Atomic Popcorn is bring you one bad ass Ed Norton straight out of Baltimore for Baltimore! Check out the details below on how you can grab tickets to see his latest film, Stone!

Synopsis:

As parole officer Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) counts the days toward a quiet retirement, he is asked to review the case of Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Ed Norton), in prison for covering up the murder of his grandparents with a fire. Now eligible for early release, Stone needs to convince Jack he has reformed, but his attempts to influence the older man’s decision have profound and unexpected effects on them both. Stone skillfully weaves together the parallel journeys of two men grappling with dark impulses, as the line between lawman and lawbreaker becomes precariously thin. The film’s superb ensemble features Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element) as Lucetta, Stone’s sexy, casually amoral wife, and Golden Globe® winner Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) as Madylyn, Jack’s devout, long-suffering spouse. Set against the quiet desperation of economically ravaged suburban Detroit and the stifling brutality of a maximum security prison, this tale of passion, betrayal and corruption examines the fractured lives of two volatile men breaking from their troubled pasts to face uncertain futures.

Trailer:

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Have you ever seen a movie trailer before they filmed a single frame of the movie? watch:

You might have recognized borrowed images from  Avatar, The Island, and Minority Report among others. This trailer is based on the Serbian comic book Technotise created by Aleksa Gajić and Darko Grkinić. A sequel to the comic has already been successfully adapted into a full-length animated film entitled Technotise: Edit & I. Jaron Pitts is the man behind the trailer, his YouTube page says he made it “for some producers in Hollywood who are making this into a live-action” film. I have to agree with whoever decided to put Milla Jovovich in the starring role, she’s perfect for the film and genre. So I’m wondering what you think, any Technotise comic book fans out there? Anyone see the animated film? Do you want to see a live-action adaptation? Who would you have play the lead? Here’s the trailer for the animated film for those who have not seen it:

It is up to you to decide.

That’s about as far as the creators of The Fourth Kind are really willing to go in confirming the ‘truth’ behind their new film. Ultimately, that’s probably as far as they should go considering all of the events and ‘footage’ presented in this 90-minute treatise on alien abduction and extraterrestrial paranoia. Despite assertions from star Milla Jovovich and director Olatunde Osunsanmi that the film includes actual footage, there’s a surprising lack of supportive evidence found anywhere outside of The Fourth Kind.  I personally couldn’t uncover anything that substantiates that there is an actual Abigail Tyler or even any significant reports of UFO phenomena in the area.

Still, The Fourth Kind sets it all up in the same fashion that a TV documentary might; introducing the real Abigail Tyler, a haunted and frail looking woman, and then switching over to Jovovich as the hottie shrink version of Tyler who is trying to uncover the truth behind her husband’s death. In a move that flies in the face of most paranormal docu-dramas, the film switches to split screen and shows the video footage for the most harrowing and disturbing moments. Faces contort, people levitate, several end up speaking in ancient Sumerian, and all describe visitations by a grey owl. Some of it is creepy and effective, some of it is tedious, but almost all of it suffers from the burden of ‘based on a true story’.

What Osunsanmi conjures by adding the layer of potential truth to the movie is a glimpse into the mindset and philosophy of those who do believe they have been abducted or have experienced significant paranormal phenomenon. The film makes it easy to sympathize with Jovovich’s performance and be chilled by the Tyler we see the in the footage, but we are taken out of the film every time we glimpse a clearly fx-enhanced sequence that purports to be real. The continued insistence that what we are seeing is something beyond cinematic fantasy is hard to take.

Benefiting the film is the lead performance by Milla Jovovich who is surprisingly resilient to the haphazard plot twists and one-note ‘woman in peril’ construction of the character. She’s come a long way since The Fifth Element’s Leeloo and this role marks her graduation from one-note action warrior to a stronger dramatic actress. Everyone else, from the perfectly calibrated Elias Koteas (once notorious for playing nutjobs) to the caffeine-fueled Will Patton (he’s never looked more unstable) give the dramatization portions of the movie some credibility.

And what of the ‘real people’ in the footage? I have no doubt personally that they are actors and they do what they have been assigned to do: stretch that perception of the world in the film as reality. Particularly, I must give credit to the casting choice for Dr. Tyler. She looks like a woman who has faced the dark under the bed and come out worse for the wear. The Fourth Kind is very canny and wise when it comes to understanding our expectations of Hollywood and its presentation of real-world events. By casting the quite pretty Jovovich, and then giving us a disheveled and disoriented ‘real’ Tyler, it challenges the audience’s skepticism. She and the other victims aren’t pretty or glamorous. This means they have to be genuine, right?

