Liam Neeson is Bill Marks, a U.S. Federal air marshal with the obligatory checkered past and a delightful host of vices. Midway through a trans-Atlantic flight he receives a text message from an untraceable number that claims in 20 minutes someone on the plane will die…unless a $150 million is deposited into a special account. And Bill, with the help of stewardess Nancy (Michelle Dockery) and plucky passenger Jen (Julianne Moore) must uncover the identity of the potential killer/hijacker.

That’s all you need; if you want to know how the rest of the movie plays out, just imagine everything you can do with that premise, as the passengers gradually become more and more aware of the situation and Marks’s control gradually diminishes – or, better yet, see the film.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, Unknown) maintains a consistent feel of paranoia by keeping his camera close and confined to the actors’ faces, barely giving the audience a chance to breathe and, early on, lingering on a handful of passengers to playfully suggest that any one or two or all of them could be the culprit. Even before the mystery begins you’re already suspicious, and while I was hoping for the villain to be revealed as the little girl’s teddy bear (Spoiler: It’s not), it wasn’t too much of stretch, given Collet-Serra’s insinuation that everyone on this damn plane must be hiding something.

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3 Days to Kill makes a point of flashing Luc Besson’s name across the screen, even though he’s not the director. That distinction goes to McG, whose name really feels like it should inspire some kind of good joke, but if it’s out there, I haven’t heard it. Just like the Luc Besson connection is going to inspire a lot of cinephiles to tell their friends, between exasperations of pretension, that he’s the guy who directed The Fifth Element – and then they immediately follow up with a recommendation of Leon or, The Professional. And well they might, because Leon is an excellent film.

But it’s also the film that 3 Days to Kill is going to be compared to, negatively. And while Leon is a better film, 3 Days is not a bad one – or, at least, it shouldn’t be considered bad because it’s not another film.

Kevin Costner is Ethan, a semi-retired hitman, working for the U.S. Government and doing his last or next-to-last job. His task is to prevent the sale of a dirty bomb by an ominously, though accurately named terrorist called “The Albino.” The deal goes sour, and people die, but Ethan catches a glimpse of “The Albino”’s boss, “The Wolf.” Now Ethan’s alone in Paris, living in a flat that has been taken over by a sweet tribe of Parisian homeless. He can’t evict them because of Paris law. And Ethan is sick.

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Following the release of 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – a movie that took me a full decade later to actually sit down and watch (told you I’m slow) – Peter Jackson had seemingly done the impossible: bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s famed series to life on the big screen…and made it amazing. So amazing in fact that I was determined not to let another decade pass before I got to watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

What did I find? More of the same; and I couldn’t be happier for it (you can go here for an in-depth review by our own Nat Almirall). Sure, the length of the movie is every bit as ridiculous as the original trilogy, but if you know that going in there’s really no point in complaining about it. Instead, I focused on what made me love that first offering so much: colorful characters, gorgeous settings and an adventure that could easily stand in as a double for the definition of “epic.”

Many of the same stars and characters make appearances in Hobbit, so there’s practically no chance of unfamiliarity with the viewer…unless this is their first foray into Tolkien’s universe. And unless they have an aversion to fantasy – at which point I’d ask why they’re watching something like this in the first place – they’ll still have a great experience watching a younger Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman in his usual twitchiness) and his new band of brothers come together for the greater good.

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Arnold is back again and this time it’s personal. Well, really, isn’t it pretty much always? Even when he’s a cyborg assassin from the future, it still ends up being personal. “Come with me if you want to live” and all that.

Anyway, his next action extravaganza is called Sabotage and there’s a new Redband trailer for it out now. Gotta say, this looks pretty darn good.

In the movie Arnold “leads an elite DEA task force that takes on the world’s deadliest drug cartels. When the team successfully executes a high-stakes raid on a cartel safe house, they think their work is done – until, one-by-one, the team members mysteriously start to be eliminated. As the body count rises, everyone is a suspect.”

We hate when that happens. Don’t you?

Check out the trailer after the break. Sabotage, which in addition to Arnold stars Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello and Josh Holloway, hits theaters on March 28.

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With Transformers 4 (aka Age of Extinction), starring Mark Wahlberg and Nicola Peltz, set to hit theaters later this year, it’s time to take a look back at all the Transformers have given us over the years. And what better way to do that than with a video showing every single transformation scene in every Transformers movie. Well, the Michael Bay ones at least.

The video was created by Tunglebrek who gives appropriate accolades to Michael Bay, ILM, Digital Domain and sound designer Erik Aadahl for their great work. And yes, we feel like Tunglebrek probably has quite a bit of free time on his or her hands.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Check out the vid after the break.

