Round Up! Round Up! Hey! Hey! Hey! Sorry, we got really excited there for a second, but there are just sooooo many great movies out right now that it makes our little heads want to explode. Do you like satirical gun fights? Gotcha covered. Re-vamped S’ghetti Westerns? Check. Tales of hate-mongering Neo-Nazi Brits? You know it! For lovers of brutal, bloody, balls-out storytelling, unto you we dedicate this week in film.

3:10 to Yuma
We never really understood the whole Russell Crowe panty-dropping posse, but perhaps this film shall change our minds? He and hot hot hot Christian Bale (that one, we understand) star as post-Civil War birds-of-a-feather in that both of them want, and more likely need, money. However, while Bale's character is that of the upstanding, dutiful wage-earning type, Crowe's is that of the stage-coach bandit, which is what leads to their acquaintance as Bale escorts Crowe to catch his one way ticket to prison town. Apparently there are some man feelings shared towards the end, making the story more mushy than gritty, but we're kinda suckers for a good western, so we'll overlook its flaws. [Website] [Trailer]

The Brothers Solomon
Definitely the lightest film in the bunch this week, Will Arnett and Will Forte play brothers who were raised on the arctic ice pack by The Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, whose health has taken a turn for the worse (i.e. he is dying.) All he ever wanted was a grandchild, but as with most home schooled children, Will and Will are socially awkward and therefore must find a willing lady to carry their artificially inseminated non-love child. Wackiness ensues (yay wackiness!) as their surrogate womb begins feeling maternal and as the boys wish to explore these new and confusing feelings that they are having towards the opposite sex. Let's just say that "Almost Paradise" is used during the film, and not in the same way that it is used in Footloose. I swear that I could see forever in your eyes, indeed. [Website] [Trailer]

Hatchet
Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times said it best when she stated "Horror without suspense is like sex without love: you can appreciate the technicalities, but ultimately there’s no reason to care." So, apparently, once the credits roll you'll be in the middle of a morning-after walk of shame, with only the splashing and splattering of bodily fluids to remember the moment by. The film may have tickled you a bit, but you are not going to want to call it tomorrow. [Website] [Trailer]

Interview
They weren't joking when they named this one. It is, in it's most literal sense, an interview, filmed in one room, between a Washington DC journalist (Steve Buscemi) who deigns to chronicle a tabloid-worthy soap star sex kitten (Sienna Miller.) Buscemi took over as director and co-writer when the original project owner, dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by Muslim extremists while riding his bike in Amsterdam, which may have made this an interesting project if we weren't claustrophobic. [Website] [Trailer]

Manufactured Landscapes
Canadian Edward Burtynsky is internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of nature transformed by industry. Award winning director Jennifer Baichwal – follows Burtynsky to China, as he captures the effects of the country’s massive industrial revolution on the land that the Chinese people will leave to future generations, most likely in a state of destruction. (And no, we aren't saying that China is the only country doing this, it just happens to be the place that the film was made.) Apparently if you love your children, or even your unborn hypothetical children, you should see this film.[Website] [Trailer]

Shoot ‘Em Up
Clive Owen is always running around trying to protect babies and stuff. What's with the babies Clive? Where do they all come from and why do people want to kill them? We think that this is supposed to be a bit of a satire, but we can't tell because Paul Giamatti looks so serious and angry in the trailers. If you are looking for a bullet brigade, you have come to the right place. [Website] [Trailer]

This is England
In all seriousness, we may be naive, but we cannot understand what drives people to irrational fits of brutality, and why people have so much hate in their hearts. In his semi-autobiographical flick, Director Shane Meadows dives into the razor blade pool of neo-Nazi youth and comes up with a sheared head and a severed heart. The extremist sects of the world truly do prey on those without options, those who don't see a way to make it on their own and therefore must band together with other like-minded outsiders and push their agenda by brute force. We'll see the film, but we would much rather take the skinheads bowling, and try to show them that there is so much more to life than perpetuating hate and beating people to a bloody pulp.[Website] [Trailer]

[Movie Schedule]