Thanks to the industrious folks at ScreenCrave, we have a first (albeit foreign-sounding) look at Angelina Jolie’s upcoming film Salt.

I still think Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is the real wild-card here considering the popularity of the Baracus character (originally played by Mr. T), but Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper are looking pretty good. And this is definitely a better shot than that earlier spy one.

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That would be (from left to right) Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as Sgt. “B.A.” Baracus, Liam Neeson as John “Hannibal” Smith, Sharlto Copley as Capt. “Howling Mad” Murdock, and Bradley Cooper as Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck on set in Vancouver. Pretty cool.
Rampage is no where near as good an actor as he [...]

Michael Bay certainly has his own style of film-making and is the industry’s veritable man-child director running amok with big budgets and even bigger explosions. And while Bay usually does what he does well (which says nothing of it actually being good), he’s overdone it with his latest, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The preceding film in 2007 introduced audiences to Hasbro’s nostalgic toy-line in fitting blockbuster fashion, bringing childhood imaginations to life in a way few thought possible. That right first step, presumably, gave Bay the inclination to crank it up to 11 this time and overload Revenge of the Fallen with so much eye candy and fury you’ll walk out of the theater with ocular cavities and a general amnesia to the preceding two-and-a-half hours. We’ll call the condition “Bay Overdose,” which can be traced back to a number of the film’s afflictions.

Tony Scott’s new thrill-ride, The Taking of the Pelham 123, starts off set to the music of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.” I doubt the Deja-Vu director intended the song’s key lyric, “Got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one” to prove an upfront, accurate summation of the film; almost like a warning label for what unfolds over the unduly extended affair. While pitting Denzel Washington against John Travolta seems like a promising ride, Pelham’s plot and prose derails the film long before it reaches it’s intended destination. One curious theory picked up along the route, however, is that perhaps Travolta’s villain was homosexual. Maybe it’s simply the byproduct of a wandering critic’s mind during eye-rolling sequences, but the idea kept my attention better than Scott’s frantic cutting and music-video aesthetics.

The Punisher may be a tortured purveyor of justice and a one-man SWAT team, able to spin upside down from a chandelier while firing automatic rifles and taking out dozens of bad guys, but the man-in-black, Frank Castle, is no match for director Lexi Alexander, who has done the improbable – put a bullet right between [...]