In 2009, director Duncan Jones made a splash on the indie scene by bringing us a smart, trippy sci-fi film called Moon. The film was warmly received by critics, but fell short of being a commercial success.

Despite the fact that Source Code has all the trappings of a studio film (bigger budget, bigger stars, bigger advertising campaign) Jones has remained remarkably faithful to his indie roots. The result is the rare mix of a smart thriller with wide audience appeal. We’ve seen that audiences don’t always shy away from smart films (case in point, Christopher Nolan’s Inception); maybe we are finally starting to see the studios warm to the idea that smart and commercially viable are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts.

Source Code proves that the two can concepts can co-exist in perfect harmony. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Captain Colter Stevens, who finds himself on a train in Chicago one day and is completely panicked to find out that he has no idea who the woman sitting with him is, and he doesn’t know how he got on the train. Before he can put the pieces of the puzzle, the train blows up.

Colter finds himself waking up in a pod-type device, listening to the soothing voice of Colleen (Vera Farmiga), a military officer who explains that he has been sent back in time (before the train exploded) to find out who placed the bomb on the train. They believe that another attack is planned, and the only way to stop it is to find the perpetrator of the attack on the first train.

Continue Reading →

Sci-Fi is the new action in 2011 as one of the bigger films, Duncan Jones’ Source Code has gotten it’s second, and International trailer. This is Jones’ second major science fiction release after last year’s thriller Moon. The film follows a pretty simple premise…for sci-fi nerds.

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the ‘Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second much larger target threatening to kill millions in Downtown Chicago, Colter relives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

A little bit Twelve Monkeys, a little bit Quantum Leap, with the charm of Jake Gyllenhaal and the unique guerrilla directing style of Duncan Jones. Check out the new international trailer after the jump, and catch Source Code in theaters on April 15th.

Continue Reading →

Duncan Jones passed the writer’s strike test and managed to put out an amazing sci-fi thriller called Moon back in 2009. Now that things are back on an even(ish) playing field, Jones is getting another attempt to bend the minds of moviegoers with his newest psychological thriller, Source Code. Here’s the studio’s extensive synopsis.

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life.

With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack. Filled with mind-boggling twists and heart-pounding suspense, Source Code is a smart action-thriller directed by Duncan Jones also starring Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

From what we can see, consider this film Twelve Monkeys meets Quantum Leap, with a few Inception elements thrown in. Check out the full trailer after the jump, and catch the film in theaters on April 15th.

Continue Reading →

Jason Statham either has a very specific goal in mind when picking films, or he really just doesn’t care. A lesser action star would feel the need to branch out into kid-friendly flicks to up his revenue stream and become more of a household name (*cough* Vin Diesel *cough*) but Statham takes a different approach.

Between the Crank films, the Transporter films, and anything done with Jet Li or Guy Ritchie, Statham has managed to keep his “badass quota” to a maximum level. The same holds with the trailer for his newest film, Blitz.

With a screenplay from Moon’s Nathan Parker, Blitz tells the story of a cop put on the case of a serial killer who makes it a point to kill police officers. You’ll definitely get the British crime side of Statham over the high-action martial arts in this film.

The very first trailer for the flick has surfaced, which you can check out after the jump. Be sure to catch Blitz in select theaters worldwide starting in February of 2011.

Continue Reading →

This week on The Flickcast Chris is on vacation so Matt teams up with guest host Elisabeth Rappe for all kinds of interesting discussion and debate on lots of different topics. Some of these topics include the new Jonah Hex trailer, Huge Weaving as Red Skull in Captain America, Matthew Vaughn taking on X-Men: First Class and the trailer for a new J.J. Abrams project supposedly attached to screening of Iron Man 2, which hits theaters this Friday.

Matt and Elisabeth also made some new picks this week including Elisabeth’s pick of the Western 3:10 to Yuma and Matt’s pick of the indie Sci-Fi film Moon, featuring Sam Rockwell.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

2010 is in full swing and some really great movies are hitting store shelves this week for the first time and for the first time on Blu-ray. This week’s releases include Moon, Halloween II, Cliffhanger, Kathy Griffin: She’ll Cut a Bitch, I Can Do Bad All By Myself and the Blu-ray release of The Hurt Locker (pictured above).

Check out this week’s releases:

Movies

Amreeka ~ Yussuf Abu-Warda, Hiam Abbass, Alia Shawkat (DVD)

Big Fan ~ Patton Oswalt, Michael Rapaport, Matt Servitto (DVD and Blu-ray)

Cliffhanger ~ Sylvester Stallone (Blu-ray)

Departures ~ Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue (DVD)

8 1/2 (The Criterion Collection) ~ Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale  (Blu-ray)

Continue Reading →

Once in a while, a movie comes along that is almost impossible to write about. Moon has been shrouded in mystery in both trailers and other marketing, and it becomes incredibly difficult to review the film without ruining the most important plot points and discoveries made throughout its 96 minutes. With that said, this film does a fantastic job of blurring the line between big budget sci-fi films and actor-driven “indie” films.

To keep things as ambiguous as possible in this review, Moon is about astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), assisted by his computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), at the end of his three-year stint on the Moon where he sends back to Earth a resource that accounts for 75% of the all energy. From there, things begin to go a bit haywire.

Continue Reading →

Over at Yahoo Movies, they’ve got another new clip for the Sam Rockwell starrer Moon to share. Sadly, they won’t allow embeds, so you’ll have to go there to see it. This new clip features Rockwell, who stars as lunar miner Sam Bell, a man spending three years alone on the lunar surface overseeing a process that harvests energy from the moon.

Fortunately, he’s only got two weeks left before he can go home. Unfortunately, he’s starting to get “cabin fever” and is experiencing strange visions he can’t explain. All of this concerns his only companion on the moon, a computer named GERTY — played by Kevin Spacey in the film. As Bell’s time gets even shorter, his visions turn into something even more frightening and he starts to believe he’s not alone — someone or something is on the moon with him.

Think that sounds interesting? So do we. To fully experience just how cool we think this new movie is going to be, check out the trailer after the jump. Moon, starring Sam Rockwell and directed by Duncan Jones, hits theaters later this year.

Continue Reading →