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Zac Effron is Jason, a 20-or-so book-cover designer living in New York with his best friend and co-worker Daniel (The Spectacular Now‘s Miles Teller) and other best friend Mikey (Michael B. Jordan). Mikey discovers his wife canoodling with the lawyer who will eventually handle their divorce, and so he and Dan and Jason make a pact to remain single. However, Jason meets Ellie (Imogen Poots), they hit it off, but he’s reluctant to tell his friends because of, you know, the pact.

And Dan meets someone. And Mikey hooks up with someone. And they keep those trysts secret, too, because, again, pact. And to go any further meet be a spoiler, but so then would be any wild stab-in-Central-Park conjecture as to what happens.

That Awkward Moment isn’t a difficult movie to review, because it’s not very good. The dialogue plays like any mid-90s attempt to imitate Pulp Fiction — which is basically sitting around a table dwelling on the minute, trying to sound clever.

Jason, for example, believes it an incredibly profound insight that, when coming from a girl, nothing good ever follows the word, “So…” as in “So, where is this going?” a phrase I’m certain was the film’s title in at least one stage of development (but then they couldn’t say “Based on the popular meme!”), and yet, who reading this has not had an awkward break in the conversation when “So…” has led to intercourse?

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We can encapsulate this in a simple way. If you loved Ted as we did, you’ll love Seth MacFarlane’s next movie A Million Ways to Die In the West. It’s pretty much that simple.

Although, as far as we know, there’s no talking bear in this one, it does have plenty of horses and some hotties like Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried. So yeah, there’s that.

Also, it’s a Western and features Liam Neeson as the bad guy. Love it. Check out the Redband trailer after the break. And remember, this is NSFW. But still, enjoy. We know we will.

Look for A Million Ways to Die In the West to hit theaters on May 30.

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Dolph Lundgren. Whatever that name means to you, he’s had quite the career since he first came onto the scene as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Now, almost 30 years later, Dolph is still around and still making movies. Some of them even with Stallone. This isn’t one of those.

Instead, Lundgren stars in Battle of the Dammed with some lesser-knows. Not that that makes them bad actors, they’re just no Stallone. Make of that what you will.

We have a trailer for after the break. But first, here’s all you need to know:

When a deadly virus is accidentally released into a major city, its population is quarantined by military blockade. And for a wealthy industrialist desperate to rescue his daughter from inside the rabid chaos, his only hope is former commando Max Gatling (Lundgren). Now Gatling has one day to bust in, blast through hordes of the undead, find the girl, and hunt for a way to get them both out alive.

But will a small band of survivors and an army of killer robots turn his mission into maximum slaughter?

Maybe. But we’re gonna guess it won’t happen without a lot of bloodshed and stuff blowing up. Look for Battle of the Dammed to arrive on Blu-ray on February 18th. Check out the trailer after the break.

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What can you say about Gareth Evans’ The Raid 2, the sequel to one of the greatest martial arts action films ever made? Well, knowing the original as we do, this sequel better be pretty damn good if it’s going to have any chance of even coming close to the original.

Fortunately, at least based on this new trailer, The Raid 2 looks like it just might be in the running for “Greatest sequel ever.”

Here’s more about the movie:

He thought it was over. After fighting his way out of a building filled with gangsters and madmen – a fight that left the bodies of police and gangsters alike piled in the halls – rookie Jakarta cop Rama thought it was done and he could resume a normal life. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Formidable though they may have been, Rama’s opponents in that fateful building were nothing more than small fish swimming in a pond much larger than he ever dreamed possible. And his triumph over the small fry has attracted the attention of the predators farther up the food chain. His family at risk, Rama has only one choice to protect his infant son and wife: He must go undercover to enter the criminal underworld himself and climb through the hierarchy of competing forces until it leads him to the corrupt politicians and police pulling the strings at the top of the heap.

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Many mid-thirtysomethings like myself got a little excited back in 2009 when G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra hit theaters. Happy memories of action figures and cartoons dancing in our heads, combined with the technology we have today; what could possibly go wrong?

Well, also like myself, many of them walked away not very entertained. If you’ve seen that movie, odds are you have two prevailing thoughts: “Well, that sucked,” and “I got burned by the first; no way I’m checking out the sequel.” Allow me a moment to convince you otherwise…

First off, if you want a proper review of G.I. Joe: Retaliation our own Nat Almirall wrote up a doozy in March, 2013. There be spoilers there, matey.

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