Machete Kills plays like a late Roger-Moore era Bond film — and not just because there’s a lot of visual cues and ideas taken from Moonraker — the action and the humor are constantly fighting for dominance, and the humor, regardless of whether it’s appropriate or not, makes sense within the context of the scene or not, hell, is funny or not, usually wins out. Though, to be fair, the plot of Machete Kills is a lot easier to follow than the plot of Octopussy.

Machete (Danny Trejo), in case you didn’t see the first film…or the trailer on which it was based, is an ex-Federale-turned-spy-or-something-like-that-but-all-around-badass, seemingly indestructible and legendary throughout Mexico. His latest “case” has him busting up a gun-running ring, apparently sponsored by the U.S. Army, and distributed to the Mexican cartel. Gun fights, explosions, dramatic standoff music, and hell ensues. Machete is somehow the only survivor when the cops show up, and by the next scene we’re in the local sheriff’s office and Machete is swinging from the ceiling with a noose around his neck. And then the President calls.

And the President is…Charlie Sheen. Naturally. He needs Machete to hunt down and kill Mendez (Damian Bichir), a nutty terrorist with a vendetta against the cartel who’s moved on to threatening the U.S. with a nuclear device. The catch is that once Machete finds him, Mendez reveals that the trigger for the bomb is tied to his heartbeat, so once he dies, boom. And he’s also put a hit out on himself that everyone in Mexico is trying to cash in on.

In the past 20 years, Kevin Sorbo has become a pretty prominent name in the geek community, spanning over a few different subgenres. Of course, he got on the map by playing Hercules for 5 years straight, and then captaining the space ship in Andromeda for another 5 years.

Since then, he’s been drifting in and out of the comedy and geek genre with films like Meet the Spartans and FDR American Badass!. Now he’s getting a little more play in a film that may not take itself seriously enough. It’s called Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, and its cynical tone puts films like Tropic Thunder and Machete to shame. Here’s the premise:

A Vietnam Veteran Sal Bando (Sorbo), tortured by his past as a Poolboy, returns home to Van Nuys, California, and a country he doesn’t recognize, in which it seems only Mexicans run pool-cleaning companies. Bando sets off on a brutal mission to reclaim his “rightful” vocation and enact revenge on the man (Trejo) who killed his wife and son.

Not only will fans get cult hero Sorbo in the lead, but Machete himself, Danny Trejo drops in as the film’s main villain. You can also check out a few other special cameos in the trailer after the jump. Poolboy hits DVD and VOD right now, where those are sold.

Even though Robert Rodriguez has long been touting 2009’s Machete was the beginning of a trilogy of films, it was thought to be dead in the water due to the lackluster performance of the original. Now, Deadline is reporting that Rodriguez has producer Alexander Rodnyansky on board and is ready to move forward with the sequel Machete.

The sequel, as was hinted during the first film, will be titled Machete Kills, already has a script and will start production as soon as April. The new film finds Machete recruited by the U.S. Government to take on a mission that would be too much for any normal man.

Machete must battle his way through Mexico single-handed to “take down a madman cartel leader and an eccentric billionaire arms dealer who has hatched a plan to spread war across the planet with a weapon in space.”

For a good amount of time, there was some worry that Robert De Niro was going the way of Dustin Hoffman where he stopped going after meaty or serious roles, only to focus on easy paychecks and “fun” projects.

With his recent return to the Fockers franchise, and his laughably bad performance in Machete, we were starting to worry if the once-amazing actor was lost forever. Now we see he may be coming towards the light once again, as he’s got second billing in Relativity Media’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Limitless.

In it, De Niro plays Carl Van Loon, a mysterious businessman who knows more than Bradley Cooper’s Eddie Morra about his own new abilities, all thanks to a pill that grants him limitless power.

In the clip we have for you, De Niro and Cooper face off in an intense battle of wits, and give each other their own trademarked dramatic stare. Check it out after the jump, and catch Limitless in theaters on March 18th.

It’s that time of year again. The time when actors and actresses are honored for all the hard work they piled together in the 12 months leading up to one moment of pay off and a tiny little statue. We’re speaking, of course, about the Razzie Awards. These are the awards given out on the eve of Oscar night to those actors, actresses, and fimlmmakers who have produced some of the worst film projects to hit theaters in the past year.

Many remember last year’s big Worst Actress winner being Sandra Bullock, who went on the very next night to win an Oscar for a role in a completely different film. This year’s potentials could have the same luck, but we doubt it. Here’s the shortlist of actors from LA Times.

Among movies and actors shortlisted for the Razzies are Jessica Alba, who is eligible for worst supporting actress for four films (“The Killer Inside Me,” “Little Fockers,” “Machete” and “Valentine’s Day”), and Emily Blunt, eligible in the same category for her work in “The Wolfman” and “Gulliver’s Travels.”

