Director Robert Zemeckis puts a decade of motion capture behind him and returns to live-action fare with Flight, starring Denzel Washington.  The John Gatins screenplay centers on a pilot (Washington) who miraculously lands a malfunctioning plane, only to become the focus of a follow-up investigation.  Today, we have an exclusive clip to share with you and it is a doozy.  It shows off the inciting incident of Flight while highlighting Washington’s grace under pressure, though the same can’t be said for his co-pilot (is it his first day?).

Also starring John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo and James Badge Dale, Flight opens on November 2nd.  Hit the jump to check out our exclusive clip, and click here for over 20 images from the film. 

Our latest poster round-up includes:

• Cloud Atlas, from the Wachowski Siblings (or Wachowski Starship?) and Tom Tykwer, starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving.  Cloud Atlas opens October 26th.
• Flight, from director Robert Zemeckis, stars Denzel Washington, John Goodman and Don Cheadle and opens November 2nd.
• Rise of the Guardians, the animated film from director Peter Ramsey, features the voices of Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, Isla Fisher, Jude Law and Chris Pine, and opens November 21st.
• Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, from director Michael J. Bassett, stars Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell, Carrie-Anne Moss and Kit Harington, and opens October 26th.
• The Impossible, from Juan Antonio Bayona, stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts and opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 21st.

Hit the jump for the new posters and synopses.

A new extended TV spot for director Robert Zemeckis’ drama Flight has been released.  Denzel Washington stars as a commercial airline pilot who is heralded as a hero after safely landing a disabled jet, but then comes under fire for possibly operating the plane under the influence of alcohol.  This clip shows off more of the ridiculously tense plane crash, and it looks to be even more harrowing than the one Zemeckis crafted for Cast Away (which still gives me nightmares).  I’m happy to see Zemeckis back in live-action and Washington looks poised to give an unsurprisingly impressive performance, so hopefully Flight delivers the goods.

Hit the jump to watch the 90-second TV spot.  The film also stars John Goodman, Don Cheadle, James Badge Dale, Melissa Leo and Bruce Greenwood.  Flight opens on November 2nd.

New clips have gone online for two of our most anticipated films of the end of 2012.  First up is an extended look at the stunt sequence we saw in the trailer for Sam Mendes’ James Bond flick, Skyfall.  Daniel Craig does his best train-jumping work here as he transitions from construction vehicle to train carriage in debonair fashion.

Speaking of debon-air (sorry), Denzel Washington is featured in this official TV spot for Robert Zemeckis’ Flight.  The thirty-second ad, titled “Hero,” focuses on the vantage point of Washington’s character as a savior when he rescues his passengers by successfully crash-landing a jumbo jet.  Skyfall opens stateside November 9th; Flight lands a week earlier on November 2nd.  Hit the jump to see both videos.

Universal Pictures has released synopses for their upcoming films 2 Guns and Identity Thief.  Briefly, 2 Guns is an action flick that stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as operatives from competing government bureaus who are disavowed and forced to go on the run together after a mission goes wrong.  As for Identity Thief, the comedy stars Jason Bateman as a man who goes to great lengths to get his identity back from a con artist (Melissa McCarthy).

Hit the jump to check out the synopses.  2 Guns opens August 16, 2013.  Identity Thief opens February 8, 2013.

Academy Award-winner Stephen Gaghan hasn’t directed a feature film since 2005’s Syriana, but the Traffic scribe is now attached to a rather high profile thriller as his follow-up.  THR reports that Gaghan will next direct Candy Store, a thriller he wrote that’s attracting some major talent.  Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington are apparently in early talks for the two leads in what’s described as “a crime thriller with meaty roles for the two main characters.”  Further plot details are unknown, but Jamie Foxx was interested in one of the roles as well.

Late last year Gaghan set up an untitled cartel drama at Warner Bros. and an independent adaptation of Patrick Keefe’s novel The Snakehead, but neither of those projects have come to fruition.  He provided a script polish for M. Night Shyamalan’s sci-fi pic After Earth starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith, which opens next year.

Sony Pictures is getting a move-on with the feature film adaptation of the 1980s CBS crime series The Equalizer.  Denzel Washington has been set to star as far back as last December, and Sony is hoping to make the film the first in a franchise.  The TV series centered on a former covert operations officer who dedicated his life to helping people in trouble.  The film will retain that main conceit, but is only loosely based on the show.  Deadline reports that an April 8th start date has been set for the feature, most likely in Boston, but the next order of business is finding a director.  Hit the jump to see who’s landed on Sony’s shortlist.

