This week’s pick is Clint Eastwood’s World War II masterpiece Flags of Our Fathers that depicts the famous flag raising on Mt. Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. The film stars Ryan Phillippe (Navy Corpman 2^nd class John “Doc” Bradley), Jesse Bradford (Corporal Rene Gagnon), Paul Walker (Sgt. Hank Hansen), and Robert Patrick (Col. Chandler Johnson).

The film is told through a series of flash-forwards and flashbacks, through the three remaining men who were responsible for the flag raising which helped to raise America’s morale as the Pacific war raged on with no foreseeable end in sight. The seven Marines that are the focal point of the film begin their training at Camp Tarawa in Hawaii with mountain climbing and other P.T. drills.

As they set sail towards their destination, it is revealed that the target in question is the Japanese held island of Iwo Jima, which sits just seven hundred miles away from the Japanese mainland.

During a debriefing, the company commander, Captain Severance (McDonough) tells the men that they will meet stiff enemy resistance than ever before because Iwo is Japanese soil and its defenders will fight to the last man in order to prevent the Americans from gaining a closer foothold toward Japan.

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Maybe I should preface this with the disclaimer that I’ve not seen any of the previous installments of The Fast and the Furious. I’m not a fan of Vin Diesel. I’m not particularly interested in fast cars and, most of the time, I’m more irritated than outright furious.

I also didn’t know anything about the characters’ backstories going into the film nor was I, in full disclosure, looking forward to this screening. That said, I had a lot of fun with this flick—and evidently so did everyone else at the screening, from the critics, who laughed snarkily at the plot contrivances and flagrantly obvious exposition, to the rest of the audience, who clapped at every conceivable moment and in general ate it up like hotcake-crepes wrapped in unicorn butts.

If you have seen the other movies, you may be happy to know that the original trio of Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto), Paul Walker (Brian O’Connor), and Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto, Dominic’s sister and Brian’s lover) are back, as are Sung Kang (Han Lue), Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce), Matt Schulze (Vince), Ludacris (Tej Parker), a whole bunch of others I’m not sure were in the other several thousand Fast-and-Furiouses, and, what the hell, they got The Rock, too.

The movie begins with the jail-springing of Toretto, a stunt so implausible that not even the film itself takes it seriously, and soon the gang’s in Rio (and, after seeing the animated film Rio recently, I’m guessing that somewhere there’s an elephantine warehouse filled with stock shots of the cityscape as leered from behind Christ’s shoulder), plotting a car-jack heist for their shady friend Vince, who’s after three seized cars being transported across the country by train.

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We all remember the scoffs Universal got when news hit that they were doing a fourth sequel to the Fast and the Furious franchise, but when the film opened to an astounding $70 million in the first weekend, the only people laughing were at the studio. So why wouldn’t they continue that trend with another film?

So here it is, the fifth film in the series, titled simply Fast Five. Worry not, fans won’t get another Tokyo Drift, as Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and a bunch of the originals are all returning. Here’s the breakdown of the film.

Since Brian (Walker) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) broke Dom out of custody, they’ve blown across many borders to elude authorities. Now backed into a corner in Rio de Janeiro, they must pull one last job in order to gain their freedom. As they assemble their elite team of top racers, the unlikely allies know their only shot of getting out for good means confronting the corrupt businessman who wants them dead. But he’s not the only one on their tail. Hard-nosed federal agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) never misses his target. When he is assigned to track down Dom (Diesel) and Brian, he and his strike team launch an all-out assault to capture them. But as his men tear through Brazil, Hobbs learns he can’t separate the good guys from the bad. Now, he must rely on his instincts to corner his prey…before someone else runs them down first.

The flick is set to hit on April 29th, and you can check out the full trailer after the jump.

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This week on The Flickcast, Chris, Matt and Christina discuss a whole slew of new topics and revisit a few old ones. Some of the things they cover in this episode include Green Hornet casting news, Steven Spielberg’s next movie, the somewhat surprising performance of G.I. Joe, Terminator 5 news, Tim Roth playing Abomination in two other movies, the death of John Hughes and a whole lot more.

The trio also makes some great picks this week with Christina’s choice of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in honor of John Hughes, Matt’s choice of Running Scared starring Paul Walker and Chris’ favorite comic book Blackest Night, written by Geoff Johns and penciled by Ivan Reis.

Last, but certainly not least, in honor of the 20th episode, the team announced a cool contest for all the listeners of the show. So, be sure to listen to this week’s episode and then check back right here later today for all the details on how you can win some great prizes!

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

Thanks for listening.