Just when you think Robert Rodriguez is going to zig, he zags. Unlike his friend and mentor, Tarantino, who puts out an artistically written film once every four years, Rodriguez is constantly reinventing himself, claiming domain over genres ranging from ultra violent exploitation films to 3D family flicks.

It looks like he’s doing a bit of fan service in both directions now with the casting for Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World. It’s been recently confirmed that Rodriguez has obtained Jessica Alba, Jeremy Piven, and Community’s Joel McHale to star in the film, with actors like Alexa Vega, Antonio Banderas, and Danny Trejo to return. Here’s the rundown of the film from the studio.

On the surface, Marissa Cortez Wilson (Jessica Alba) has it all…married to a famous spy hunting television reporter, a new baby and intelligent twin step kids. But in reality, trying to mother Rebecca (Rowan Blanchard) and Cecil (Mason Cook), who clearly don’t want her around, is her toughest challenge yet. Also, her husband, Wilbur (Joel McHale), wouldn’t know a spy if he lived with one which is exactly the case – Marissa’s a retired secret agent.

Marissa’s world is turned upside down when the maniacal Timekeeper (Jeremy Piven) threatens to take over the planet and she’s called back into action by the head of OSS, home of the greatest spies and where the now-defunct Spy Kids division was created. With Armageddon quickly approaching, Rebecca and Cecil are thrust into action when they learn their boring stepmom was once a top agent and now the world’s most competitive ten year olds are forced to put their bickering aside and rely on their wits.

With a little help from a couple of very familiar Spy Kids, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara), and some mind-blowing gadgets, they just may be able to save the world and possibly bring their family together while they’re at it.

While she’s not busy beating up the creator of Fantastic Fest, Tim League, Michelle Rodriguez is off making some pretty bad ass films. She was the strong female lead (not the damsel in distress) in this summer’s Machete, and now it seems that she’s got another machine-gun-toting action film in the works with Citizen Jane.

As awesome of a premise as you could come up with given that title, you can imagine what the filmmakers were thinking of when this concept was written out.

Citizen Jane stars Michelle Rodriguez as Charlotte Foster Jane, a lethal assassin hell bent on avenging the murder of her parents in this guns blazing, action packed retelling of Orson Welles 1941 classic, Citizen Kane.

She will do anything for her Rosebud…

Set to release September 5th of next year (during Fantastic Fest ’11, no doubt), we will hopefully get some more info about the film as we get closer to the release date. In the meantime, check out the intense teaser trailer for it after the jump and ask yourself “What would you Xanadu?”

Resident Evil: Afterlife put up some pretty impressive numbers over the weekend, particularly for a franchise’s fourth film. The movie wasn’t screened for critics, so there was no early buzz on the film.  The $27.7M take speaks volumes about the franchises built in audience.

The film exceeded the opening weekend of Resident Evil: Extinction (the last film in the series), which made $23.7M. However, considering inflated ticket prices and 3D upcharges, it did not actually bring more people to the theater.

This morning, Milla Jovovich has confirmed that there will be a fifth film.

Good thing the movie made some money, because everything else had a positively dismal showing.  Takers nabbed the number two spot with $6.1M.

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt take on a whole bunch of new topics. Some of these include the box office success and relative merit of movies like The American, Machete and Takers as well as new trailers for films like Let Me In and Hobo with a Shotgun.

They also discussed more Expendables 2 and X-Men 4 rumors, casting news and all manner of other showbiz-related topics. Plus, the boys talked all-things Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Chris and Matt also made some pics this week including Matt’s pick of the game Dead Rising 2: Case Zero and Chris’ pick of the campy yet fun Machete.

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.

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George Clooney still has it, at least for this weekend.  His latest film The American made an estimated $13M over the weekend, which was good enough for a first place finish.

Labor Day weekend is typically very slow, so believe it or not, that is a healthy box office total. The real shocker is how audiences responded to the film. Cinemascore is a tracking system used to tally audience response to a film.  Exit polls are used as indicators of a film’s longevity at the box office. The American earned a shocking D- grade, meaning audiences really hated it.  It garnered an F from women. (You can read our positive take on the film here.)

Of course, mis marketing the film as an action movie no doubt led to lots of false expectations.  It’s a good film but a tough sell. It is a deliberately paced pot-boiler character study.  Those looking for a jolting action flick probably found themselves snoozing in no time.

Holdover Takers landed the number two spot with $11.5M.   Machete was hot on its heels with an estimated $11.3M.  Considering how graphically violent the movie was, this is a pretty good take, plus its reported budget was only $20M, so it should easily earn back its budget.