How many times has this happened to you? You wake up in a car, its smashed up and you have no memory of how you got there or what happened. Sound familiar?

Well, even if it doesn’t sound familiar, it still makes for an interesting premise for a movie to be sure. Fortunately, someone already had the idea and has made a movie that starts off just that way. The movie, which features Adrien Brody and is called Wrecked, tells the story of Brody’s character who wakes up in a forest after a car accident and has no idea how he got there or what happened.

Then, as he piece together the events leading to his predicament, things don’t turn out at all ho they seem. In fact, they don’t turn out very good at all. The film was directed by Michael Greenspan and is slated for release next year.

Check out the trailer after the jump.

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Red certainly isn’t an important or groundbreaking film, but it is a lot of fun, and that counts for something in my book.  Sometimes that is exactly what we are seeking out, and this film delivers.  It’s a blast.

Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, a man who appears to be living a  ho-hum existence  in the suburbs.  He spends his free time convincing a government employee in Kansas City (Sarah, played by a sassy Mary-Louise Parker) that he has not received his government checks.  He is really ripping them up, just so he can call her every few days and talk.  The two have adopted a flirty rapport during their chats.

In a thrilling opening sequence, Frank finds out (rather unexpectedly) that he is being targeted by assassins, and he quickly and efficiently employs a variety of weapons and booby traps to thwart their efforts.  It is clear that this is no ordinary citizen, you see Frank is classified by the CIA as RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous.)

After he has time to get his wits about him, Frank rushes to Kansas City to rescue/kidnap Sarah, because she will be targeted l if the unknown assailants check his phone records.

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Darren Aronofsky has made a career of choosing interesting, non-traditional material and illuminating the unexpected aspects of his subject matter. Case(s) in point: The Wrestler (a down-trodden wrestler), Pi (mathematicians), Requiem For a Dream (middle-aged drug addiction), and now Black Swan (competitive ballet.)

His knack for taking something completely mundane and elevating it to something tense and dreadful is astonishing.  Who would have ever thought that a movie about mathematicians could be exciting, much less sinister?  It is no surprise that the man who brought us Pi delivers a dark,  provocative, psychological drama, set in the cutthroat (who knew it?) world of competitive ballet.

Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a beautiful ballerina who dances for a New York City ballet company.  Though technically gifted, she has never gotten her big break because the company’s arrogant art director thinks she is too bland to carry a performance.

The film opens with us being privy to some of the cattiness that takes place behind the scenes at the ballet.  The troupe’s principal ballerina, Beth (Winona Ryder),  is being forced into retirement at the ripe old age of 37. Nina finds it sad, and defends the dancer, while the other girls titter on about her age and diminished athletic ability.  It’s immediately established that the women are highly competitive.  There is no sense of camaraderie, everyone is out for themselves.

The perennial classic Swan Lake is set to be the season opener, and Beth’s departure leaves the principal role wide open. Director Thomas (Vince Cassel) pits the girls against one another as they audition for the coveted role of The Swan Queen.

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I remember when I saw the trailer for Buried (directed by Rodrigo Cortés and starring Ryan Reynolds), I thought it looked horrifying – though I was curious how the film would play out for it’s 94 minute running time.  While conceptually interesting, Buried is essentially about a man trapped inside a box – material which seems better suited for a short feature.  That conceit - and the fact that the film rests almost entirely on the performance of it’s only on-screen actor – make the fact that the film was completely engaging an even more impressive feat.

Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), a truck driver working in Iraq, recovers from unconsciousness to find that he is buried alive inside a wooden coffin with little more than a cell phone, a zippo lighter and a knife.  Paul’s initial reaction to his predicament is to panic – understandably – and the tension is palpable as he frantically tries to escape his claustrophobic surroundings.

He is eventually contacted by his kidnappers – via the planted cell phone he is buried with – who demand a ransom for him to be released alive.  Paul desperately tries to contact his employers and family before finally making a connection with an FBI agent, during which time he is able to vaguely recall the details of an ambush led by insurgents - presumably by those responsible for holding him hostage.

