Among Jason Statham movies, Homefront is right above the middle: It does what you’d expect, but it does it a bit better than what’s been done before.

Statham is Statham, so he’s the secretive outsider with his own code of ethics, and everyone around him is obsessed with violating that code. It’s not much different from The Transporter series or Parker, which came and went without struggle earlier this year in that it provides a venue for Statham to whollop, whomp, blow up, and canoodle with the film’s other residents. He still has his accent. He still kicks ass. He still has that weird charisma that really has yet to be explored.

Specifically, here he has a hit put on him by the drug-lord father of a kid who died in a DEA raid on a meth lab. Even though Statham was clearly trying to keep the kid alive, and the father watched as everyone but Statham gunned his son down, Statham has the rotten luck of being the one marked for death. Go figure.

I’ve had, for some time, the suspicion that the current comedy troop of Rogen, Hill, Cera, and Franco would eventually get to the point where, instead of a script, they would just sit around and talk. Now we have This Is the End, and if this isn’t the logical conclusion of the gang’s comedy, it’s damn close.

The premise is that Jay Baruchel is in LA to visit his friend Seth Rogen. Their friendship has been on the skids, and Rogen’s insistence that they attend a party at James Franco’s house instead of, I don’t know, hang out and smoke weed. doesn’t help. At Franco’s they meet up with Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, and several others within or slightly out of their group’s ever-expanding radius, such as Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Martin Starr, Chritopher Mintz-Plasse, and now, I guess, Emma Watson.

Freak disruptions start to occur all over the place — sinkholes swallow up many of the party-goers, others are lifted to heaven in columns of blue light, fires explode across Hollywood, and the five find themselves barricaded in Franco’s house — until Danny McBride shows up and makes their sixth.

April Fools Day is usually a day that brings tons of fake news, including trailer releases (like that Legend of Zelda trailer that will never be made into a movie *sadface*). But this year, April 1st was the release date of the red band trailer for the unbelievably star-packed action comedy This Is The End starring James Franco (who has had an already packed 2013 with the release of Spring Breakers and Oz The Great and Powerful), Seth Rogen, Emma Watson, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, and that’s just the supposed “main cast.” From just watching the trailer, expect appearances by Michael Cera, Rihanna, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Mindy Kaling, and more. Holy freaking casting!

The main plot of the movie is simple: James Franco is throwing a kick-ass party and invites all his friends (because celebrities always party with tons of other celebrities) to have a crazy good time. Until the apocalypse happens. Los Angeles is engulfed in fire and brimstone, monsters and aliens are running rampant, people are looting and killing, mass hysteria basically.

Eventually, the main cast barricade themselves in what’s left of Franco’s house and try to survive. At one point, Emma Watson breaks in with an ax (a freaking AX) to try her hand at some looting, which looks to be successful based on the apparent self-testimonial video that is shot by the guys who are documenting what’s going on during the end of days.

Lest we forget, Spring Breakers writer/director Harmony Korine is the guy who got his start writing Larry Clark’s Kids, a film whose characters drank, did drugs, had sex, beat up strangers — all very adult things — and was slapped with an NC-17 rating and a heap of controversy because its characters were all, well, kids. Eighteen years later, the kids aren’t much older, they engage in the same activities, and yet it’s a comedy.

Apparently Korine decided to write and direct a movie about Spring Break because he missed out on it in his youth. So why the sudden change of opinion? Is it because Spring Break is just that — a break from real life where we can expect, if not forgive, hedonistic expression and temporary neglect of duties and responsibilities?

For the kids in Kids, every day of their lives was Spring Break, and if it’s the only thing you have in your life, its consequences are going to be catching up very soon. However wild the girls may go in Cancun, there’s at least some grudging respect for responsibility. Or maybe Korine is aging in reverse?

At 18, when he wrote Kids, he was just coming out of his teens, and being that close to the source, he ws tired of it, ready to take it down. Now he looks back on it with a sense of nostalgia, trying to relive all those moments he missed out on, perhaps.

Whatever the reason, Spring Breakers is just a lot of fun.

Coming as a surprise to no one, Oz: The Great and Powerful has come in first in the weekend box office for a second weekend in a row. The film is performing strong as the first blockbuster of the year, even if it is not reaching Alice in Wonderland or Hunger Games heights.  Still the film should get well over $200 Million domestically and exist as another nice win for Raimi and Disney.

In second place, the Halle Berry thriller The Call had a surprisingly strong debut. The film brought in just over $17 Million and is one of the stronger Halle Berry starring openings in quite a long time. The movie was cheap to make and easy to market so this is a really solid early year win for all of the people involved.

The winning stops at number two as the opening of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is anything but incredible or wonderful. Apparently the film is less funny than my word play and connected with audiences thusly. Comparing the film to other high concept comedies it falls fall below its peers. In fact it barely made 2/3rds of what the Will Ferrell bomb Semi-Pro made a few years ago.

When a movie has been described as “Scarface meets Britney Spears” one must at least pay some attention to it. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the movie in question, Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, also features bikini-clad hotties (in the forms of Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine) wielding firearms.