The first unofficial images of Denzel Washington, shiny of tooth and spiffy of hat, on the set of 2 Guns have made it to the Web.  Based on the pulpy Steven Grant comic, it stars Washington as Trench (a DEA agent) and Mark Wahlberg as Steadman (a naval officer), who team up to rip off the mob.  Neither realizes the other is undercover nor that they’re actually being set up to steal from the CIA.  Wahlberg’s Contraband director Baltasar Kormakur is helming the pic, which is described (in the novel, at least) as “a light-hearted crime romp in the vein of Ocean’s Thirteen and The Italian Job.”  The solid supporting cast includes Edward James Olmos as a villainous drug lord, Paula Patton as Washington’s fellow DEA agent and love interest, Bill Paxton as a high-ranking CIA operative and James Marsden as a naval commander. The script comes from Blake Masters (Showtime’s Brotherhood). Hit the jump to check out the pics.

Here are some recent casting additions at a glance with more information after the jump:

• James Marsden (X-Men) will board Universal’s 2 Guns, joining Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington.
• James Woods (Casino) and Ron Eldard (Sleepers) join the Steve Jobs indie biopic jOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher.

Hit the jump for more on each picture.

Safe House is the kind of movie that you might run across on cable a couple years down the line and forgot that you had ever seen it.  Sure, it’s got a good cast (Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, and Sam Shepard), but it’s so routine and by the numbers that by the end the film it almost completely evaporates from memory.  Our review of the Blu-ray of Safe House follows after the jump.

The first trailer has landed for director Robert Zemeckis’ Flight.  Starring Denzel Washington as a heroic commercial airline pilot who miraculously lands a disabled jet, Flight goes deeper by delving into the real reasons behind the near-catastrophe.  The trailer does a nice job at highlighting the cast, which includes the always-charismatic Washington alongside John Goodman, Don Cheadle, James Badge Dale, Melissa Leo and Bruce Greenwood.  It also attempts to take what is initially a fairly thin inciting incident in John Gatins’ (Real Steel) screenplay and expand it to more of a human interest story.  You’ll have to decided for yourself whether the trailer gets you interested or not.  Flight opens November 2nd of this year.  Hit the jump to see the trailer along with the first image and poster for the movie.

Paramount has made a welcome release date announcement today.  Director Robert Zemeckis’ (Back to the Future) long-awaited return to live-action, the drama Flight, has been slated for release on November 2nd (per Box Office Mojo).  Zemeckis has been making creepy motion-capture films like The Polar Express and Beowulf for the last decade, but Flight marks his first live-action feature since 2000’s Cast Away.  Denzel Washington stars as an alcoholic and drug-addicted pilot who safely lands a damaged plane and is quickly heralded as a hero, despite having been under the influence during the accident. The fantastic cast includes John Goodman, Melissa Leo, and Don Cheadle.  The film will square off against the R-rated comedy 21 and Over and Disney’s animated feature Wreck-It Ralph on that November date.

In order to put Flight on the 2012 release schedule, Paramount has pushed the family comedy The Guilt Trip (formerly My Mother’s Curse) from October 2nd to a prime Christmas Day slot.  The film centers on a mother/son road-trip and stars Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand.  The coveted December 25th date also includes Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

Though writer/director Adam McKay is currently busy writing the script for the long-awaited sequel to Anchorman with Will Ferrell (thank the Maker!), it appears he’s lining up a fairly ambitious project as his follow-up to Anchorman 2.  McKay is in talks to develop to direct the remake of the 1971 comedy Uptown Saturday Night.  The project has been in development for years with Will Smith and Denzel Washington attached to star, but the addition of McKay makes the remake all the more enticing.  Hit the jump for more.

There’s no problem with delivering a solid action thriller that doesn’t reinvent the genre, but Safe House goes through the motions without an ounce of creativity or flavor.  It’s the bare minimum of what an action movie should be and marches through gunfights and car chases because that’s what the genre requires, not what makes the film exciting.  Denzel Washington doesn’t add much by doing a tamer retread of his Training Day performance, and Ryan Reynolds is the film’s redeeming aspect as he tries to bring a little nuance and shading to his character.  But the main fault lays with director Daniel Espinosa, who knows how to make Safe House loud, but not much else.

Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is twenty years old, but the controversy surrounding it still feels fresh. At the time, Lee was considered a dangerous filmmaker, and no one was sure how the film would be received and if it would start riots. And Lee made it of the moment; he opened with the Rodney King beating, which now may have no context to younger viewers. But now, it’s simply a great movie that is saddled with a bio-pic structure. Denzel Washington gives a career best performance as the criminal transformed into a great leader and thinker. Our review of Malcolm X on Blu-ray follows after the jump.