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Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (Oscilloscope) rivetingly recounts the Burmese protests against the oppressive government, bravely recorded by the nation's countless and anonymous video journalists (best extra: director Anders Ostergaard commentary); Patricia Highsmith's chilling story The Cry of the Owl (Paramount) has become a competent but unexceptional thriller starring Julia Stiles and Paddy Considine; Britain's most famous living artist is profiled in David Hockney: A Bigger Picture (First Run), an hour-long documentary about Hockney's return to his native Yorkshire to paint, a la Monet, its color changes through the seasons (best extra: additional Hockney interviews); The 41 Year Old Virgin... (Fox) is a botched, painfully unfunny spoof of the equally botched, painfully unfunny movies of Judd Apatow; an unsatisfying hybrid of music and drama, The Infernal Comedy (Arthaus Musik) stars a curiously uninvolved John Malkovich in the true story of an Austrian killer of prostitutes, set to the music of Beethoven, Mozart, and others (lone extra: making-of documentary); Sebastian Silva's blackly comic The Maid (Oscilloscope) lampoons upper-crust Chileans but runs out of gas halfway through and lumbers to a disappointing conclusion (best extra: on-set footage); North Face (Music Box) is the transfixing true story of German climbers attempting to scale the dangerous Eiger mountain in the Swiss Alps; Pretty Bird (Paramount), though filled with excellent character actors known for their theater work like Billy Crudup, Elizabeth Marvel and Denis O'Hare, is far too low-key to score more than a few satiric points; if you've ever wanted to see what cute, tattooed, pierced young women look like while trying to act out a “Blair Witch” type scenario, then the guilty pleasure Suicide Girls Must Die (First Look) is the movie for you (lone extra: bonus scene); Thirst (First Look) strands two young couples in the desert and we watch them dehydrate and die in 90 minutes—at least this fun scenario stars Lacey Chabert, all grown up from her days as a young kid on Party of Five; in its politically incorrect take on the U.S. response to terrorism, the engrossing thriller Unthinkable (Sony) stars Samuel Jackson as the kind of interrogator who doesn't think twice about cutting off a finger or slitting someone's throat—Michael Sheen is superb as an American Muslim terrorist who may or may not get away with blowing up several big American cities (best extra: alternate ending).