Jason Eisener won Robert Rodriguez’s SXSW Grindhouse trailer contest for his fake trailer HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, which was featured in Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s GRINDHOUSE. Unlike that film and Rodriguez’s fake trailer turned feature film MACHETE, this film is simply an exploitation flick. The film has little purpose other than being violent and bloody.

Here, the Hobo is played by Rutger Hauer. It is a testament to his professionalism that he gives a real performance within this muck. He’s a homeless vet looking to save enough money to buy a lawnmower so he can make an honest living. He comes to Hope Town, which is like a cross between Detroit in ROBOCOP and some punk run town in MAD MAX. Why he thinks this is a good spot to beg is unknown? I would have picked the suburbs before panhandling in a place where the town’s welcome sign is spray painted over to read Scum Town.

Director Francis Lawrence (I AM LEGEND) and writer Richard LaGravenese (THE FISHER KING) do a rare cinematic achievement when having a book as the source material — they make the story better. They made all the right choices in what to cut, keep and change. The changes make the film more dramatic, but not in a maudlin way. Everything that happens is more immediate. The Depression-era setting only reminds us of the melodramas of that age, which this film fits in with surprisingly well.

Jacob (Robert Pattinson, TWILIGHT) was taking his last final in veterinary sciences at Cornell when he gets word that his parents have died in a car accident. They had mortgaged their house and business to pay for his education, so the bank takes everything. Now orphaned, he decides to jump a train. Luckily, he ends up on a circus train in the car of Camel (Jim Norton, STRAW DOGS), a friendly, drunk roustabout who helps him get work. When it’s found that he is an Ivy League vet, he is taken before the boss, August (Christoph Waltz, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS), an intimidating man who isn’t unfamiliar with violence as a way of making people do what he wants.

The latest animated feature from Blue Sky Studios is like a Disney film circa OLIVER AND COMPANY. It's safe entertainment that skews for the younger crowd. And there isn't anything wrong with making a film for a specific audience. I certainly don't miss the crass pandering to the older viewers. It's replaced with the joy of love and song.

The story follows a blue macaw who ends up in Minnesota. He is adopted by Linda (Leslie Mann, KNOCKED UP), who names him Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, THE SOCIAL NETWORK). They live a comfortable, conservative life running a small bookstore. But they are challenged one day to step out of their comfort zone when Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro, 300) shows up and informs them that Blu is the last male of his species. The Brazilian scientist wants to try and mate Blu with the last female blue macaw named Jewel (Anne Hathaway, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED).

There are a bunch of movies that this thriller brings to mind. It's like THE PROFESSIONAL crossed with the BOURNE series and a touch of KICK-ASS. The first and last of those films because of the young female protagonist and the middle one for its reality grounded action. But then you get a dose of fairy tale woven in as well.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, THE LOVELY BONES) is 16 and has been living in the frozen woods with her father virtually her whole life. He is Erik (Eric Bana, HULK), a rogue CIA agent who has trained his daughter to be a ruthless killer. She is a smart girl who speaks multiple languages and can best her dad in a physical fight. He has prepared her for the inevitable day when Marissa, known as The Witch (Cate Blanchett, INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL), finds them. His motto is "adapt or die."

Duncan Jones follows up his ingenious "ideas" sci-fier, MOON, with this more conventional sci-fi thriller. That said I'm not saying that film is mindless in the least. It actually has lots of ideas, maybe too many. It's like watching GROUNDHOG DAY filtered through Hitchcock and 12 MONKEYS.

Solider Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal, DONNIE DARKO) wakes up on a train. Christina (Michelle Monaghan, GONE BABY GONE) sits across from him and keeps calling him Sean. He thinks he's going crazy. The last thing he remembers is flying helicopter missions in Afghanistan. Then a bomb blows up on the train.

