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The Messenger is gripping.  The story is deep, it’s about war, not a fun subject. Ben Foster is Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army officer who has just returned home from a tour in Iraq and is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Montgomery is partnered with fellow officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) to bear the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers. Montgomery finds himself drawn to Olivia (Samantha Morton), to whom he has just delivered the news of her husband’s death. The story is  surprising, humorous, moving and very human portrait of grief, friendship and survival.

But I really like this widget because it offers a lot of information about the movie. Enjoy!

Ben Foster stars as Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army officer, who has just returned home from a tourin Iraq and is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Will is partnered with fellow officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) to bear the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers.

Will seeks solace back home and finds himself drawn to Olivia (Samantha Morton), to whom he has just delivered the news of her husband’s death. Will becomes involved with Olivia and film peels away layers of surprising, humorous, moving and very human portrait of grief, friendship and survival.

The Messenger trailer is up at Apple in HD.  You can view it here.

First Showing nabbed the embedded code, so we have the trailer below, too.

Are you ready for some gritty action just in time for Halloween?

To celebrate the release of the Natural Born Killers 15th Anniversary Director’s Cut, available on Blu-ray/DVD on October 13, 2009. Warner Bros. has created a really cool online trivia game. 

How well do you know your Natural Born Killers movie? 

Yes, that is Robert Downey, Jr. with Woody Harrelson in the picture. 

Test your knowledge by playing the game. Visit Natural Born Killers and play NOW!

I love that line.  Really I do.  Because in it is the entirety of the movie Zombieland, opening in theaters today.

Zombieland brings us back with Jesse Eisenberg, the Michael Cera knockoff whom you may remember macking on a surprisingly able Kristen Stewart back in another movie about land, Adventureland.  Anyway, this time, naturally we’re in Zombieland, a world vaguely like our own but jammed to the hilt with zombies.  Those few human beings who are left find themselves forced to make deadly choices every day for the sake of survival, but yet, even here, they still manage to have dreams.  Simple dreams, for the most part. Thoroughly American dreams.  But will they capture those dreams?  Or will they be zombie chow?

After I finished watching this one, which I had been longing to see ever since I saw the trailer, one thought hit me like a bolt out of the blue.  This is just the Americanized version of Shaun of the Dead.  Zombieland was another hilarious zombie comedy, the only real difference here being that the thoroughly British qualities of Shaun of the Dead had been replaced by thoroughly American qualities.

Sure, everyone’s got a gun in Zombieland, but they’ll also feel that British influence (after all, Great Britain really IS the mother of America if you want to get metaphorical about it) by striking out with whatever’s handy.  Rakes, hedge clippers,  the Garden Weasel (the weirdest garden tool ever), even pianos on ropes–we’ll take out zombies with whatever we can get our hands on.

Yes, Zombieland is hilarious.  Woody Harrelson is much more talented than anyone gives him credit for (he actually WAS an action hero of sorts at one point), Jesse Eisenberg makes a great foil for Woody’s over-the-top lunacy, and the fact that Bill Murray is in this just made my jaw drop.

But Zombieland will actually make you think, too.  Think about the common dreams we all share.  Oh, sure…in Zombieland, the goals of the day are amusement parks, family and Twinkies, but is that really so far removed from baseball, mom and apple pie?  And in the end, when faced with those horrible choices, and left to, as the movie so dynamically puts it, “nut up or shut up”, you’ll find that more often than not, you’ll be better equipped to nut up than you thought.

There’s so much to like about Zombieland–hilarity, personal growth, violence, zombies, Bill Murray–that the list alone is reason enough to see this.  Zombieland is an incredible movie, and as such, I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my horror and wonders if I’m going soft as I pound its override button like a test-your-strength mallet into a clown’s face and award Zombieland a full-on ten out of ten.  This is just too funny and too action-packed and even too scary not to see.

Lots of buzz about The Messenger started when it premiered at Sundance. Written and directed by the same writer who wrote Jesus’ Son and I’m Not There.  I have heard nothing but very positive reviews from festivals that rave about the performances from Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton and a brilliant directorial debut by Oren Moverman, The Messenger brings us into the inner lives of these outwardly steely heroes to reveal their fragility with compassion and dignity.

Foster stars as Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army officer who has just returned home from a tour in Iraq and is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Partnered with fellow officer Tony Stone (Harrelson) to bear the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers, Will faces the challenge of completing his mission while seeking to find comfort and healing back on the home front. When he finds himself drawn to Olivia (Morton), to whom he has just delivered the news of her husband’s death, Will’s emotional detachment begins to dissolve and the film reveals itself as a surprising, humorous, moving and very human portrait of grief, friendship and survival.

What is it about Woody Harrelson movies that make people speculate so insanely about their sequel potential?  First it’s Defendor, and now we’re talking a  Zombieland sequel!

Okay, I freely admit that Zombieland is like an order of magnitude greater in the commercial potential department than Defendor can ever hope to be, but for crying out loud, Zombieland hasn’t even been released yet.  To talk about a sequel–as much as we’re all probably going to want one; it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that this will OWN its weekend–at this stage of the game is wildly premature.

Woody himself says it best:

“I think one key thing for when they want to do a sequel is that the movie is successful. Since this once hasn’t even opened, I don’t think they’re going to talk about sequel yet.”

Exactly.  Thank you, Woody.  I really hadn’t thought you were this level-headed, what with your hemp nonsense and all, but that’s a QFT if ever I saw one.

Wow, talk about putting the cart before the horse–this is putting the cart before the invention of the WHEEL.  We don’t even have a proper release date yet for the first installation of Woody Harrelson’s offbeat comic book hero romp, and here we are, looking at a sequel.

Now, the interesting part about the tentatively titled Defendors is that it won’t star Harrelson–and might not even have him involved at all–but would rather focus on a group of wanna-be super heroes who revere the Defendor legacy of pursuing Captain Industry, and want to carry on where Arther Poppington left off.

I happen to think that this is fourteen different kinds of awesome stuffed into a five pound sack.  Quite literally.  I’m eager enough to see Defendor as it is–if they’re already working on a sequel, then maybe I can get a Defendor installment every year, the way I get a Saw sequel.

I suppose that’s probably asking entirely too much, but hey–nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Funny movie!  I love the beginning when Woody Harrelson’s plays the theme from Deliverance and then says to the Zombie “You’ve got a pretty mouth.” Is that sick or what?!

“I want some, too!”

I like this trailer — it’s funny.

Next week, a new romantic comedy is set to hit the screens with Jennifer Aniston leading the cast. The move is “Management”, a romantic comedy that chronicles a chance meeting between Mike Cranshaw (Steve Zahn) and Sue Claussen (Jennifer Aniston).

When Sue checks into the roadside motel owned by Mike’s parents in Arizona, what starts with a bottle of wine “compliments of management” soon evolves into a multi-layered, cross-country journey of two people looking for a sense of purpose. Mike, an aimless dreamer, bets it all on a trip to Sue’s workplace in Maryland – only to find that she has no place for him in her carefully ordered life.

Buttoned down and obsessed with making a difference in the world, Sue goes back to her yogurt mogul ex-boyfriend Jango (Woody Harrelson), who promises her a chance to head his charity operations. But having found something worth fighting for, Mike pits his hopes against Sue’s practicality, and the two embark on a twisted, bumpy, freeing journey to discover that their place in the world just might be together.

(Source) ComingSoon.net