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Every week, I search through movie release schedules to find movie rentals that I would have otherwise missed for lack of TV advertising. I'll watch the big name releases along with everyone else, but I know from experience that sometimes the box office failures, critically panned, straight-to-DVD, and independently financed movies that nobody's heard of can offer some real hidden gems. As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure. This column is dedicated to bringing awareness to those potential treasures. Listed alphabetically, each movie includes a list of notable cast members, a basic plot summary, its DVD and/or cloud release date (based on Netflix - other services may have the movie earlier), and the basic reason why the movie caught my attention. With any luck, one or more of these will catch your attention, too. My picks of the week are listed at the end of the column.

Here's my watchlist of DVD and cloud releases for the week of:

August 27th (click the movie title to see the trailer)

At Any Price
Who: Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron, Heather Graham, Clancy Brown, Kim Dickens, Red West, Maika Monroe, Chelcie Ross, Patrick Stevens
What: A drama about modern farming life and how the struggle to survive can affect the family. Quaid stars as the head of a multigenerational farm in Iowa who is trying to expand, but his ambition leads him to become the target of investigation for improper business practices. Efron plays his son who wants nothing to do with the family business and would rather be a professional NASCAR driver, but is held back by his father's crisis.
When: August 27th - DVD and online on demand
Why: The first thing the trailer for this movie makes me think of is Matt Damon's Promised Land, except instead of anti-frakking this movie is probably anti-GMO. But At Any Price looks like it has smoothed over the political/environmental issue element and included a family aspect that makes it at least a bit more complex a story. Quaid and Efron also seem very well suited to play mid-America farmer and rebel.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
Who: Justin Chambers, C. Thomas Howell, Michael B. Jordan, Kevin McKidd, Nathan Fillion, Ron Perlman, Kevin Conroy, Dana Delany, Cary Elwes, Vanessa Marshall, Danny Huston
What: An animated superhero film featuring DC Comics characters and adapted from the "Flashpoint" graphic novel crossover series. In it, The Flash battles with Professor Zoom and finds himself in an alternate timeline where the Justice League does not exist. It's up to Flash to put things back together. Chambers voices Flash, Howell voices Zoom, Jordan is Cyborg, McKidd is Thomas Wayne, Fillion is Green Lantern, Perlman is Deathstroke, Conroy is Batman, Delany is Lois Lane, Elwes is Aquaman, and Vanessa Marshall is Wonder Woman.
When: August 27th - DVD and online on demand
Why: Christian Bale and Henry Cavill may make the big bucks, but it's important to remember that they aren't the only screen portrayals of DC's superheroes. I'm aware of the seemingly endless iterations of graphic novels, but to be honest, I don't follow them to know the plot lines. What caught my attention here is that just because this is an animated production doesn't mean you have unknowns providing the voices. There are some big names in this cast, and I'm interested in seeing how their voices shape the characters.

Killing Season
Who: Robert De Niro, John Travolta, Milo Ventimiglia, Elizabeth Olin
What: In this action thriller, De Niro stars as a former soldier who has retired to a simple life in the outdoors, pursuing his passion for hunting. He comes across Travolta's character, who claims to be a hunter from Bosnia, but is soon revealed to want De Niro's head, possibly for personal reasons. Then their own version of The Most Dangerous Game begins.
When: August 20th - DVD and online on demand
Why: As talented as De Niro has proven himself to be over his career, I think it's fair to say that he's done a number of projects that weren't ever destined to be mentioned at the Oscars. This is one of those movies, but that's okay, because De Niro can still portray a convincing tough guy at any age. Travolta too started out as a lover more than a fighter but in his later years has toughened up to be a decent bad guy. Put the two together and you've got potential for some good action.

Pain & Gain
Who: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Rebel Wilson, Ed Harris, Ken Jeong, Rob Corddry, Tony Shalhoub, director Michael Bay
What: An crime story based on real events in the 1990s, recounted in the Miami New Times and the book Pain & Gain: This Is a True Story. Wahlberg stars as an ex-con and gym businessman who decides to kidnap and extort a man (Shalhoub) he believes is a criminal. Recruiting fellow bodybuilders played by Anthony Mackie and Dwayne Johnson, the kidnappers dig themselves into a hole and decide to try the plot again, but a private investigator (Harris) and the police are not far behind.
When: August 27th - DVD and online on demand
Why: I'm a big Wahlberg fan, and I think he's good at both comedy and drama, and this looks like a combination of both. It also looks like a chance to see Johnson as jacked up as he's ever been and may ever be. Put the two together in a heist movie and I'm sold. It's interesting that this is one of Michael Bay's weakest performing movies in terms of box office, but that's in part because there's no high-tech spectacle here. Think of this more like Bad Boys without the intentional one-liners.

