Die Hard on a White House.

That’s basically it right there. You have your former law enforcer — here his name is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) and he used to be Secret Service assigned to protect the President (Aaron Eckhart). During a snowstorm, Some Damn Thing hit the Presidential Limo’s windshield and fishtailed the car nearly off a bridge. Banning was able to save the President, but not his wife, and since the President can’t stand to be reminded of that night, he has Banning reassigned.

Okay, then you have your terrorists commandeering a building — here they attack the White House in a cargo plane the same day the President (whose name is Benjamin Asher, and whom I’ll be referring to as Asher for the remainder of this), Vice President, and Secretary of State are meeting with the South Korean Prime Minister.

As the gang retreats to the Presidential Bunker, one of the PM’s aides reveals himself as Kang Yeonsak (Rick Yune), a North Korean terrorist with a backstory that blah, blah, blah. He shoots a lot of people in the head and wants to blow up things. That’s all we need to know.

You have your former law-enforcer invading the building — in this case, Banning storms the White House after Kang’s goons take out every Secret Service man and Marine on the premises.

Fortunately, each week brings a new chance to see a great movie or TV show that you’ve never seen before. Or, you can go back and watch something you’ve seen a hundred times and still enjoy it. Both of these things are possible because new moves and TV programs come out on Blu-ray and DVD each and every week.

This week brings some titles, new and old, that we’re excited about including The Warlords, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, season one of Warehouse 13 and the Blu-ray releases of The Crazies remake and Hot Tub Time Machine (pictured above with Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Rob Corddry and John Cusack).

Movies

Brotherhood VI: Initiation (2009) ~ Tyson Breech, Burke Carter (Blu-ray and DVD)

Creation ~ Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly (Blu-ray and DVD)

Don McKay ~ Thomas Haden Church, Elisabeth Shue (Blu-ray and DVD)

Hot Tub Time Machine ~ John Cusack, Clark Duke (Blu-ray and DVD)

New York Confidential ~ Broderick Crawford, Anne Bancroft (DVD)

Night Train to Munich (Criterion Collection) ~ Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison (DVD)

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief ~ Logan Lerman (Blu-ray and DVD)

It is getting more and more difficult for filmmakers to breathe new life into the tired zombie genre as of late. The most successful zombie movies in recent memory are infused with humor (Zombieland) or introduce a new spin on the classic tale (Pontypool.) The Crazies is a cool little horror film that works because its zombies are not quite typical zombies, which I found more believable and thus more scary than a true zombie movie.

Time for me to fess up. I haven’t seen George Romero’s 1973 film that was the original source material for this film, so this was all a new concept to me.

The Crazies opens with a nifty juxtaposition of small town tranquility and calm (the whole town is watching a local baseball game) with modern day horrors, as a man pointedly walks across the baseball field with a shotgun. He doesn’t look like a zombie.

Instead, he appears to be channeling Michael Douglas’ character from Falling Down. As the horrified crowd looks on, the local sheriff  David (Timothy Olyphant) shoots the man before he can harm anyone.

It’s almost February and some really great movies are hitting store shelves this week for the first time and for the first time on Blu-ray. This week’s releases include This Is It, Surrogates, Whip It, Saw IV, the complete run of NBC’s canceled-too-soon Southland and the Blu-ray release of Wim Wenders’ classic Paris, Texas with Nastassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton. (pictured above).

Check out this week’s new releases:

Movies

Atonement ~ James McAvoy (Blu-ray)

Bright Star ~ Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw (Blu-ray and DVD)

Fame (1980) ~ Irene Cara (Blu-ray)

Give ‘Em Hell Malone ~ Doug Hutchison, Thomas Jane (Blu-ray and DVD)

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell ~ Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults (Blu-ray and DVD)

The Crazies, a remake of the 1973 George Romero film of the same name, has gotten it’s second theatrical trailer and it ups the creepy factor. The first trailer set up a great mood of unsettling psychosis that pervades a town; even if it might have given a little too much of the movie away.

The story is, “a small town in Iowa, starts seeing it’s inhabitants go crazy, after a mysterious toxin infiltrates their water supply.” The new film stars Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, written by Scott Kosar (The Machinist) and Ray Wright (Pulse), and directed by Breck Eisner (Sahara).

The second trailer, lives up to the name of “crazy” as there’s psycho laughter; crazed, zombie-looking people, and the always great black and white fade out freeze frame. One of the best parts of the trailer is towards the end, when I actually jumped out of my own seat – if you’re a guy, you’ll probably know which moment I’m referring to.

Overall, though, I’m pretty interested in seeing this when it comes out in February of 2010. All I can say is, this is why I only drink Diet Coke.