For an evening of cheap and cheeky thrills, The Fourth Kind will do the trick. But like Paranormal Activity, it doesn’t offer anything, true or otherwise, that can satiate our imagination for more than a single sitting.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

Milla Jovovich is on a hot streak right now. Soon to be seen in theaters in the alien thriller The Fourth Kind, currently filming the next Resident Evil movie, and already signed on for 2010′s Stone, Jovovich has one more project to add to her list.

Jovovich has been cast to star in Forecast Pictures, Radar Films and Minds Eye Entertainment’s psychological thriller Faces in the Crowd.

Faces in the Crowd, written by writer-director Julien Magnat, follows a woman who survives being attacked by a serial killer, but suffers a head injury that leaves her unable to recognize faces. While dealing with this, the woman also has to keep dodging her would-be killer, who plans to get rid of his one witness.

Faces will be Magnat’s first directorial experience in English, and will be produced by Stomp the Yard director Sylvain White and Where the Wild Things Are producer Scott Mednick.

Filming for Faces in the Crowd is to begin in March.

It takes skill to make a franchise of movies that remains consistently good from the original movie to each subsequent movie. The Resident Evil franchise is one that I feel has managed to do this. However, this may be due to a personal bias that Resident Evil‘s character ‘Alice’ is one of the best female characters in any film (no damsel in distress here!).

That being said, those who saw the third of the Resident Evil movies, Resident Evil: Extinction, and felt that it ended with the blatant a very blatant suggestion of a sequel to follow can now look forward to just that.

The fourth in the series, Resident Evil: Afterlife is slated to hit theaters in August of 2010, and brings back Paul W.S. Anderson (director of the first film in the franchise) to write, direct, and produce the film. Many of the actors from the previous films will also be returning for Resident Evil: Afterlife, including Milla Jovovich in her role of Alice.

The movie is going to be filmed in 3D, and is the last film to move the franchise’s plot forward before going back for a prequel, and follows Alice as she plays heroine and leads her fellow survivors to safety (or is it actually a trap?) from the undead. Production is said to be starting soon.

The funniest part about this scoop, I think, is the fact that it’s not even about the next Resident Evil film (that is, Resident Evil 4: Afterlife, scheduled for a 3D release on August 27, 2010).

Instead, Paul W.S. Anderson is planning on a fifth entry to the franchise that will reboot the series to a certain extent, shifting the focus from Milla Jovovich’s character Alice to a military unit battling the undead.

This is a reboot I don’t mind, specifically for the fact that her character was an arbitrary, random insertion into a series that had plenty of fine characters without her. I would have enjoyed much more seeing the exploits of Leon Kennedy or one of the cheesy characters from the first game brought to screen than anything Jovovich’s bland heroine did in the films.

It’s just too bad the series has already squandered opportunities with many of these characters on the way to the fourth entry. I always have hope for a more faithful adaptation, though. Fingers crossed.

"a good movie for a date night"

If the daytime soap operas were ever given a chance to become big screen movie, A Perfect Getaway would be that movie. The plot is right out of one of the many soaps my mom watched when I was a kid. You have the main couple who are on their way to Hawaii for their Honeymoon. You have the couple that are the wilderness/survival freaks that befriend the first couple. And then you have the “bad” couple who are rough and tough and just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time OR, as we call them in the movie business…the red herring. All three meet up and we learn that (cue music) one of these things is not like the other. One of these couples are killers and we’re along for the ride to find out who.

The movie focuses on Cliff (Steven Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich) Anderson as they are on their Hawaiian honeymoon. They arrive days after a mysterious murder has been discovered on the main island of Honolulu of another honeymooning couple. Deciding to move forward they continue with their vacation not letting that murder overshadow the anticipated fun and adventure. Along the way they meet up with Kale (Chris Hemsworth) and his wife Cleo (Marley Shelton), as well as Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and his girlfriend, Gina (Kiele Sanchez). During this time as they are walking the Hawaiian trails they learn from others that the police and the park rangers are on-site looking for the killers, as it is believed that they may have left Honolulu and are now on the same island as our couples. Needless to say, each suspects the other, and Trouble in Paradise isn’t just a cliché.

