The first trailer for the Sundance hit Ain’t Them Bodies Saints has been released online.  The film centers on a young outlaw couple played by Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck who are apprehended by the law and must deal with the consequences of their actions,  Affleck’s character escapes prison years later and sets out to find his lover and daughter in 1970s Texas Hill Country.  Writer/director David Lowery’s debut feature drew positive reviews and comparisons to the work of Terrence Malick at Sundance, and after watching this trailer it’s not hard to see why.  Not only is his visual style eloquent and poetic, but the story almost feels like a spin on Malick’s Badlands.  The trailer promises a slew of fine performances and a nuanced, character-centric story, and I’m eager to catch the full film when it hits theaters.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer, and click here to read Matt’s positive review from Sundance.  The film also stars Ben Foster and Keith Carradine.  Ain’t Them Bodies Saints opens on August 16th.

Universal Pictures announced today that it will be releasing director Peter Berg’s (The Rundown) Navy SEAL film Lone Survivor on January 10, 2014.  Based on the bestselling non-fiction book of the same name, the film tells the story of four Navy SEALs on an ill-fated covert mission to neutralize a high-level Taliban operative who are ambushed by enemy forces in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan.  The film’s impressive cast includes Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, and Eric Bana.

Berg and Kitsch are coming off of last summer’s bomb Battleship, but both have proven themselves to be quite talented in the past, so hopefully Lone Survivor is a return to form.  The film will likely open in New York and Los Angeles at the end of December to qualify for awards season, and will face off against the Sylvester Stallone/Robert De Niro boxing film Grudge Match and the Lionsgate horror pic Jessabelle when it opens wide on January 10th.

David Lowery‘s confident feature Ain’t Them Bodies Saints lives between old life and a new beginning; between past crimes and future punishment; between the intimate and the distant.  But for me, the emotions fall through the beautiful cinematography, lyrical music, and excellent performances.  This is the X-factor of any viewer: an emotional connection we struggle to explain.  Lowery has made a strong movie, and one that will put him on the radar of everyone who sees Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.  But for reasons I have difficulty articulating, I couldn’t feel anything from his gorgeous film.

If poetry doesn’t broaden our view of our world and force us to push the boundaries of our lives, then it’s pointless.  Poetry cannot always tap into the chaos and beauty of life if it must be constrained by meter, verse, and rules set down centuries ago.  Poetry, when wielded by genius, can seduce, defend, condemn, and most importantly, transform.  Words are powerful enough to change the world, but even in the hands of the most gifted writers, they can be futile against our frailties, insecurities, and desires.  In his magnificent debut feature, director and co-writer John Krokidas has created a moving, exhilarating, and heartbreaking film in Kill Your Darlings.  Led by breathtaking performances by stars Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, and Ben Foster, Kill Your Darlings watches the greatest writers of a generation push the boundaries of modern American culture only to find that even the best words, the most well-spoken words, the most honest words, can fail when spoken to a shattered heart.

The Sundance Film Festival recently announced the promising lineups for a few of the festival’s categories, and we’ve now got the first images from some films that will be playing in competition as part of the U.S. Dramatic category.  Briefly:

• Afternoon Delight – Written and directed by Jill Soloway, starring Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor, and Jane Lynch.
• Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – Written and directed by David Lowery, starring Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Nate Parker, and Keith Carradine.
• C.O.G. – Written and directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, starring Jonathan Groff, Denis O’Hare, Corey Stoll, Dean Stockwell, Casey Wilson, and Troian Bellisario.
• Concussion – Written and directed by Stacie Passon, starring Robin Weigert, Maggie Siff, Jonathan Tchaikovsky, Julie Fain Lawrence, Emily Kinney, and Laila Robins.

Hit the jump to check out the images and synopses.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17 – 27.

The first trailer and poster for director Fernando Meirelles’ (City of God) 360 have landed online.  The film was written by Frost/Nixon scribe Peter Morgan and tells the interconnected stories of characters played by Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Ben Foster, and Anthony Hopkins.  The film actually premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and—given the talent involved—was surprisingly met with a lukewarm response (read Matt’s review here).  I kept an open mind after reading reactions, but this trailer doesn’t inspire much confidence in the film.  It invokes the played-out plot device of using a bunch of apparent strangers’ interwoven stories to tackle some grand theme, but it just feels a bit too much like Babel or Crash to rouse any enthusiasm.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer and poster to judge for yourself.  360 will be available on iTunes on June 29^th and hits theaters August 3^rd.

You’re driving down the street, and it’s suddenly blocked off.  You notice these weird yellow signs with nonsensical letters or numbers.  There’s unusual glow lighting up a neighborhood you can’t usually see from your house.  What you might have here is a film company shooting in your town.  It happens a lot, and you never know where they might pop up…until now.

The following is a semi-comprehensive list of films currently shooting, what they’re shooting, and where they’re shooting.  We’ll be telling you where you might get to see the very famous, the kinda famous and (if all goes well) the soon-to-be famous. While we can’t list every single movie, television show, or student film in production, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what the heck is going on where all those people are buzzing about.  Want to know where in the world are Matt Damon, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Woody Harrelson, and Leonardo DiCaprio? Hit the jump for more.