Okay, I think I have the studios figured out. The recent trend toward not screening a movie, or screening it too late for reviewing press to make deadline, must be the studios’ clever attempt at using  reverse-psychology. We (reviewers) are conditioned to believe that any time a movie is not screened or screened last minute, that there must be some horrible problem plaguing the movie, hence their unwillingness to pre-screen it. Such was the case with Surrogates when I saw it last night.

Bracing myself for a stinkbomb, I emerged from the screening and proclaimed to the studio rep: “It was not terrible. I think I kind of liked it.” Hardly a ringing endorsement, to be sure, but I think that is part of their strategy. If they set the expectation bar low, when the movie is not horrible the viewer will be delighted by this welcome surprise. 

Surrogates could have been one hell of a movie had it’s intriguing premise been well executed. Despite the film’s flaws, I found it thought-provoking enough that I would definitely recommend it to fans of the sci-fi genre or Bruce Willis.  I absolutely love a movie that makes me think, and this one had my head swimming with the ethical implications of bio-medical research, the prevalence of electronic media in our lives, and our (as a society) startling retreat from one-on-one human interaction.  Any movie that makes me take pause to analyze the message is worthy of a recommendation.

We’ve discussed the notion of how cool it would be to see a movie where Bruce Willis takes on an army of robots, and this week, we’ll actually get to see it happen in theaters across the country. This Friday marks the national release of Bruce Willis in Surrogates from Disney and Touchstone pictures.

For those who are unaware of the film’s premise, yet intrigued by the idea of Willis kicking tin butt, the plot is simple. Humans grow lazy and develop a robotics program that allows them to play as robot versions of themselves from the comfort of their own homes. Those robots are able to do all the things that humans could not, without all the risk of…well, risk. This is all good and well until a person gets murdered when his surrogate is killed. FBI agent Bruce Willis is on the job, and in order to do it, he must step outside as himself, not his robotic counterpart.

There’s a brand new featurette hitting the web, which has a few people from the film discussing it. Alongside stars Willis and Radha Mitchell is director Jonathan Mostow, producer Max Handelman and co-writer of the original graphic novel, Robert Venditti.

Check out the video after the jump, and catch Surrogates in theaters this Friday.

Robots can be a pretty scary thing, but not nearly as scary as Bruce Willis when he has something to prove. We all remember Die Hard. That seems to be the fight card for next week’s release of Surrogates: Bruce Willis vs. Robots. Who wouldn’t want to see John McClain fight Optimus Prime? Same concept.

There’s a brand new international trailer out for the film, that shows a few more scenes, and gives us a deeper look into a world where humans control their robot counterparts from the comfort of their own home…until something goes terribly wrong.

Check out the new trailer after the jump, and enjoy Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, James Francis Ginty, Boris Kodjoe, and Ving Rhames in theaters nationally on September 25th for Surrogates.

When we first told you about this movie, we gave a bit of info about it including who was going to be in it, Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell, who the director is, the talented Johnathan Mostow, what its all about and when it may be released. This time around, we’ve got the first poster for the upcoming film to share with you.

Brought to us by the folks at Coming Soon, this poster features Bruce Willis flanked by a bunch of what appear to be tubes used to create the surrogates of the title. In fact, they look like other versions of Willis himself, which makes sense. Plus, the poster features a pretty decent tag line that does a good job of encapsulating the story. Willis is the only human in a world filled with artificial people and only he can save mankind from destruction. Sounds like pretty much every other movie featuring Bruce Willis, doesn’t it? But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As with many posters these days, its not particularly innovative or even that interesting. It just shows the required info which, in this case, is a decent tag line and a giant picture of the movie’s star. Plus, he’s sporting that cool goatee. I guess that’s all you really need to get the message across. Of course, this is just the first poster, so I’m sure we’ll see co-star Radha Mitchell in there at some point too.

Surrogates hits theaters on September 25. Click through for a larger version of the poster.

Well, at least I think he does. Although, if this trailer for his new film Surrogates is any indication, there’s not much Willis character likes about anything in this film. In fact, he seems a bit perturbed.

In case you’re not familiar with Surrogates, which is based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti, it concerns two FBI agents (Willis and Radha Mitchell) investigating the murder of a college student linked to a man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon. This technology allows people to purchase perfect robotic versions of themselves which, of course, leads to all kind of trouble.

I like Bruce Willis in pretty much anything he does and its nice to see Radha Mitchell in a movie that looks much better than the last one I saw her in — the craptastic giant killer crocodile film Rogue, co-starring Michael “just doing it for the paycheck” Vartan.

Plus, this movie is directed by Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines, Breakdown), a guy who’s films usually are quite good. So, that might mean this movie could actually be good too. We’ll find out when Surrogates hits theaters September 25th. Until then, check out this brand new trailer.