As I stated, I liked the mystery of A Perfect Getaway. Writer/Director David Twohy did an incredible job of setting up the plot and leading the audience along the ride of “who could the killer be?”.  His cinematic views of the trails in Hawaii are breathtaking and make me actually want to go there for vacation one year (minus the murder and mayhem).  The only problem I had with this movie was his development of one the characters and how this affected the overall feel of the movie. Without trying to ruin the plot, Nick tells Cliff and Cydney about some of his past experiences as a Navy SEAL in the course of the film. My problem is that at one point Nick turns into Rambo and changes the pace of the movie – which in turn changes the mood from mystery to action movie for a matter of minutes. To me, the jolt took away from what had been established up till this moment as a perfect buildup to the Act 3 reveal. like having a lush, flowery green carpet suddenly pulled out from underneath you. Did it ruin the overall movie? No, and that is a good thing as you’ll still enjoy the ride of A Perfect Getaway.

A Perfect Getaway is distributed by Universal Pictures and written and directed by David Twohy. It is rated “R” for graphic violence, language including sexual references and some drug use. With a run time of 97 minutes it is a good movie for a date night; take in a nice walk and some ice cream after.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

An unwritten rule of film is that movies are either made or broken by their twists. If you really want to get down and dirty, M. Night Shyamalan’s career is a good example of this (two were fine, the rest were all atrocious). There are times when a film doesn’t need a twist in order to sustain its greatness. Sometimes, a bad twist will destroy and otherwise great and engaging film. Finally, we have movies that are elevated to greatness because their twist is so suspenseful and earth-shattering. A Perfect Getaway falls into another category altogether, that of a lame twist in an already boring and stupid film.

It’s quite alarming how terrible this movie is, yet in the interest of fairness let’s focus on the few positives first. Leading the pack is Timothy Olyphant who is clearly collecting a paycheck of fun. It’s unclear what writer, director, and torture master David Twohy’s intent for the character Nick was, but Olyphant is relaxed and not as uptight as he was in Live Free or Die Hard. His results here make him the most entertaining character of the bunch as he makes the most of an outlandishly thin character. He’s working in cahoots with a cinematographer who also wants to turn in good work despite everything else working against them. If this film does anything good it’s showing off what the RED Camera can do. Mark Plummer has pulled off some gorgeously detailed shots that capture the sexy geography of Hawaii. Every small detail on the trees and mountains is caught with precision. In addition, non-geographical shots such as the stitching on the bags – crystal clear – are a testament to what these cameras are capable of.

But unfortunately, this isn’t a movie showing of gorgeous postcard shots; rather, one that attempts to be a suspense/horror film. There’s just that small problem when a suspense film is so boring for its entire runtime. Sure, the movie starts off pretty decent but it doesn’t build up to anything, exciting or not. There’s a murderer on the loose but don’t bother to say why we should be afraid of him, her, them. Twohy expects to engage the audience by throwing different suspects at us in the most obvious ways. He also falls back on jump scares to move the action but forgets that all the great ones have a build up preceding. In addition, it’s tough to get invested in characters that are the equivalent of cinematic dry bones. Outside of Nick, none of the characters are worth getting involved with. When the big, obvious “twist” finally arrives, the picture finally expects us to care. Up to this point, Twohy has bored the audience to death but now wants us to be engaged, an hour and twenty minutes into the film. Apparently he forgot the other unwritten rule, that twists are only good if the characters are engaging.

Then again, the rest of the cast isn’t really doing anything to help the cause. A once decent actress, Milla Jovovich might be at her absolute worst here.  She overdoes all of her lines whether she’s playing cutesy or the standard Super-Bad-Ass-Female-Woman her hack of a fiancée painted her as. Kiele Sanchez is worse, serving quite possibly the worst southern accent ever. Thankfully she doesn’t need to go undercover with the accent, or else she might not be with us much longer. Steve Zahn might be the least offensive person of the this bunch, but he never exactly reaches the entertainment level of Olyphant. It’d be lovely to mention Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton playing a couple who seemingly just escaped from some prison island nearby, but it’s still puzzling why they were here in the first place. Now granted, it’s not completely any one of their faults as Twohy’s excuse of a script doesn’t give any of them much to work with. His abilities (or lack thereof) as a director shine through as all of these actors (Olyphant included) operate on completely different plateaus. Is this an actors’ movie? No, but why should we not expect them to try?

A Perfect Getaway might be B-Movie material, but those are generally entertaining. This film doesn’t even come close to that as it lacks the suspense, the tension needed to make these type of films work. Maybe it’s fitting Cliff (Zahn) and Nick have a conversation about screenplays (as that’s Cliff’s profession). In said dialogue, one of the characters refers to Hollywood making “the next crapola.” No truer words are ever spoken in this film, and at least Twohy knows what he’s making.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