DAY WATCH [R]
Trying to explain the genre that this sequel to the dark Russian fantasy Night Watch belongs to would be an exercise in futility. Trying to coherently relate the plot from start to finish would be just as pointless. It has all the trappings of a fantasy film and, mercifully, we will spare you the details of First and Second Level Gloom, The Chalk of Fate, Light and Dark Others and Ancient Warriors. What we can tell you is that Russian director Timur Bekmabetov has stuffed Day Watch so full of visual tricks and treats that you might not even care that the entire film makes little to no sense. Cars drive on the sides of buildings, people switch bodies for comedic effect, millions of Christmas ornaments from hell almost end the world; it is almost as if the filmmakers came up with every cool scene or idea they could think of and threw them all on camera linking them ever-so-frailly by a plot about an ancient battle between good and evil. And why not? In this case it works. There is such a drunken feast on screen that it is best to just sit back and experience it, and ask only important questions like, “Why don’t American directors have enough balls to make something as completely insane as this?” –Matt Hoenigsberg

JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN [November 2] - Punk rock warlord Joe Strummer, frontman for pioneering punk band The Clash, gets his due in insider Julien Temple’s documentary, which features interviews with the likes of Bono (of the not-punk band U2), Martin Scorsese (multiple maker of fine music docs himself, see below) and John Cusack, who adapted and starred in the film version of Nick Hornby’s punk-flavored High Fidelity. Also check out one of Strummer’s last interviews, shot at WCCA while on tour in 2001 with his last band, The Mescaleros.

AUGUST RUSH [November 21] - There’s so much “power of music” vibe in the trailer for this romantic drama that it may as well be about a superhero called “MusicMan” (known by day as the mild-mannered symphony hall janitor J.P. Jellyroll) who shuffles from place to place (while humming a jaunty tune) and thwarts evil. No, this one is about a musically gifted but doleful moppet (played by dramatically gifted but doleful moppet Freddie Highmore) who goes on a quest to find his birth parents, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (”The Tudors”) and Keri Russell (Waitress), with Robin Williams as The Crazy Guy With The Hat Who Lives In The Park.

I’M NOT THERE [November 21] - Like the folks whose faces grace coins and stamps, so too do music icons have to wait until they are late music icons to have their own biopics. Unless you’re Bob Dylan. This way-out take on the folk rocker’s life has six different actors playing the Hall-Of-Famer – Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, 14-year-old black actor Marcus Carl Franklin…and Cate Blanchett (yes, Cate Blanchett). If anyone can pull this off, it is co-writer/director Todd Haynes, whose other musical flights of fancy include the glam-tastic Velvet Goldmine (1998) and Superstar (1987), a biopic of Karen Carpenter shot using Barbie dolls (and unauthorized Carpenters music, which is why it is only available underground).

SWEENEY TODD [December 21] - You wouldn’t know from the trailer, but this ghastly Tim Burton film about a barber who bakes bad people into pies is a musical, based on the Sondheim show. Frequent partner in crime Johnny Depp plays the title role, and judging from this first look at the joint Warner/DreamWorks venture, neither studio knows what the heck this bird is. Neither do they seem to want to let any of the whole concept’s innate humor show. They better figure it out soon – they’re propping up their holiday line-ups with the big-budget tentpole.

SHINE A LIGHT [April 8, 2008] - All-around proficient guy Martin Scorsese, who finally won an Oscar this year (for The Departed) returns to the music documentary territory which he made fertile with The Last Waltz (about the last gasp of the supergroup The Band) and more recently, No Direction Home, about Bob Dylan. This one is about The Rolling Stones (perhaps you’ve heard of them), shot on their recent tour and covering their entire storied career. Why release it to theatres, you ask? When you’ve got a brand like IMAX behind you, projecting your wizened faces on to some of the largest screens in the world, amping up your music to pee-inducing levels (so the people who have gone deaf with you at your concerts can hear it), why not? [See also the early IMAX film, At The Max, for Stones performances more vintage).