As Paul works within the confines of his surroundings to garner his release from captivity, there is never a moment when you aren’t vividly aware of his time running out.  A cellular battery slowly draining or dropping calls, a lighter running out of fuel to burn, limited oxygen to breathe and a bevy of other obstacles – punctuate the unlikelihood of Paul’s survival.  Yet there are fleeting  moments of hopeful respite here and there, just enough to string you – and Paul – along.

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Every year, one film likes to stand out as the tiny indie flick that comes out of left field and turns heads everywhere. Last year’s is most memorable, as Paranormal Activity blew up in the box office and kept people awake for weeks. Now it looks like Rogue Pictures’ Catfish may do the same.

For those not in the loop, here’s the official synopsis:

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel’s brother, Nev.  They had no idea that their project would lead to the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives.  A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times, Catfish is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.

The film plays itself like a classic tale of romance, with a modern social networking twist, and then turns into something completely different. We’ve got four new clips to prove that point, served up just for you.

Take a look at the clips after the jump, and catch Catfish in limited theaters on September 17th.

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A new teaser trailer for the highly anticipated film Black Swan has been released and is up over at Apple Trailers. Aronofsky will direct a primarily female cast that includes Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder.

I’ll admit that I thought a psychological thriller set in the world of competitive ballet seemed pretty silly, but this trailer has me sold. Portman plays Nina, a ballet dancer who has been chosen to replace the principal dancer in Swan Lake. Just as she is settling into her new role a new dancer, played by Mila Kunis, shows up and lots of eerie things start unfolding.

The film plot has been tightly guarded, so that is about all I can tell you. What do you suppose is going on with the whole skin condition? How does that factor in? We’ll have to wait until December 1st to find out. The film will make a few festival stops at the Toronto Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival prior to its official release.

I find the career trajectory of Darren Aronofsky so interesting. He is one director who is never going to be pigeon-holed into one genre. His filmography is amazing. He started with Pi, which blew my mind, then moved on to Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, and now Swan Lake.

He’s a great talent, and he has yet to commit a career misstep, so I can’t wait to see what he does with this one. Check out the new teaser after the break.

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The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a twisty, provocative British thriller featuring a breakout performance from Gemma Arterton. You may have caught her in the recent popcorn flicks Prince of Persia or Clash of the Titans, two movies in which she is largely relegated to arm candy for the leading men.

It is refreshing to see the sultry actress show us the  range of her acting prowess. As Alice Creed, she gives a gritty, brave performance  that you won’t soon forget.

The film begins with two men meticulously preparing a room to serve as a temporary housing for a kidnapping victim.  It seems that every tiny detail has been addressed.  The room is soundproofed and padded, the bed is bolted to the floor, and the room has been stripped bare of anything that could be used as weaponry.

The two men don masks and drive an outfitted van to their victim, a one Alice Creed.  Soon, she is shackled to the bed and stripped naked.  It’s a difficult scene to watch, and horribly degrading.

It would be very easy to write off the movie at this early juncture as being yet another torture-porn genre film, but don’t be so quick to judge.  That graphic and frightening scene sets up some interesting plot points for later, and makes better sense after you have the context  of the whole movie behind it.

Fortunately, it is quickly apparent that the men have no interest in Alice sexually.  They cloth her in a jogging suit they provide, and don’t seem to have much interest in actually harming her.  Instead, they want to extort some money from her wealthy father, by making him pay a kidnap ransom.

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I guess statistically speaking, it was bound to happen.  If you see enough movies, eventually you are going to witness a great movie that just doesn’t do it for you.  Such was the case with Inception.  I was poised to love the movie and declare it a cinematic masterpiece, if not one of my favorite films of the year.

I walked out seeing people high five each other and hug each other in a joyful embrace, no doubt exalted by the awesomeness of the film that they had just witnessed. How I envied them.

I left  frustrated, angry and annoyed. I desperately wanted to belong to that group of blissfully happy movie-goers, but I couldn’t fake it.  I just didn’t enjoy the movie.

Is that to say that it was not an excellent film?  Of course not.  On a purely technical basis, the film is amazing. It is also wildly imaginative, smart and original, all the things I clamor for during the summer film schedule.  Try as I might, though, I couldn’t get engaged in the story.  I never connected with any of the characters, and as a consequence, I never felt any urgency or peril regarding their situations.

