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Human or Beast?

Will (James Franco) is a scientist developing a gene therapy drug to heal the human brain in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but after an incident with one of his chimpanzee test subjects, his project is shut down. Though most of the chimpanzees are destroyed, Will takes baby chimp Caesar (Andy Serkis) home and raises him in secret, thinking Caesar's remarkable intelligence is the key to a drug that could cure his Alzheimer's-suffering father (John Lithgow)... but Will can't keep Caesar a secret forever. When Caesar is sent to a primate sanctuary run by Brian Cox, he sees how the rest of ape-kind is treated, and begins to plan not just an escape, but a way for the rest of the ape inmates to live unharassed lives. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

Charley (Anton Yelchin) has left his nerdy past behind and started dating popular Amy (Imogen Poots). Even though Charley's been avoiding embarrassing people from his past, his childhood friend Evil Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) forces him to investigate a preposterous theory in Fright Night: Charley's next-door-neighbor (Colin Farrell) is a vampire. Looking into the disappearances makes him a target, and Charley has to protect his mom (Toni Collette) and his home from a bloodthirsty killer... so he tracks down a "vampire expert" stage magician (David Tennant) and prepares to do battle with the undead. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

Growing up in 1950s Idaho, young Seth attributes tragedies in his sparse farming community to vampires in The Reflecting Skin. Learning vampire lore from his troubled father (Duncan Fraser), Seth suspects the reclusive woman called Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan) is a vampire, though his strict, religious mother (Sheila Moore) frowns on supernatural tales. When Seth's older brother (Viggo Mortensen) returns home from the Pacific he begins an affair with Dolphin, and Seth is terrified his brother will be the next casualty.

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Kung Fu

Po (Jack Black) has become the Dragon Warrior, but Master Sifu (Dustin Hoffman) tells him he won't reach his full potential until he achieves inner peace in Kung Fu Panda 2. While Po and the Furious Five track marauders to Shen (Gary Oldman), a peacock developing modern weapons to conquer all of China, Po starts having memories of his mother and has to wonder why he was raised by an adopted father. If Po's parents and the villainous Shen are intertwined, then Shen could hold the secret to Po's inner peace. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

Taking place before the popular Ip Man films, Ip Man: The Legend is Born shows the beginnings of the legendary master as Ip Man (Dennis To) and his sworn brother Ip Tin-Chi (Fan Sui-Wong) as they begin their studies in Wing Chun kung fu under their sifu (Sammo Hung). As they develop, the brothers Ip travel to Hong Kong, learning different takes on life and different schools of thought within Wing Chun, but their school's ultimate test will be surviving a Japanese plot and a spy in their midst. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

A famous detective (Andy Lau) is released from prison to solve an elaborate murder plot in Tsui Hark's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. Set free by the soon-to-be Empress (Carina Lau), Detective Dee teams up with Li Bing Bing to discover who is killing senior officials before the murderer eventually assassinates the Empress, but their investigation takes them into magical subterranean cities and pits them against inconceivable mystical forces. On DVD and Blu-Ray.

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Forbidden Loves

Traveling from 1950s Holland to New Zealand, three women seek their new lives in Bride Flight. Slipping forward and backward in time, the film constructs an epic, romantic drama as farm girl Ada, aspiring familywoman Majorie, and Holocaust survivor Esther are entangled in each other's lives, driving them towards not just friendship and love, but also betrayal and adultery. With Rutger Hauer.

Orphan Shireen and affluent Atafeh are coming of age in Iran in Circumstance, but as the sixteen-year-old girls begin to discover themselves, they clash with their restrictive culture. While the girls stray further from their culture's accepted norms, Atafeh's brother, turning to religion after overcoming a drug addiction, grows more fundamentalist and intolerant of the lives the girls are living.

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Filmed by Swedish documentarians in the 60's and 70's, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 investigated the Black Power movement as it developed. Providing a different perspective than American journalism at the time, the Swedish footage has been made available after 30 years in storage, providing rare interviews and footage of cultural leaders.

The Disney Animation Collection Vol 7 is out in time for Christmas, and it features Mickey's Christmas Carol, where Scrooge McDuck is guided through his life by three spirits.

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New this week in our TV New Releases:

Family Guy Volume 9

The Griffin family continues to skewer social mores with pop-culture asides.

Pie in the Sky Series 5

The final series of Pie in the Sky could let gentle Inspector Crabbe finally get out of police work and cook full-time