Before I go too far with this review of the Blu-ray Combo Pack release of director Dennis Villeneuve’s film Prisoners, I need to make a couple things clear. First, I’m a Hugh Jackman fan. I think he’s a very good actor who’s almost always a pleasure to watch.

Even in less-than-stellar movies, he usually stands out. That’s not to say Prisoners is one of those movies, it isn’t. It’s just so you know where I’m coming from.

The second thing I need to point out is my love of a adult drama. For a time Hollywood made a lot of these kinds of movies and they were often quite good. Occasionally, even excellent. Standouts in the past like The Fugitive, Jagged Edge and Presumed Innocent come to mind.

Plus, more recent films like Argo and Silver linings Playbook are also good examples. But most of the time the industry seems consumed with the need to make and market movies for kids and skimp on things like character or story. I worry about the future of adult drama.

Fortunately, a movie occasionally comes along that restores my faith, at least temporarily, that this art form will not be lost forever. Prisoners is one of those movies and it manages to deliver on almost every level.

There’s several things to like about the upcoming film Prisoners from director Denis Villeneuve. For one, it features a terrific ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, and Viola Davis.

Second, the director’s previous film, Incendiaries, was quite enjoyable. For more reasons, you’ll just have to check out the trailer for Prisoners that’s just come out.

In the film, two families lives are upturned when their young daughters go missing together. Yeah, that’s probably not going to end well. The movie also stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a cop trying to pick up the missing girls’ trail, Paul Dano and Melissa Leo.

Look for it to arrive in theaters on September 20. Check out the trailer (which reveals some plot elements) after the break.

The somewhat annoying “shakey cam” used throughout the Open Road Films release End of Watch can’t completely kill our interest in this R-rated thriller. Writer-director David Ayer brings us a tale of two L.A. cops, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena, as they go about their day.

Like it or not, he does it from the perspective of various hand-held, dashboard and security cameras. Not sure we’re in love with that. Oh well.

There’s redband trailer for the movie out today and ww’ve got it for you after the break because, well, it’s a redband trailer. The movie also stars Anna Kendrick, Frank Grillo, Cody Horn and America Ferrera.

It opens on September 21st.

When you’re in the news business and things move as fast as they do these days (i.e at the “speed of the Internerts”) sometimes a story will slip through the cracks. This is one of those stories.

A few days ago French video game publisher Ubisoft announced it is launching Ubisoft Motion Pictures to adapt its game franchises for film and TV. Heading up this new venture will be Jean-Julien Baronnet, former CEO of Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp., producer Didier Lupfer is in charge of production and development and Jean de Rivieres, former head of distribution at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures France, will handle marketing and international sales.

Some of Ubisoft’s titles that could be movies include Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. You also may recall Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was recently brought to the big screen by Jerry Bruckheimer, with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead. Yeah, we kinda tried to forget that one too.

With this new division it will be interesting to see if the company can do a better job with turing its games into films than others have done. My guess is they probably won’t have much luck. Turning games into movies is very difficult, just ask all the people who’ve tried to do it.

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.