Plus, it also has James Franco, and his shiny grill, playing a character that reminds us a lot of Gary Oldman’s Drexl Spivey in True Romance. Put all that together and we’re not a hundred percent sure what it means.

One thing we know it does mean, though, is we’re very interested in checking out the full movie. Until then, take a look at the brand new redband trailer after the break.

Look for Spring Breakers to hit limited theaters on March 15th and then go wider on March 22nd.

“Fun” is the word we’ll use to describe the upcoming movie from Harmony Korine called Spring Breakers. You’ll see what we mean when you take a look at the first trailer for the movie that dropped today.

The movie features Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and James Franco in a story about four college girls who land in jail after robbing a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation.

Hijinks ensue when the girls find themselves bailed out by a drug and arms dealer who wants them to do some dirty work. No, not that kind of dirty work. Crimes, see? Although, maybe a bit of that other thing too.

Check out the trailer after the break. Look for Spring Breakers to arrive in theaters March 22nd.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to meet the intense actor Michael Shannon in a dark alley. Although, from what we’ve heard (and seen) he’s actually a very nice guy who just plays twisted dudes for a living.

Speaking of twisted dudes, we’ve got a new trailer featuring Shannon starring in the movie The Iceman. The upcoming thriller sees Shannon playing “real-life hitman/family man Richard Kuklinski, a mob killer-for-hire who knocked off more than 100 men before begin caught in 1986.” The catch? His family had no idea what he did for a living. Icy indeed.

Ray Liotta, Wynona Ryder, Chris Evans and James Franco co-star. Look for The Iceman to arrive in theaters this May.

Until then, check out the new trailer after the break.

If you’re one of the people who’s always wished for a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, your wish has been granted. That’s right, Disney has gone ahead and made said prequel and its called Oz the Great and Powerful. It stars James Franco and Milla Kunis and is directed by Sam Raimi.

The first trailer for the film screened at Comic-Con in San Diego on Thursday and we’ve got it for you right here, just in case you weren’t able to make it to the Con this year. No need to thank us. It’s what we do.

Disney also screened a trailer for The Lone Ranger, which we’ll get for you just as soon as we can. Meantime, this trailer gives us a good idea what we can from the movie which tells the story of how the Wizard (Franco) first arrived in Oz and became its ruler.

Look for Oz the Great and Powerful to hit theaters on March 8 of 2013. Check out the trailer after the break.

With the Academy Awards still fresh in our minds, we can think of all the great films 20111 brought us. It is easy to forget that year also had tons of stinkers and flops, but the Razzie Awards are here to remind us.

The Razzie Award nominees have been announced, and their aren’t too many surprises. Adam Sandler has a record 11 nominations, and that’s not including nominations that are tied to his Happy Madison productions. Three films by the production company, Buck Larsen: Born to be a Star, Just Go With It, and Jack & Jill, all have multiple nominations each.

The Razzies, or Golden Raspberry awards, were created in 1980 as an antidote to the Oscars. They are usually held on the eve of the Academy Awards, but this year are moving to 1 April. Traditionally, stars do not turn up to collect their awards, but good sports over the years have included Paul Verhoeven in 1996 (worst director and worst picture for Showgirls), Halle Berry for 2005’s Catwoman and Sandra Bullock for 2010’s All About Steve.

Check out the nominations after the jump, and be sure to keep an eye out for these “winners” when they are announced on April 1.

Moneyball was a great film and it was very interesting to watch Jonah Hill stand toe to toe with Brad Pitt and deliver Aaron Sorkin dramatic dialogue like a pro. So the news that he has signed on to a new dramatic feature is exciting.

Deadline is reporting that Jonah Hill will be joining forces with James Franco, himself another actor fully capable in drama or comedy, for the upcoming film True Story. A film about a New York Times journalist who’s identity had been stolen by a wanted murder while on the run from authorities.

Like Moneyball, this is another opportunity for Hill to veer from his comic persona. He will play Finkel, who was a writer at The New York Times Magazine in 2002 when he learned that Christian Longo was captured in Mexico after a long stint on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List for killing his family. The strange part was that he had been living under the identity of Finkel.

The very next day, the real Finkel was fired by the editors of The Times, right after they ran an editor’s note declaring that he had falsified parts of an investigative article. His career seemed over, until Longo (who’ll be played by Franco) declared that the real Finkel was the only journalist he would talk to. 

Sounds very interesting, hopefully we are just getting to meet a whole new side to Jonah Hill.

2011 might go down as the year Hollywood finally figured out how to make a great prequel. Between the “X-cellent” X-Men: First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes we have seen two high profile franchises recieve a much needed quality boost back into the lime light.

The most impressive part of this movie is the performance of Andy Serkis as Caesar the ape. Millions of words have been written on the subject of his brilliant digital performance, and every single one of them speaks the truth. We are seeing the line between animation and performance blends so much that it is almost impossible to tell the difference.

This Blu-Ray presents the film, and a whole bunch of features that help you understand what exactly went into the astonishing effects work on the film. Of all the films that have come out in the last few years, this is one of the most worthy of a great set of features.