One of the side effects of Side Effects is sadness that Steven Soderbergh is now one film closer to retirement.

When the 30th anniversary Blu-ray edition of National Lampoon's Vacation (which hits shelves tomorrow) crossed my desk, two thoughts went through my head. 1) "I haven't seen this in ages!" and 2) "30th anniversary? Man, I am old." To my surprise, though, the movie itself doesn't feel as ancient as I did in that moment or as many comedies from that era do today. (Seen Meatballs lately? Yikes.) In fact, period fashions, music cues and surprising amounts of casual nudity aside, Vacation is fairly timeless in its comedy. The Griswold clan's ill-fated road trip to Walley World still makes us laugh in large part because the characters' personalities and the madcap situations they become ensnared in remain relatable and funny to viewers past and present.

Having recognized that mainstream Hollywood holds few options for her beyond roles as mothers and/or cougars, Julianne Moore has established primary residence within the independent film world in recent years, where the range of characters is supposedly broader. For example, Moore's latest indie features The English Teacher and What Maisie Knew -- both of which have already opened in limited release in select markets and expand wider today -- cast her as... um, a cougar and a mother respectively. So much for range, I guess.

Had Jeremy Renner not suddenly become Hollywood's go-to utility franchise player in the past few years, it's easy to imagine Aaron Eckhart taking over the Bourne series once Matt Damon decided to move on to greener pastures. Where Renner is an innately more volatile screen presence, Eckhart has the same contrast between his placid, matinee idol exterior and inner action hero that made Damon's Jason Bourne so relatable. Eckhart must have realized the missed opportunity, given that his new thriller Erased is essentially Bourne-lite, sending the star's ex-CIA alter ego on a cross-country race through Europe as his Agency past nips at his heels.

After turning it over in my brain a bit, I think I've come up with an analogy for why Star Trek Into Darkness proves so disappointing as the second entry in J.J. Abrams's rebooted Trek film franchise. Bear with me a moment while I set this up: (Warning: Spoilers Follow)

Want more bang for your DVD buck? Cloud Atlas offers six movies in one.

There are many ways to describe Baz Lurhmann's directing style, but "restrained" sure as hell isn't one of them. From Strictly Ballroom to Australia, each of the Aussie auteur's films embrace emotional and cinematic excess in grand, borderline ridiculous ways. That makes him an unlikely, but also inspired choice to tackle an adaptation of a Great NovelTM like F. Scott's Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a text so revered that movie versions can become ossified by their own self-importance. That's what happened to the last Gatsby flick, the 1974 Robert Redford/Mia Farrow tour-de-boredom that was so respectful of Fitzgerald's text that it transformed his vibrant novel into a pretty, but inert soap opera.

We're only halfway through 2013, but it's unlikely that we'll see an odder cast than the one at the center of Brian Herzlinger's low-budget musical comedy How Sweet It Is. In fact, the movie is almost worth seeing solely so that, years from now, if you ever get asked the trivia question "What movie musical starred Joe Piscopo, Erika Christensen, Paul Sorvino and Eddie Griffin?" you'll be able to provide the answer, plus a plot synopsis and maybe a few bars of the title number, with complete authority.

I'll give Eli Roth this; having found a successful gimmick, he's not about to surrender it anytime soon. That particular gimmick can best be described as "Assholes abroad" -- an idea he tried out in the first Hostel and returns to again in Aftershock, the new horror film/disaster movie he co-wrote, produced and stars in, but didn't direct. Be grateful for small favors, I guess.

May's VOD offerings lead off with the corporate satire, Syrup, starring Amber Heard.