SAW IV [R]
Like its sadistic main character, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who died in 2006’s Saw III (but gets plenty of face time via flashbacks in this sequel), Lionsgate’s hugely popular franchise just won’t die. This one has Officer Rigg (Lyriq Bent of Skinwalkers) returning for a third time (in a much bigger role) to take on Jigsaw and his latest host of torturous death traps left behind as a sort of sadistic posthumous “remember me” gift. Rigg must face himself as someone who feels he could save anyone and everyone, even those who have broken the law, while the lives of Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) and Lamanna (Simon Reynolds) literally hang in the balance. While all this connects with every character in the last three films, it also starts to find itself becoming a bit too much to handle, like Jigsaw’s overcomplicated Rube Goldberg murder machines. An already ambitious backstory has now become erratic and too involved, perhaps too much so for its own good, becoming like work now to follow. Anyone who hasn’t seen any of the other Saw films will be lost, and anyone who has avoided them for reasons of extreme content will be overtaxed by the sheer horror of the over-amping that fresh-blood writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan do here. And knowing that they will do it again in the already-announced back-to-back double-threat Saw V (2008) and Saw VI (2009) means we’re not out of the woods yet. The “torture porn” industry, though taking a major hit as of late in the media, continues to thrive. And while many people – horror fans amongst them – feel that movies like the Saw series, Hostel 1 & 2 and Captivity overstep the boundaries of good taste, the box office receipts and DVD dollars say otherwise. But surely and soon enough, this trend will fade away and another subgenre will assert its fleeting dominance. But if the gore-spattered, record-breaking opening weekend of Saw IV is any indication, then don’t expect that trend to die a quick (or slow and overcomplicated) death anytime soon. –Richard Caron

DAN IN REAL LIFE [PG-13]
At this point in Steve Carell’s career, he doesn’t have the full body of goofy work behind him that Jim Carrey had when he decided that there was more to a career in movies than silly noises and funny faces. This is why that every film like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine and this serio-comic treat put him that much farther ahead in the life-long quest for Oscar gold, not to mention that they help us forget turkeys like Evan Almighty. “The Office” star plays Dan Burns, a widower raising his three daughters on his own (and not taking any time for himself) who spends a long weekend with his family at their seaside Rhode Island vacation home. Writer-director Peter Hedges (Pieces of April) assembles an apt and genial cast to play Dan’s family, with cryptically popular stand-up Dane Cook taking on an atypically straight role as Dan’s younger brother. He plays to his abilities mostly, and his natural charisma comes through (and he gets to play wacky, too, with a hilarious mock-improvised song called “Ruthie Pigface Draper”). Dianne Wiest (A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints) lends some warmth to the part of their mother, and a refreshingly non-crotchety John Mahoney makes perfect sense as their father. Rather than dwelling on the dysfunction of this Everyfamily, Hedges subtly communicates their love for each other, and without turning it into a slapstick affair like Meet the Parents, either. The airy rapport that Dan has with Marie (Juliette Binoche), whom Dan does not know is his brother’s new girlfriend when they meet cute at a bookstore near the family’s house, binds it all together, and the rigors that Hedges puts them through speaks volumes about their characters’ character. Hedges obviously loves these people, and through some skillful play (and a lovely, natural songtrack and score by Sondre Lerche), makes us love them, too. –Elizabeth Meyer

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL  [PG-13]

Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a strange sort, given to sitting in the dark and avoiding close contact with other people.

His sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer) tries to coax him out of his shell, but she can’t pry him out of his house – which is, actually, a room in the garage of the home Lars and his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) inherited from their parents.

Others in town, like the old ladies at church, think that Lars just needs a nice girl. Unless he’s gay, of course. “My grandson is gay,” one old dear tells Lars; “I know all about the gays.”

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THE DARJEELING LIMITED [R]

The tabloids tell us that Owen Wilson is a wounded soul; how true that may be is for Mr. Wilson to sort out, and after his press release asking for peace and quiet, we probably ought to give it to him. But seeing him in The Darjeeling Limited, with his face in bandages and his eyes reddened, feels like a moment of some strange synchronicity.

Wilson plays Francis, perhaps the oldest and certainly the most domineering of three brothers. The other two siblings are Peter (Adrian Brody), whom we sense is the middle child, and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), who seems to be the youngest.

We’re left to puzzle out more than the relative ages of the three: there are whole mountains of baggage these guys bring with them on a cross-country train trip through India, and the stack of matching luggage (leather bags with cartoonish animals painted on them) that they tote is only symbolic of the load of history, misery, and resentment they carry.

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FIDO [R]
As if someone had played the video game Stubbs the Zombie and decided that it would make a good movie, so comes this darkly comic, severed tongue-in-rotting cheek treat from writer-director Andrew Currie. In an alternate 1950s America recovering from a zombie plague, Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray) makes friends with his family’s new zombie servant, which he calls Fido (Billy Connolly). Thankfully, Currie does not go wild with the gore, nor does he fixate totally on the gallows satire and social commentary that every genre film like this one must provide, instead turning it into a rather touching love story between Fido and Timmy’s mom, Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss). Some other nice touches include the relationship that swinging bachelor Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) has with his disturbingly sexy live-in zombie maid, Tammy (Sonja Bennett), and the turning of two neighborhood bullies into two undead neighborhood bullies. The movie is a collection of smart performances (Dylan Baker is especially good as the out-of-step Mr. Robinson), but at the heart of this major suspension of disbelief is Scottish comic Billy Connolly (The Man Who Sued God), whom fans of George Romero will unfairly peg as ripping off Howard Sherman’s cuddly corpse Bub in Day of the Dead. He is quite brilliant in the role, pulling it off with a surprising amount of emotion under heavy make-up and without a single line of dialogue. Like Shaun of the Dead before it, the whole hilarious affair is a stand-up zombie movie with that something extra that so many pretenders lack: “More brains!” –Robert Newton