It’s nice to see a down and dirty action movie, and Contraband offers a number of things that are fun. It’s got Mark Wahlberg in the lead, and a supporting cast that includes Kate Beckinsale, J.K. Simmons, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, and Lukas Hass.  It’s got a no-nonsense plot about smuggling, and at least one good shootout. But it’s also imminently forgettable. Our review of the Blu-ray of Contraband follows after the jump.

If you’re looking for Rooney Mara in the next 12-16 months, odds are she’ll be on a movie set.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo actress is currently filming Steven Soderbergh’s Bitter Pill, and earlier this week she replaced Carey Mulligan in director Spike Jonze’s next project and signed on to star in the 1950s period piece Brooklyn.  She’s also set to film an untitled Terrence Malick project (formerly Lawless) this summer with Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling, and now she’s added yet another pic to her docket.  Deadline reports that Mara, Ben Foster, and Casey Affleck are attached to star in the drama Ain’t Them Bodies.

David Lowery is set to write and direct the film, which is described as a contemporary story in the vein of Bonnie and Clyde.  No other plot details are known at this moment, but you can’t really go wrong with a strong line-up like Mara, Foster, and Affleck.

It’s been a while since we reported on Lone Survivor, Peter Berg’s adaptation of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s autobiography. Last year, after Universal had made a deal with Berg to fund Lone Survivor if he made Battleship, it looked like the director and star Taylor Kitsch would be teaming up for the Navy SEAL project. While that assumption hasn’t changed, Berg is currently in talks with Mark Wahlberg and Ben Foster to fill in two more of the film’s Navy SEAL quartet. Lone Survivor is the true life story of how Luttrell (Wahlberg) and his SEAL team fought back against a Taliban ambush while on a mission to kill a terrorist leader in Afghanistan. Hit the jump for more on this project.

The John Krokidas project Kill Your Darlings continues to add quality cast members. The thriller, based on the lives of writers who sparked the Beat Revolution, already stars Daniel Radcliffe, Ben Foster, Elizabeth Olsen, Dane DeHaan and Jack Huston. Now, Kill Your Darlings has added Michael C. Hall, Kyra Sedgwick and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The film follows the friendships of Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Foster) and how their relationships are tested by the murder of Burroughs’ friend, David Kammerer. Hall is reportedly playing Kammerer. Production is scheduled to start March 19^th at Columbia University in New York. Hit the jump for more.

With his new film Rampart (which ranked #4 on my Top 10 of 2011 list), writer-director Oren Moverman took the corrupt-cop genre and twisted it just like he did with The Messenger‘s soldier-PTSD story.  He’s one of the more exciting filmmakers working today because of his ability to play against expectations and come out with a more powerful, realistic story as a result.

I got the chance to interview Moverman about the film and we talked about where the real Rampart scandal came into the story, re-teaming with Woody Harrelson, shooting the movie as if it were two different films, and more.  Moverman also spoke about his collaboration with Ben Stiller for a David O. Selznic biopic for HBO, and we discussed his script for Steve Buscemi‘s upcoming film, Queer.  Hit the jump to check out the interview.  Rampart opens in select cities this Friday.  Click here to read my full review.

Set in New Orleans, Contraband is Mark Whalberg’s new thriller about smuggling on container ships. He plays a blue-collar family man who’s sworn off his former life of crime, until his brother-in-law botches a drug deal and needs his help in order to repay the debt. Whalberg agrees to do one last job, running contraband from Panama on a container ship. Kate Beckinsale plays Whalberg’s wife, Ben Foster his best friend and business partner, and Giovanni Ribisi plays a New Orleans drug runner who is barely recognizable and eerily convincing.

I recently sat down with Foster in New York and we talked about the role he was initially courted for, the time he got kicked out of acting class, as well as his new production company. Hit the jump for the full interview.

There are so many ways to steal something, but when it comes to the big score, movies have kept their focus on elaborate heists.  How are the criminals going to break into the vault?  How will they escape?  Couldn’t they put all of this effort into a job that doesn’t risk going to jail?  These questions aside, the basic point remains: steal what you want and don’t get caught.  But there are so many other ways to accomplish that.  Baltasar Kormákur‘s Contraband is a fresh take on the theft genre (unless you’ve seen the original version, the 2008 Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam) by turning the attention to smuggling.  However, the movie always feels torn between what’s safe and familiar and what’s daring and inventive.

We’ve been provided with five clips and sixteen images from director Baltasar Kormákur’s crime thriller Contraband. The film is set in the world of international smuggling and stars Mark Wahlberg as a man trying to escape his days as a criminal. When his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a deal, Wahlberg’s character must settle his brother-in-law’s debt in order to keep him safe from a drug boss (Giovanni Ribisi).  The film also stars Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, J.K. Simmons, and Diego Luna.

Hit the jump to check out the clips and images.  Contraband opens January 13th, 2012.