On a suburban street, two masked men seize a young woman. They bind and gag her and take her to an abandoned, soundproofed apartment. She is Alice Creed, daughter of a millionaire. Her kidnappers, the coldly efficient Vic and his younger accomplice Danny, have worked out a meticulous plan. But Alice is not going to play the perfect victim – she’s not giving in without a fight. In a tense powerplay of greed, duplicity and survival we discover that sometimes disappearances can be deceptive.

Meet charming and jobless Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera). A bass guitarist for garage band Sex Bob-omb, the 22-year-old has just met the girl of his dreams…literally. The only catch to winning Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)? Her seven evil exes are coming to kill him. Genre-smashing filmmaker Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) tells the amazing story of one romantic slacker’s quest to power up with love in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Scott Pilgrim has never had a problem getting a girlfriend. It’s getting rid of them that proves difficult. From the girl who kicked his heart’s ass—and now is back in town—to the teenage distraction he’s trying to shake when Ramona rollerblades into his world, love hasn’t been easy. He soon discovers, however, his new crush has the most unusual baggage of all: a nefarious league of exes controls her love life and will do whatever it takes to eliminate him as a suitor.

As Scott gets closer to Ramona, he must face an increasingly vicious rogues’ gallery from her past—from infamous skateboarders to vegan rock stars and fearsome identical twins. And if he hopes to win his true love, he must vanquish them all before it really is game over.

A tight-knit group of New York City street dancers, including Luke (Malambri) and Natalie (Vinson), team up with NYU freshman Moose (Sevani), and find themselves pitted against the world’s best hip hop dancers in a high-stakes showdown that will change their lives forever.

Register to win a copy of “Bull Durham” on Blu-Ray from MGM Home Entertainment and Red Carpet Crash. The classic baseball movie is available on Blu-Ray for the first time on Tuesday, August 3:

Play Ball.  Hailed by Sports Illustrated as “a damn good baseball movie” and ranked the #1 sports movie of all time*, Bull Durham hits a new high when it debuts on Blu-ray August 3 from MGM Home Entertainment.  Covering all bases with critics, men and women alike, the film about sports and sex from writer/director Ron Shelton (White Men Can’t Jump, Cobb) stars Oscar winners Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves, Mr. Brooks), Susan Sarandon (Enchanted, Dead Man Walking) and Tim Robbins (War of the Worlds, Mystic River).

Nominated for a 1988 Original Screenplay Academy Award, Bull Durham is a “funny, sexy, literate love story” (Newsweek) about America’s other favorite pastime.  The baseball season gets off to a rocky start when the Durham Bull’s new catcher “Crash” Davis (Costner) punches out the cocky young pitcher, “Nuke” LaLoosh (Robbins), he’s just been hired to train.  Matters get even more complicated when sexy Annie Savoy (Sarandon) informs both men that each season she chooses one player to share her bed – and Nuke and Crash are this year’s ‘draft picks.’

Register to win “Operation: Endgame” on DVD from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment and Red Carpet Crash. The uncommon spy game movie is available on Blu-Ray and DVD Tuesday, July 27:

Rival squads of sociopathic covert agents turn on each other with vicious glee when their underground facility is threatened with flaming death. The fun of Operation: Endgame lies in the cast: this is a pretty unlikely collection of assassins, played by the likes of Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine), Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), and Emilie de Ravin (Lost), alongside more traditional Hollywood superspy types such as Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard), Ving Rhames (Dawn of the Dead), and Ellen Barkin (The Big Easy)…

Register to win a DVD copy of “After.Life″ from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment and Red Carpet Crash. The horror movie is available on DVD Tuesday, August 3:

A young woman caught between life and death… and a funeral director who appears to have the gift of transitioning the dead, but might just be intent on burying her alive.

Each Sunday night at 9:00 pm CT, Red Carpet Crash presents the fourth season “Mad Men” on the big screen at the Angelika Film Center. Admission is free (as all of the Angelika On TV presentations), and there’s a cash bar inside the theater for the mid-show cocktail you need to make your “Mad Men” experience complete.

If you attended the “Lost” final season watching parties at the Angelika, you know how much cooler a well-produced TV show can be on the big screen. With the attention to detail “Mad Men” pays the Sixties, you can imagine how much the silver screen treatment will make Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce.

Dinner For Schmucks

RCC Rating: RCC Rating:  Worth Full Price On Opening Weekend

The plot of “Dinner for Schmucks” is simple.  Tim (Paul Rudd) comes up with a once-in-a-lifetime idea to impress his boss and save his company.  His boss gives him one shot to get it right, which puts him in contact with someone with whom he never would have otherwise met, who turns his life upside down in a number of highly comical ways, and shows him the value of his relationship with his girlfriend by nearly causing it to end.  Yet through it all, this wise, though unconventional, stranger teaches our hero the true meaning of love and friendship.

If this sounds familiar, you’ve either seen the original French film, 1999’s “Le Dîner de Cons” (“The Dinner Game”), or you’ve seen this year’s “Get Him to the Greek.”  Both films are hysterically funny, but both follow a similar path—our leading man must learn what’s really important through spending time with a wild and crazy guy.

