This week’s pick is yet another John Carpenter classic. Kurt Russell stars as the first ever action hero of the 1980s in Escape From New York (1981). After success with Halloween and the horror classic The Fog, Carpenter’s next project would be a unique blend of science fiction, action, noir and a western. The result is one of the finest multi genre classics of its time.

Set in a dystopian future (now the past) the United States’ crime rate rises to an astonishing four hundred percent in 1988. To combat the growing crime rate, the United States becomes a totalitarian police state and the great city of New York is turned into the one prison for the whole country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected around all of Manhattan Island, all the bridges and waterways are mined, and the United States Police Force patrols the wall perimeter to insure no one escapes. Once you go inside the prison, you never come out.

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Some days it just doesn’t pay to get outta bed. First, the news broke this morning that Ridley Scott is jumping aboard the sequel/reboot train once again with a new Blade Runner movie which, let’s face it, is basically a terrible idea and completely unnecessary.

Now word comes that his brother Tony is prepping a reboot of Sam Peckinpah’s western classic The Wild Bunch. WTF? Sorry Tony, but that’s about as stupid an idea as rebooting or making a sequel to Blade Runner. Oh, wait. . .

Instead of mining classic films looking for good ideas you obviously can’t come up with yourself, how about finding some smart writers to come up with some ideas for you? I’m sure you can find one or two talented writers in all of Hollywood.

If you’re having trouble, I’ll get some friends of mine to send you over some scripts. Really, it’s no trouble. In the meantime, stick to making ridiculous movies about trains that won’t stop or trains that get taken over by terrorists or, well, you get the idea.

Please, leave the actual thinking to others. It’s painfully obvious you’re not capable of doing any yourself.

Oh, on another note, nobody plays baseball in the rain. It’s just stupid.

The name of this year’s movie game seems to be massive casting. If Expendables was for the slightly older action star, then Summit Entertainment’s RED is definitely skewing much older in terms of casting.

The film stars Bruce Willis as the leader of the greatest CIA agents ever to go through the agency. The only problem? They’re all over the hill and retired. Willis leads a team of Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren, with folks like Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfuss joining along as well. In order no to alienate the viewers under the age of 50, Mary Louise Parker, Julian McMahon, and Karl Urban fill out the cast.

If the action and casting isn’t enough to warrant your $10, then how about the fact that the film is based on a comic of the same name? Originally written by Warren Ellis, the script comes from the Hoeber brothers, who also brought Whiteout to the silver screen.

We’ve got 5 brand new clips for you to check out after the jump, so be sure to enjoy the action, and catch RED in theaters on October 15th.

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This week’s pick goes behind the lines of World War II France with the 1967 release of Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen. The film stars the legendary Lee Marvin as Major John Reisman, an American OSS (pre C.I.A.) operative chosen by Allied command to recruit, train, and drop twelve convicted American military prisoners into France before the Normandy invasion to wipe out a chateau full of German brass. Aldrich adapts E.M. Nathanson’s novel to bring one of the 1960s most successful war movies to the screen.

The cast is a who’s who of some of Hollywood’s best talent. Ernest Borgnine (Maj. Gen. Worden), Charles Bronson (Joseph Wladislaw), Jim Brown (Robert T. Jefferson), John Cassavetes (Victor R. Franko), Richard Jaeckel (Sgt. Clyde Bowren), George Kennedy (Maj. Max Armbruster), Ralph Meeker (Capt. Stuart Kinder), Robert Ryan (Col. Everett Dasher Breed), Telly Savalas (Archer J. Maggott), Donald Sutherland (Vernon L. Pinkley), Clint Walker (Samson Posey), and Robert Webber (Brig. Gen. Denton).

Major Reisman is selected for this mission due to his illustrious reputation for behind the lines action, but he is also well known for exceeding his orders and showing borderline insubordination for his superiors. Both General Worden and Denton tell Reisman that the twelve men have a temporary stay of their sentences for the mission.

Reisman knows fully well that it’s a suicide mission and asks the Generals to reconsider and that the only way for these men to go along with such a deal, is to pardon them for their crimes and that they be returned to active duty at their former ranks. It’s a tough sell, but Gen. Worden agrees and Reisman has just a few short months to train these convicts and turn them into an elite commando unit.

Most of the twelve men are serving long prison sentences, but five (Franko, Jefferson, Maggott, Posey and Wladislaw) are to be hung for murder. Reisman sells the promise of amnesty to these five, because they are the ones with the most to lose. Reisman tells them all that they are dependent of one another and that if any try to escape, fail to add up, or quit, they will all be sent back to prison.

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