Tuesday Releases: The Darkest Hour & The Iron Lady

April 10, 2012 / Leave a Comment

APRIL 10TH, 2012

The big newest release of the week is the Academy Award winning performance from Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. Depicting the real life Margaret Thatcher, Streep won her third Academy Award this past year for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Released in December of last year, The Iron Lady is actually hitting DVD rather quickly. Passing on this particular purchase, the film does contain some great performances and deserves at least one viewing.

The Darkest Hour comes in behind The Iron Lady as the second biggest DVD release this week. Grossing slightly over $21 million, The Darkest Hour is another take on the alien invasion story, in which the aliens that attack are invisible and disintegrate anything they come into contact with. Given away by electricity, a few travelers visiting Moscow attempt to traverse the city in hopes of finding a nuclear submarine to take them home, if there is a home to go back to. With the cast that graces this film, you would at least assume there is some quality to The Darkest Hour, however, Emile Hirsch, the once rising actor delivers, by far, the worst performance in the film. Add in Transformers’ Rachael Taylor and The Social Network’s Max Minghella (who is once again having his ideas stolen from him) attempt there best, but are ultimately bested by the weak plot and weak action sequences. Olivia Thirlby proves again that she is a spectacular actress who just needs to catch a break and get out of these low budget films.

The three films I am most anticipating are Sleeping Beauty, Into The Abyss, and Tyrannosaur. Sleeping Beauty stars Emily Browning off her starring role in Sucker Punch. Now starring in an artistic dramatic Australian film and bearing all, the films premiers last May at the Cannes Film Festival. Into The Abyss is the latest Werner Herzog documentary (which was snubbed by the Oscars) containing interviews with two men in prison, one sentenced to life and the other to death. With Herzog being one of my favorite directors right now and following rave reviews, I cannot wait to see this film.

And lastly, you know him from Cinderella Man, Hot Fuzz, and The Bourne Ultimatum, but the Brit actor Paddy Considine steps behind the camera to direct the U.K. film, Tyrannosaur. Discussed as an art-house favorite, this uncensored film about rage and overcoming your demons is definitely worth a viewing.

With two Hollywood releases (The Iron Lady and The Darkest Hour) and three major Indie releases, this a great week for new releases no matter who you are. It’s not as if you will run out to buy any of these films (unlike next week’s releases), but they will make your trip to the video rental store or Redbox (or Netflix Instant stream for Sleeping Beauty and Into The Abyss) that much more enjoyable.