In order to get the big promotion, Tim must win over the big client, and also bring along the best idiot to his boss’ “Dinner for Winners.”  The biggest loser (and not in the Jillian Michaels’ sense) gets a trophy and is “released back into the wild” with no clue he or she has been the butt of the joke all night, and his or her escort gets office bragging rights and the boss’ good favor.  For Tim, this could mean a move up to the seventh floor—an office space coveted for not smelling like cabbage.

Tim’s girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), like most rational people who aren’t creating summer comedies, thinks this is a terrible idea.  Tim and Julie fight, and Julie runs to a meeting with, and possibly the arms of, her artist client Kieran (Jemaine Clement—I tell you this so you don’t spend the entire film wondering how they got hair on David Cross, as I did).

Tim’s better senses follow his better half, and he decides to decline the dinner invitation, until he hits Barry (Steve Carell) with his car.  Barry was in the road to pick up a dead mouse—another muse in his long line of “Mouseterpieces,” and is excited to have been hit by Tim’s Porsche, previously he’s only been hit by a Datsun.  Barry then spends the next twenty four hours “helping” Tim, and ruining everything in his life possibly worth ruining.

When the dinner finally arrives, Barry seems like a shoo-in to win, until his arch-nemesis, Therman (Zach Galifianakis) arrives. (Therman gets the biggest laugh earlier in the film when he takes off his jacket in his office.)  Not only is Therman Barry’s boss, but he has also stolen Barry’s wife (and when you see her, you suddenly understand why all his female mouse muses have red hair), and, as if that weren’t enough, Therman is a master of mind control.

By this point, Tim has come to realize the error of his selfish ways, and has to find a way to preserve Barry’s dignity and self-confidence, even if that means giving up the big job.  The film’s sweet side is revealed, albeit hilariously, and the recurring theme that “everything happens for a reason” is proven true.

Stay for the epilogue—although it will make you check under your bed for the foreseeable future.

Charlie St. Cloud

RCC Rating: Worth Seeing At A Matinee

When I saw the movie poster tag line after seeing Charlie St. Cloud, I chuckled to myself: “Life is for living.” Really? That’s odd because it seems that 75% of this film is centralized on focusing on the past, death and depression. But, I suppose that is the point it is trying to make.

“Charlie St. Cloud” stars teen heartthrob Zac Efron (“High School Musical”, “17 Again”). Mr. Efron plays Charlie, a high school graduate with a sailing scholarship, who struggles with the death of his younger brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan). Prior to Sam’s fatal car crash, Charlie promises Sam that he will practice baseball with him for an hour every day until Charlie leaves for college. At Sam’s funeral, Charlie is met by Sam’s ghost in the woods and agrees to keep his promise.

As the film cuts to five years later, we see Charlie beginning to fall in love with an old high school classmate and fellow sailor champion, Tess (Amanda Crew). As Charlie and Tess’ relationship progresses, Charlie begins showing up late (or not at all) to some practices with Sam, to which Sam states “you’re late, I thought we had a deal.” The film’s main premise at this point becomes whether Charlie should continue to live in the past and keep his promise to his dead brother, or live life, follow love and see where it takes you. Charlie apparently cannot have his cake and eat it too:

Charlie: “The more I’m in your world, the less I can be in his.”
Tess: “You didn’t die in that car crash, Charlie”
Charlie: “Actually…I did”

We assume Charlie means this figuratively, of course, but considering the film’s reoccurring creepiness, it almost makes you wonder for a slight moment if he meant it literally.

Later in the film, Charlie runs into the paramedic, Florio (Ray Liotta), who miraculously saved his life after flat-lining from the aforementioned car crash that killed Sam. Florio states that God has a purpose for Charlie’s life and is giving him a second chance or else he wouldn’t have survived. The film has a much-needed twist, and we discover what this plan is towards the end of the film.

Charlie St. Cloud is not your typical romantic drama in that it involves the supernatural element of interacting with dead people. It has a slightly creepy-factor in that regard, and to crank that up to its full potential, Charlie starts working in the graveyard. However, the film is creatively done and captures Charlie’s emotions as he struggles with losing several of the ones he loved most, not just his brother. Zac Efron pulls off a believable performance and this role tests and shows off his acting capability. At a certain point, you start to feel a whirlwind of emotions for his character and what he must be going through to have experienced such tragic loss at such a young age. “Charlie St. Cloud” will be a hit with the ladies, particularly the high school crowd, in part because it’s a romantic tear-jerker but also because, well, it features Zac Efron… need I say more?

Putting the supernatural aspect aside, “Charlie St. Cloud” feels reminiscent of sitting through a Nicholas Sparks movie which will probably help garner more revenue at the box office. Hmm, this might actually be a resume booster for Mr. Efron and could increase his probability of landing himself as the main male squeeze in a future Nicholas Sparks film. Charlie St. Cloud is certainly a step up from… oh, let’s say “High School Musical.”

Thirty years ago, Andrei Simoniovich Filipov, the renowned conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra, was fired for hiring Jewish musicians. Now a mere cleaning man at the Bolshoi, he learns by accident that the Châtelet Theater in Paris invites the Bolshoi orchestra to play there. He decides to gather together his former musicians and to perform in Paris in the place of the current Bolshoi orchestra. As a solo violin player to accompany his old Jewish or Gypsy musicians he wants Anne-Marie Jacquet, a young virtuoso. If they all overcome the hardships ahead this very special concert will be a triumph.