pop songs played. Lest we forget, you can never have enough teen angst because some girls’ lives are all tough and stuff. Thankfully, we can all live vicariously through Miley Cyrus in The Last Song.

It must have been the disappointment of Clash of the Titans and the quickie 3D job. Or maybe it was simply the fact that Chris Columbus wrote and directed the film but Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief seemed like a good idea at the time. And in some ways, I was pleasantly surprised, yet there is something missing from the transition from book to screen.

What happened to the Blu-ray release of James and the Giant Peach?

Henry Selick’s strangely inventive retelling of Roald Dahl’s timeless fable should’ve been a visual treat. This wonderful world of giant, talking insects living inside a giant peach, and helping a young boy realize his worth would’ve been a wonderful addition to your home video collection but something is lost in the transfer. The images and the audio seemed forced and certainly didn’t add to the story, in fact, the less than stellar quality is sometimes distracting.

The opening sequence for Kick-Ass is shockingly good. It is unconventional, it is outrageous and it breaks the rules early on. This is not your average film. Yet the next half hour or so, we are brought back to reality as a young man named Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) wonders what it would be like to be a super-hero. In many ways this is simply a coming-of-age story for Dave and his alter ego “Kick-Ass”. He has a couple of friends who think he is a little off, and he likes a girl who is convinced he is gay. There is certainly nothing ground-breaking there.

Got an organ you can’t pay for? Better watch out for the Repo Men. Or do you just need to kick some mythological beasts behind? How about Clash of the Titans! If neither sound appealing and you are hoping for something just a little classier, you might want to partake in Vincere or La Graine et le Mulet (The Secret of the Grain) (Couscous).