It's almost spring, but here's some fresh new DVD releases to keep you warm in these last days of winter.

In all the hoopla over the new trailer for Super 8 (which looks like J.J. Abrams taking on The Goonies, a.k.a. awesome), people have happily forgotten that yesterday saw the debut of the first full-length trailer for The Smurfs. Now, I'm only a moderate Smurf fan, but I've been dreading this movie since I first heard about it, because I knew it would be a train wreck of Garfield proportions. Unfortunately, the trailer does not seem to be proving me wrong, as there are numerous elements that have dreading the day I will be forced to see it for review purposes. As a sneak peek of that review, here are the things I found the most annoying, terrifying and disgusting about the trailer.

When I told my mother I had seen this movie, she groaned and asked me if I fell asleep during it. I explained that I loved Jane Eyre in all its incarnations (well, excepting the mediocre musical) and then started rambling about The Wide Sargasso Sea and The Eyre Affair and wondering how my mother could think a story that had fire and a crazy person living in an attic could possibly be boring. Then we decided to agree to disagree. If you are siding with my mother? Don't bother with this movie. In fact, stay far away, because it is beautiful, but slowly and methodically paced (I think in quite an effective way) and that will likely put you to sleep as soon as you watch a scene with limited talking for a good five minutes. If you, like me, are a fan of the Charlotte Bronte work, I think this film, while arguably not the most necessary thing in the entire world, is a well-done adaptation of the source material.

After breaking out in Rome, Ray Stevenson played thugs in a slew of bad movies, from Punisher: War Zone to Cirque du Freak to The Book of Eli. He'll elevate his tough-guy game slightly in Thor and The Three Musketeers later this year, but anyone looking to see him step outside his goon-shaped box would do well to check out Kill the Irishman. The real-life character he plays is still basically a thug, but he's an intelligent, quirky thug with a fabulous mustache, and he holds his own against a huge cast of some of our greatest crime-movie actors. The film itself isn't great art, but it's a fun way to learn about a little-known period in our history, with a lot of explosions in it.

Los Angeles has been defeated. Yes, there were aliens involved, but that doesn't matter. The Marines at the center of Battle: Los Angeles could have been fighting the Girl Scouts of America, and they still would have fallen prey to the three classic villains of Hollywood: bad writing, bad acting and poor cinematography. Actually, Girl Scouts would have been an improvement over the alien invaders of B:LA (pronounced "blah") because I would actually have to give a writer credit for daring to pen a battle between Marines and Girl Scouts. Plus, I would understand the limitations of child actors, and I wouldn't be so disappointed in the movie's inability to clearly show me what a Girl Scout looked like. Also, the Girl Scouts probably would have been much scarier and more effective opponents than the bumbling, yet somehow successful ETs in this film.

Red Riding Hood was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who was fired from the Twilight franchise after she helmed the first movie, and written by David Johnson, whose only other screenwriting credit is for Orphan, the endlessly mocked twist-ending movie about something being wrong with Esther from a couple years ago. Considering that kind of pedigree at the wheel, I think you have an idea of how this is going to go.

It's Mardi Gras! To celebrate the Feast of Fools, it seems like the DVD releases are about reasonable people doing stupid things.

Obviously, Rango was intended to be at least partially for children. A wacky chameleon pretends to be a cowboy, and his belt falls down and it's all very funny. But in all other respects, Gore Verbinski's newest film is darker and more adult than all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies put together. The wisecracking lizard at the center of it all is in the midst of an identity crisis, the villain's scheme is straight out of Chinatown and the supporting cast look like they were dug up from Pet Sematery.

While Take Me Home Tonight is set in 1988, and constantly reminds you of that fact with its endlessly danceable soundtrack, the real time warp will happen as you look at the faces of the actors and actresses who appear in it. Since the film was shot four years ago, you feel like you're watching archival footage of Topher Grace, Anna Faris, Dan Fogler and the rest, which... actually makes it feel like a real 1980s film. The sense that the movie is old, combined with the film's themes of growing up, the consequence-free gallivanting and the easily pat resolution, cumulatively give the impression of watching a vintage John Hughes movie, with just a hint of Judd Apatow. It likely wasn't intentional, but shelving this movie for so long did wonders for its enjoyability.

Now that everyone who saw and enjoyed A Cinderella Story and Sydney White has graduated from high school and moved on to the next stage of their movie viewing habits, it's time for Hollywood to start churning out a new generation of updated fairy tale movies for a fresh crop of kids who haven't seen enough to know any better. Would it be nice if they made something more original or even slightly more sophisticated than Beastly is? Of course, but why put in all that effort? Judging from the success of The Twilight Saga, it's not like the target audience who wants this would care much either way.