GONE BABY GONE [R]
It may not lay to rest the persistent rumors that Ben Affleck and writing partner Matt Damon actually wrote their Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting unaided, but a decade later, Affleck finally steps up and shows that he can not only write, but direct a picture, too. His debut at the helm is a confident adaptation of Mystic River author Dennis Lehane’s crime drama about a kidnapping in a poor Boston neighborhood and the effects it has on those involved. Affleck’s younger brother Casey, who can also be seen in the moody western The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, plays a young but street-savvy private investigator working with the police to solve the case. Like Affleck the elder proved he could seriously act serious in Hollywoodland, so too does the baby-faced junior do here, smartly flipping his character from inexperienced to worldly and back again in intensifying cycles that propel the layered story. Michelle Monaghan (The Heartbreak Kid) is steady as his partner, and thankfully, the script doesn’t get bogged down with any superfluous romantic entanglements between them. Ed Harris (A History of Violence) is a one-man firestorm as a shady cop, mirrored by Morgan Freeman as his quietly cool captain, but it is Amy Ryan (“The Wire”), however, who is the real standout here, not only nailing the working-class Boston accent and attitude, but also letting us understand her, too, just short of sympathizing. The entertaining film may not win Ben Affleck another Oscar (though Casey’s work this year has some buzz), but it is an excellent first step in reinvention and leaving unfortunate words like Milli Vanilli, Bennifer and Gigli behind him. –Klaus Hummersumpf

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD [R]

The pretentiously long title gives some indication as to the length of this western wannabe, over 2 1/2 hours of painterly photography, brooding performances and poetic narration. Recent films like 3:10 To Yuma easily top it, though – especially in the coherence department – despite solid burns by Brad Pitt (Babel) as the notorious outlaw, Jesse James, and Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone) as obsessed fan-turned-gang member Robert Ford. Kiwi writer-director Andrew Dominik (Chopper) appears to have been going for the same pensive vibe that Terrence Malick infused into Days of Heaven, only the result is rather forced and ultimately not as satisfying as the hype might indicate. The length of the film does give Affleck a chance to turn Ford from a kiss-ass greenhorn to a creepy stalker of Chapman-like proportions, though Dominik stumbles a bit by giving no indication as to why James was treated as such a hero and Ford, post-deed, as a pariah. This is not a bad film, just not the kind one needs to feel inadequate for not “getting” or fawning excessively over. –Robert Newton

30 DAYS OF NIGHT [R]
Take with a grain of salt all the talk of this vampire movie being one of the best ever. That’s just an overeager studio marketing person culling the Internet for a rave from the one guy who probably considers classic horror to be anything that was made before the advent of DVD. The premise is a blurb itself: a remote town far north in Alaska that goes dark for a month straight every winter is visited by a gang of vampires bent on total annihilation of the local populace (in order to keep people believing that vampires are not real). Josh “One Day I’ll Be A Real Boy” Hartnett (Resurrecting the Champ) plays the sheriff, who is thrown into this life-or-bloody-death crisis situation with his estranged park ranger wife, played by pouty D’Abo girl look-alike Melissa George (“Alias”). It is all very atmospheric and goth, an attempt by Sony to create another franchise like Underworld (perhaps they’ll merge them when they run out of only moderately lame ideas). Eventually, the survivors’ struggle for survival becomes one for the audience, as after about the seventeenth day, it feels like the action is playing out in real time. Supporting player Mark Boone Junior (The Legend of Lucy Keyes) plays the ornery town hermit, forced into social interaction with his fellow hunted, with some flair. The presence of Danny Huston (The Proposition), though, as the head Euro-trashy bloodsucker is one of those wait-through-the-credits-to-see-it-was-really-him roles, especially considering that all one can think of when looking at him is Billy Bob’s turn as Carl from Sling Blade, going on about mashed potaters and sopping up the carnage with a biscuit and mumbling, “Uh-hmm.” Use the days until Halloween more wisely and rent a truly great modern vampire movie, Eric Red’s evergreen 1986 goodie, Near Dark. –Robert Newton