Pawn Shop Chronicles
Who: Paul Walker, Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser, Elijah Wood, Vincent D'Onofrio, Thomas Jane, Lukas Haas, Norman Reedus, Pell James, Chi McBride
What: An ensemble crime comedy set off by characters pawning and finding key items at a pawn shop (though the settings move to various other locations). It's too big to adequately summarize, but just imagine the movie Snatch but set in America with a lot more booze, drugs, stupidity, and insanity.
When: August 27th - DVD and online on demand
Why: The characters in this look crazy, and similar to Pain & Gain, dumb crooks. But it doesn't look poorly made. The trailer for this movie reminds me of The Baytown Outlaws, which I really liked. For the cast list, I'm willing to find out if the chaos can be controlled for a sensible movie.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Who: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber, Kiefer Sutherland, Om Puri
What: A dramatic thriller about the perception of middle easterners in the U.S. following the events of September 11, 2001, based on the novel by Mohsin Hamid. Ahmed stars as a Pakistani who emigrates to the U.S. and embraces life just like everyone else, landing a great job (under a boss played by Sutherland) and a great girl (Hudson). But when the U.S. is attacked on 9/11, he comes under scrutiny solely for being Pakistani, which leads him to return to the country where he also eventually comes under scrutiny for possibly being involved with terrorists and a kidnapping. Schreiber plays a journalist who helps frame the story in retrospect.
When: August 27th - DVD and online on demand
Why: As anyone in the U.S. knows, racism against people who "looked like" or had names that "sounded like" terrorists was a problem following the events of 9/11. I'm willing to remind myself of that fact by watching a movie about the topic. I'm not familiar with Ahmed, having missed seeing Four Lions, but the presence of Schreiber and an action plot up my interest.

Stranded
Who: Christian Slater, Brendan Fehr, Amy Matysio, Michael Therriault
What: A sci-fi horror with Slater starring as the leader of a team of astronauts stationed at a base on the Moon. A meteor shower hits the Moon base and cuts off their communications with Earth. But the meteors also brought some alien spores which infect the crew, drive them insane, and even alter their bodies.
When: August 27th - DVD and online on demand
Why: The poster for this movie amuses me because it looks like something you'd have seen on a billboard in the tv show Entourage. I'm always willing to give Christian Slater a chance, even though he's in a lot of low budget, low brow movies. This one follows the generic space paranoia and infection plot of better funded movies, but I've seen worse.

What I'm watching this week:

The strongest quality movie of this week's releases looks to me to be the drama At Any Price. I sense a message in it similar to Matt Damon's Promised Land, but less heavy handed. And this looks like the perfect role for Dennis Quaid. I'm sure Zac Efron fans will be interested as well. Next up, Pain & Gain is the kind of movie I would have seen in the theater but didn't get to. I'm a fan of Wahlberg and Johnson, and the mix of crime, action, and some humor looks like fun. Similarly, Killing Season has a fairly generic action plot of two men hunting each other in the woods, but the pairing of Robert De Niro and John Travolta adds a kick to the movie and makes it something I could kick back and watch without much thought. I'm a fan of live action superhero movies, not as much a reader of graphic novels, but Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox interests me because of the voice cast list, and that might be enough to get me to try out this animated movie to see how crossover DC Comics plots are handled. I see it as an opportunity for comic education. Since I enjoyed The Baytown Outlaws, Pawn Shop Chronicles looks like an ensemble action movie that just might be crazy enough to pan out. Maybe not, but again the cast list is calling to me. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, like At Any Price, is a topical drama, but has enough of an action plotline to make it seem less like a social documentary than a story that will inspire some thought. Stranded to be honest looks generic and not exactly worth the effort to seek out, but on the other hand if you want a horror starring a familiar face, this could do for a quick fix.

Coming next week:

Arthur Newman, Empire State, The English Teacher, Evocateur, From Up on Poppy Hill, The Iceman, The Lords of Salem, Oblivion, The Place Beyond the Pines, Stories We Tell