Boxing has all but disappeared from the sports landscape, but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from telling their pugilist stories. Especially when it’s a Rocky-esque rags to riches tale like The Fighter. It stars Mark Wahlberg as boxer “Irish” Mickey Ward and Christian Bale as his half-brother Dickie Eklund, who returned from a life of crime to train Ward during a successful run during the 2000s. The movie is directed by David O. Russell (where’s he been?) and co-stars cute as a button Amy Adams, who plays Ward’s gal Charlene. After watching the trailer, I wish I hadn’t. It pretty much reveals the whole damn plot. Oh well. It still looks good and listening to Bale and Adams butcher the Boston accent might be worth the price of admission.

When I think about movie plots I’ve not yet seen exploited, giant octopus vs. small plane would certainly be at the top of the list. Mainly because sky and sea aren’t mutually exclusive. But hey, we’re talking about the horror genre, so anything goes, no matter how ridiculous it might sound. Enter the soon-to-be-released straight to DVD/Blu-ray Canadian chiller, Altitude. Hit with me the deets on this puppy, First Showing:

Altitude is that Canadian mid-air monster movie about a bunch of teenagers who take a small plane on a trip and encounter a Lovecraft-like supernatural beast in the clouds.

Okay, technically, it’s not an octopus, but as you’ll soon discover it sure as hell looks like one. Classification aside, what the hell is this strange tentacled creature doing trolling the clouds? Only angels and Lando Calrisian live among the clouds. At any rate, the premise screams stupidity, but only because it’s about a bunch of teens battling an octopus in mid-flight. Here’s the trailer (via STYD).

Don’t let the odd title fool you. Director Danny Boyle’s latest flick 127 Hours looks like a winner. James Franco plays real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston, who was trapped beneath a boulder and forced to amputate his own arm in order to free himself. Ouch. As always, Boyle’s visuals are stunning, as are his choices for female co-stars, Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn. Boyle rarely misses, so I’m looking forward to seeing this when it’s released in November. No word on whether or not Boyle asked Franco to jump into a pile of sh*t.

Wes Craven has had a brilliant career. The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream all left a last impacting on the horror genre. That was then, this is now. Craven’s recent forays behind the lens have resulted in such tripe as Cursed and Red Eye, not to mention his in-production project, the very troubled and very pointless Scream 4. Sandwiched between that garbage comes My Soul To Take, Craven’s latest been there done that teens are being stalked by a serial killer POS. The trailer is perfectly edited, but all I could do while watching was count in my head how many flicks Craven ripped off to assemble this mess. (Final Destination, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Stephen King’s It, Candyman, Halloween, etc., etc.)

Normally a movie about ballet would send me running for the guillotine, but not when said movie is directed by Darren Aronofsky and stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Hell, I’ll wear a tutu to the premiere to show my support. No, really. My ex-girlfriend left a purple one behind after I gave her the heave-ho. We enjoyed role-playing now and again. In this particular scenario, I was the stern ballet instructor and she was the disobedient student. It involved rope and Vaseline, but for legal reasons I can’t divulge any more information. Back on topic, here’s the trailer for Black Swan. It looks intriguing in a Single White Female kind of way. (Psst… Portman and Kunis do the nasty in this flick.)

When I first heard Casey Affleck was documenting brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix’s retirement from acting and subsequent foray into the world of hip hop, I thought, “Hey, this could be interesting.” In the same way that dissecting a frog in tenth-grade Biology class was interesting. It was cool to see all the gross internal organs, but at the end of the day you couldn’t help but feel a little sick to your stomach. The results of Affleck’s work have turned into a movie called I’m Still Here. Is it real, or some elaborate ruse devised by Phoenix? Truthfully, I don’t give a sh*t. I’m fascinated by the whole experiment, be it true or false. Here’s the trailer, which looks ultra serious on the surface, but it’s easy to identify an underlying tone of mockery. (Is that Admiral Bill Adama doing the voiceover? Sweet.)

Russell Crowe has been in a funk as of late. His last four movies have been Body of Lies, Tenderness, State of Play and Robin Hood. None could be classified as memorable and in the case of Robin Hood, the best word to describe it would be abysmal. Well, his latest doesn’t instill much confidence that he’s ready for an about-face. It’s called The Next Three Days and in it he plays a dude who concocts a plan to spring his convicted of murder wife from the pokey. Sounds implausible, but when you consider it’s directed by Paul Haggis – the man responsible for the severely overrated Crash - it’s not surprising. Judge for yourself, but this thing looks blander than Wonder Bread.

If you haven’t been privy to Hindi cinema (or Bollywood), then you’re missing out. For unintentional hilarity, few movie industries or genres can compare. If you dig tiresome cliches, soap opera plots, substandard special effects and impromptu dance sequences, Hindi flicks are where it’s at. The trailer for Mallika is a great primer. It’s a beautiful disaster of slow motion head turns, obtrusive title cards and ear-splitting sounds of tearing. None of these things give us an inkling of what the hell it’s about, but it makes little difference because the filmmakers have not a clue either. Prepare to be confused.

[h/t Twitch]

A few months ago I posted the international trailer for Gaspar Noé’s psychedelic mindf*ck Enter the Void. It focused mainly on the stunning visuals, but skipped out on the story elements. The new domestic trailer does a better job explaining the plot via voiceover from stars Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta. For those unfamiliar, the film is about a drug dealer named Oscar whose spirit wanders the neon streets of Tokyo after being shot and killed. The reviews have been largely mixed, but there’s no arguing Noé has created an ethereal journey unlike anything seen before.

Of all the ridiculous and pointless remakes being served up by Hollywood, I Spit On Your Grave puzzles me the most. I recall seeing the original years before I probably should have and being quite disturbed by the content. I couldn’t understand why anyone would make such a blatantly exploitative movie. The majority of films, even the poor and/or stupid ones, attempt to make some sort of point within the narrative.

Brutal gang rape and graphic revenge violence taken to the extreme serves no real purpose other than to shock and disgust, which in my mind isn’t reason enough to commit time, energy and money to the filmmaking process. It would be one thing if this was a B- or C-grade direct to DVD throw away, but it’s not. Instead, it’s being marketed as a mainstream Hostel-like horror flick. I guess certain people get off on stuff like this. I imagine the same kind of people who own ball gags, nipple clamps and gimp apparel. Hey, whatever floats your boat. If you dig porn for serial killers, so be it.

I Spit On Your Grave is set to open October 8th, which the parties responsible are dubbing “Day of the Woman.” Do they really expect us to buy the female empowerment angle? I’d respect them more if they just admitted to getting off on images of rape and penis-severing. At any rate, the new trailer for the updated version is well-executed on a technical level.