Fox's AVC-encoded transfer of Darren Aronofsky's dark ballet thriller is true to its source. Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique used a combination of 16mm film and digital cameras. For a relatively low-budget production, the smaller cameras were easier to move around and give the filmmakers a documentary feel. The 1080p Blu-ray is mixed bag of scenes with heavy grain and sharper digital imagery. So the noise to be found in the darker scenes, could be from the digital source. Despite these issues, the presentation provides nice detail in the brighter scenes. Note Nina's pink bedroom. That serves as a good transition into the transfers best quality. While the palette is mostly white, black and gray, those tones are represented in perfect contrast and inky black levels. As for any digital anomolies, I found none.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 matches the picture presentation wonderfully. Great use of the back speakers and directionality serve the psychological thriller well. Unexpected noises from behind can even spook the most jaded viewer. The score and music are mixed terrifically, never overplaying the dialogue. The LFE track comes into play during the nightclub scene where the house music is thumping.

The real conflict in this film isn't between the humans and Martians, but between the cliché and the generally humorous and touching. Weak pop culture jokes are pitted against heartwarming scenes between mothers and sons. Action out of the action device handbook pulls down some good character development. It's a battle till the very end.

Our players are as follows. Milo (Seth Green, AUSTIN POWERS) is the broccoli-hating hero who wishes that his Mom (Joan Cusack, WORKING GIRL) wasn't his mom after she bars him from watching his favorite zombie movie on TV as punishment for feeding the cat the aforementioned vegetable. As a result, the Martian Supervisor (Mindy Sterling, AUSTIN POWERS) rules her a perfect candidate to use as a brain donor for their Nanny Bots, the robots that raise all Martian female babies. The male Martians are too touchy feely so they are thrown into the garbage.

Fate or chance, which rules our lives? Is there a higher power that is guiding our path or is everything just a series of random choices that lead us through our lives. Is it a combination of the two? The big moments are charted out, while we have the illusion of free will in the smaller choices. Is there some cosmic force that would stop us if we wandered off the path? These are some of the questions presented in this romantic fantasy thriller.

David Norris (Matt Damon, GREEN ZONE) was the youngest man ever elected to the House of Representatives. He's a heavy favorite for the senate, but an immature prank tanks his campaign. In the hotel bathroom, working on his concession speech, he meets dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA), who is hiding out from security because she crashed a wedding at the hotel. They have an instant connection. He gets her number. They share a passionate kiss. But the men in hats are going to intervene.

I've been mulling over what to say about Gore Verbinski's first foray into feature animation. Like it's main character it has so many dual identities. Its photoreal animation is a truly original, while its script seems cobbled together from dozens of at right angle sources. The film has adult ideas that few American animated films ever have, but it seems lost at what audience it's really targeting. It's a Western. It's a comedy. It's an existential examination.

A chameleon with no name, who sounds like Johnny Depp doing Don Knotts, is trying to find his muse in a Beckett-esque performance for himself in his terrarium. Then he hits a bump along the road, literally. His tank is thrust out of the back of his owner's car along a desert highway. A squished mystic armadillo called Roadkill (Alfred Molina, SPIDER-MAN 2) tells him to go out into the desert and that everyone needs to cross the road at some point.

Read my review of 127 HOURS

Simply gorgeous. The MPEG-4 AVC 1080p transfer is flawless. Shot digitally on multiple platforms, the detail is remarkable, which is so compelling in the scenes where James Franco's Aron Ralston is trapped in the canyon. The lines on his face, stubble and fabrics of his hat and shirt are impeccably nuanced. The color palette is rich from the deep red of Ralston's blood or the reddish-orange rock walls or the turquoise skies of Utah. Contrast is spot on and the blacks are inky.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track matches the quality of the picture. This is a film where the sound is nuanced, but it's handled extremely well. The rear speakers are used to create subtle atmosphere and wrap the viewer in the wonderful score and music. The LFE track rumbles when Ralston first crashes to the bottom of the canyon. The sound effects combined with the scoring are profoundly handled during the scene where Ralston cuts his arm off. Breaking bones and snapping nerves are what make the audience cringe more than the bloody visuals.