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While its 1987 predecessor Predator took its sweet time setting up the action, Predators starts off at breakneck speed, with a man hurtling through air,  frantically trying to get his parachute open.  The wind whips around him, and as he plummets toward a certain death, he appears to be a goner.

Of course, at the last second, he gets it to open, and it breaks his fall enough to allow him to survive.  All around him, other people are falling out of the sky, but some of them are not as lucky,  and die upon impact. It’s a thrilling action sequence, and immediately sets this film apart from the original.

The first thirty minutes of this movie has a distinct Lost-like vibe to it. The survivors start rounding up one another, and it becomes apparent that nobody knows how they got to this jungle, or where they are.  One man even asserts that they must be in hell.

They discover that they are all combatants of some sort.  Most are military mercenary types, one is wearing a prison jumper, and one claimed he worked for a drug cartel.   It’s a bad-ass assortment of individuals, that much is true.

Everyone has landed with appropriate weaponry and ammunition strapped to their bodies.  The lone exception is Edwin, a bookworm type who claims he is a doctor, and seems woefully out of his element among the soldiers.

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Given the current spate of advances in genetic engineering, Splice seems eerily prescient. After all, we have already seen the rapid evolution of cloning. Supermarkets now carry cloned produce, and mammals are routinely and successfully cloned as well. Is it really unreasonable to assume we will see a human-animal hybrid in our lifetime? Who’s to say one doesn’t already exist?

It is hard to believe that director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) first conceived the idea for Splice almost 15 years ago, all because he was intrigued by the shocking image of the Vacanti mouse, that little white mouse that had a human ear growing out of its back. The result is this chilling sci-fi/horror hybrid that is teeming with the ethical and moral implications of genetic research.

Elsa (Sarah Polley, The Sweet Hereafter) and Clive (Adrien Brody, The Pianist) are gifted young genetic bio-engineers, who have successfully spliced the genetic material of different animals into a hybrid. A pharmaceutical company has sponsored them, in the hopes of developing new medications.

Frustrated, Elsa chomps at the bit to add a little human DNA to the next experiment, but the company shoots her down, deeming it too risky, not to mention illegal.

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When this Mel Gibson starrer came to theaters, I didn’t get a chance to see it so my first exposure to it was on Blu-ray. I won’t go into a full review of the film here (I’ll leave that to our own Shannon Hood) but suffice it to say I liked director Martin Campbell’s mix of cop procedural, revenge tale and conspiracy thriller. Gibson plays Boston Detective Thomas Craven who’s daughter is brutally murdered right in front of his eyes after a rather brief homecoming.

This horrific act spurs Gibson’s character on a path of revenge and a quest for justice that takes him in many different directions as he crosses paths with all manner of characters. Of course, things are not as they seem and the crime is not s simple assassination gone wrong, nor was Craven the target as everyone, except him, suspect.

During the course of his investigation Craven discovers a wider conspiracy that leads to the power corridors of the highest levels of government. Into this mix comes Ray Winstone’s Jedburg, a shadow operative who ‘s motivations and loyalties are unclear.

Is he a friend or foe and who does he work for? These questions arise as the film progresses and as Craven and Jedburg have several scenes together. Even though the other actors in the film, including Danny Huston, Shawn Roberts and Bojana Novakovic, are quite good, Gibson and Winstone elevate their scenes together and make this movie, at times, a real pleasure to watch.

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When Platinum Dunes announced plans to remake the original Nightmare on Elm Street, I had mixed feelings. I was a fan of the original series, and watched all seven movies. I even watched that dreadful Friday night program Freddy’s Nightmares. I guess you could say I have a soft spot for the film series.

However, when Jackie Earle Haley was announced as the new Freddy Krueger, he was fresh off an electrifying performance as Rorschach in Watchmen, and I was officially on board with the remake. I couldn’t think of anyone better to step into the role previously played by Robert Englund.

So while watching the remake, I was surprised at how odd it was to see someone else play the role. I didn’t dislike Jackie Earle Haley’s performance (though I do wish he hadn’t sounded exactly like Rorshach), but I guess I didn’t realize that Robert Englund had become synonymous with Freddy Krueger in my mind.

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