Martin Scorsese’s latest potboiler bears the unmistakable markings of a classic film noir. Cigarette smoke  hangs heavy in the air  and tendrils about the characters, almost taking on a life of its own. Dream sequences become engulfed in flames and smoke. The camera lingers on one character taking a drag off of a cigarette and inhaling the smoke directly into his nostrils.

The smoke  is so pervasive that I kept thinking there has to be a reason for it, beyond atmosphere.  My conclusion is that the smoke is an allegorical symbol for “smoke and mirrors”, quite apropo because on Shutter Island, nothing is as it appears.

Leonardo DiCaprio (with a thick Boston accent) plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshal who has been summoned to the mysterious Shutter Island, a foreboding chunk of land surrounded by rocky precipices. This makes the island ideal for housing dangerous and severely disturbed psychiatric patients. The movie takes place in 1954, when psychiatric patients were routinely given lobotomies, and other “treatments” were inflicted that are considered unethical and inhumane today.

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Fans of comedy and episodic TV have nothing but good thoughts come to mind when they hear the names Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Both The Office and 30 Rock have dominated comedy on network TV for quite some time now, so it would only make sense that a film showcasing both of them together would be epic, no? Probably not, after seeing the trailer for their newest film, Date Night.

The film is about a bored and boring married couple who decide to spice things up by lying to a hostess at a restaurant about their reservations, thus taking another couple’s name and table. One crazy happenstance after another then occurs, and our beloved couple is now on the run from gangsters. Add to that premise the reluctant hero from Get Smart and the neurotic lead from Baby Mama and you’ve got this 90-minute comedy.

The film is padded with a pretty big supporting cast, hoping to drag the audiences in. Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Ray Liotta, Mark Ruffalo, Mila Kunis, Leighton Meester, and even Olivia Munn are all in the film, with Shawn Levy, director of the Night At The Museum films, sitting in the director’s chair.

Check out the first theatrical trailer after the jump, Be sure to catch Date Night in theaters on April 9th, 2010.

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Director Rian Johnson hit it out of the park with his first film Brick (2005), a small, quirky indie film with a grade-A cast and some amazing style. The Brothers Bloom looked just as good, but unfortunately had a small run and I was unable to see it in theaters.

The film centers around two brothers, Stephen and Bloom, who after being orphaned and shuffled between various foster homes, become con men to make it in the world. They’re rather good at it, but after having made a name for themselves, Bloom decides he wants out. The two brothers, along with their sidekick and explosives specialist Bang-Bang, plan the perfect con to go out on: showing a reclusive but beautiful heiress, Penelope, a good time on a  journey across the globe. Problem is, Bloom can’t con a woman without falling in love in the process.

This film’s story makes it stand out. Because it’s a movie about con men, it’s hard to know when to trust what’s going on as the absolute truth. The movie will trick you, but that’s what makes it great to watch for the first time. You’ll be guessing the brothers, especially Stephen, at every turn.

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We’re very excited here at The Flickcast for Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are. While the film is still a month away, we’ve brought you featurettes, trailers, and more coverage for the film than you could shake a stick at. Now, four new character banners and a new poster just debuted on Myspace’s blog for the film!

The new banners showcase three “Wild Things” Judith, Carol, KW, and Max, the main character as played by Max Records. In addition to Records as “Max”,  the film features James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Lauren Ambrose, Mark Ruffalo, and Forrest Whitaker. Where The Wild Things Are hits theaters and IMAX October 16th.

You can view the four character banners and poster after the jump.

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Now that the Summer blockbuster season has settled down and most of the tent pole films for the year have been put to bed, it’s time for the sleeper hits of 2009 to shine. The Fall is a pretty big time for films like District 9, Gamer, and of course Where the Wild Things Are to take over the box office in a substantial way.

The first trailer for Where the Wild Things Are hit a few months back, and didn’t show us very much. Still, we knew that director Spike Jonze, who was the mastermind behind this stroke of genius, would do the children’s book classic. We now get a new trailer filled with plenty of footage of the titular “wild things” and surprisingly lots of James Gandolfini.

Also starring Forest Whitaker, Catherine Ohara, Lauren Ambrose, Mark Ruffalo, Catherine Keener, and Max Records, Warner’s Where the WIld Things Are hits screens October 16th nationwide.

Check it out the brand new trailer after the jump.

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“I think you’re constipated in your soul,” Rachel Weisz says to Adrien Brody before going into an orgasmic fit at the oncoming thunderstorm in Rian Johnson’s second film, The Brothers Bloom. That was the peak of Weisz’s eccentric and electric role as Penelope, the mark of Adrien Brody’s Bloom and Mark Ruffalo’s Stephen Bloom.

Ruffalo’s Stephen Bloom is the storyteller, the man with the set-up, writing all the key roles and setting up the players. Brody plays Bloom, (Bloom?), the heartthrob, the bait if you will, that gets the women the men con. Tired of having a scripted life setup by his brother Stephen, Bloom sets off to live “a life that is unwritten.”  Just to be lured back into one final con: to get what everyone really wants.  The mark is Weisz’s Penelope a shut-in “rich bitch from New Jersey,” as Brody says.

The con is to swindle Penelope out of her bottomless treasure trove of riches in the name of getting a priceless book, which is really mostly scrap paper. The plan is to include her in the action. Through this, Stephen the storyteller introduces us to the world that he and his brother interact with including a cast of colorful characters such as Robbie Coltrane’s farting Belgian The Curator, and Maximilian Schell’s Diamond Don, and the brother’s nitroglycerin expert Bang Bang played with Chaplin-esque silent comedy by Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi.

That setup really is just a con to get everyone involved. The perfect con, or as Ruffalo likes to say, is “to give everyone what they want.” To give Penelope an adventure, to live a life to which all of her separate and unique abilities can be put to use, and to give his younger brother a good life with a woman he can live with.  This is literally the sole purpose of Stephen’s final con-to give everyone what they want, including himself with heart breaking results.

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