I just walked out of the completely packed press screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. James will have his review up shortly, but before the press conference begins, I wanted to give you my quick initial impression of the film, which is: Indy 4 is a nicely satisfying continuation of the franchise, and will please most Indy fans.

Though the first act drags a bit, the latter two-thirds of the film pick up the pace, and the film is packed with all the familiar elements fans have come to expect from Indiana Jones. John Williams's classic score still thrills, and the film, for the most part, meets the expectations set when you hear those familiar first bars of the theme song. Harrison Ford is older, of course (aren't we all), but still brings the role all the charm, daring and humor Indy should have. Shia LaBeouf holds his own alongside Ford, bringing to his role a combination of swaggering bravado and hidden vulnerability that mirrors the younger Ford in the earlier films. And it's great to see Karen Allen back on the screen for the sequel, still full of sass; although she is saddled with a couple of lines of fairly cringe-worthy dialog, you just can't help but like Marion.

You know, if I were an immortal creature of the night, I probably wouldn't be working in a strip club. But seriously, if you were all powerful, would you bother having a day job? Let alone one that has you spending your evenings fighting off 'pole chafing'. Oh well, I guess I've been watching vampire movies long enough to recognize the honored tradition of the stripping undead. The latest contribution, according to Horror Movies.ca, will star Ray Winstone (Beowulf) and go by the name of Live Girls.

Rob Green is set to direct the story of a married man (Winstone) who begins to frequent a strip club and becomes obsessed with the lead dancer, Anya. As to be expected, these ladies are little more blood sucking than you would normally find in your average peeler bar, and our hero begins to find himself changing in unexpected ways. When he returns with another wronged man to uncover the mystery behind this club, it's all fangs and arterial spray from there.

But before you get too excited about Girls, keep in mind that Winstone already has three other projects on the go, and Green is in production on another film. Not to mention that this particular movie hasn't been listed anywhere official for either Green or Winstone. So, stay tuned to Cinematical for any news that comes our way.

By the time this review is over, I will have spent more time thinking about Fool's Gold than the writers of its script. This...thing...is one of the sloppiest pictures released by a major studio in recent memory. What can you say about a "romance" with no romance, a "comedy" with no laughs, an "adventure" with no excitement? Though I certainly wasn't rubbing my hands together in anticipation walking in to the theater, I thought this would at least succeed at being an enjoyable time waster. "Attractive people wearing few clothes in exotic locales -- I can handle watching that for a few hours," I thought to myself. But I was wrong. So very wrong. The whole affair is about as compelling as a two-hour fart.

I don't ask a great deal from romantic comedies. I don't need every one to be Annie Hall or When Harry Met Sally or Love, Actually. I don't even need them to be particularly good -- I kinda enjoyed The Holiday, for God's sake! Give me a few laughs, appealing leads, a warm squishy feeling, and you've done your job. Plainly, the makers of Fool's Gold did not do their job. Listen, I know Valentine's Day is coming up, so heed this warning -- if you see this crashing bore of a movie on a first date, your relationship is doomed, cursed even. Do not speak on the way home, avoid eye contact, just go your separate ways and don't speak of the evening again.

Most of us are probably painfully aware of the stress of the holidays when it comes to familial relationships. Films about families tell the one story that practically anyone can relate to. So in the spirit of feeling better about ourselves I've compiled a list of some of the most dysfunctional families in film. Maybe after taking a look at some big-screen dysfunction, we can sit back and take a little solace in that at least none of us have to sit down to Christmas dinner with any of the people on the following list.

1. Spanking the Monkey

Before he was famous on You Tube for his demented freak-out on the set of I Heart Huckabees, David O. Russell was famous for making the unthinkable; a comedy about incest. Monkey stars Alberta Watson as Susan Aibelli; a lonely and depressed mother who develops a sexual relationship with her son after they are left alone together for the summer. Jeremy Davis stars as her son and the subject of this unlikely coming-of-age story. The film might not be for the weak of heart, but it did manage to win an audience award at Sundance in 1994, and was responsible for turning Russell into the megalomaniac we've all come to know and love.

2. Ordinary People

Besides going down in infamy as the film that beat Raging Bull out of a 'Best Picture Oscar', this 1981 drama about a family dealing with the loss of it's 'favored son' was the directorial debut of Robert Redford. Timothy Hutton stars as the younger brother who is readjusting to life after a botched suicide attempt. Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore also star as the parents to Hutton and Judd Hirsch as the prototypical 'earthy NY Jewish' psychiatrist. So for anyone who watched Mary Tyler Moore as the epitome of 'chirpiness' during the seven year run of her self-titled series, get ready to be blown away, because her performance as a cold and repressed suburban mom is one of the best there is.

Comingsoon.net has made what seems like a perfectly reasonable assumption to me: that the first trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- I'll never like that title -- may debut during the Super Bowl on February 3rd. Paramount has already declared that the trailer will arrive in February, but it was assumed in some quarters that the premiere would be attached to Paramount's biggest February release, The Spiderwick Chronicles. But really, is that a big enough event? The trailer would be a far bigger deal than the movie it's attached to. Putting the Indy 4 trailer up during the Super Bowl makes infinitely more sense to me, and I can't imagine the marketing department at Paramount isn't thinking the same thing. Additionally, CS also reports that the first trailer for Star Trek XI will most likely play before Cloverfield in January. And The Dark Knight is on schedule to debut its new teaser in front of I Am Legend on December 14.

In other Indy 4 news, fans of Ray Winstone may want to see the film if just to say farewell -- the actor appears to be so exhausted by filming that epic and his other recent projects that he's now actively considering retirement. "I've achieved it [career success] and now I'm finished," he's gone on record as saying. "I'm going to let me girls [his kids] get on with it and they can look after me. No more -- seriously. That's it." Winstone's role in Indy 4 is as Mac, a sidekick character that will presumably pick up the slack of not having Denholm Elliott be part of the script. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull -- nope, still don't like it -- is scheduled to hit theaters on Memorial Day.

I dunno... There may be something to this "secret" thing. Just yesterday I wished that Henry Rollins would make the movie rounds again, and I wake up today to find out that he is. However, this is probably more a case of good timing, since I imagine this whole deal was made before my wish. Anyhow, The Hollywood Reporter has listed the cast that are a part of an upcoming action thriller currently called the Untitled Gehenna Project. It's strange, diverse, and kind of irresistible -- Cuba Gooding Jr., Taryn Manning, Ron Perlman, Henry Rollins, Valerie Cruz (The Dresden Files), and Ray Winstone have joined a cast that includes Jason London (the Dazed one, not the mallrat), Franky G (Saw), Zack Ward (Transformers), Stephanie Jacobson (Razor), Bill Moseley (Repo! The Genetic Opera), Sarah Ann Morris (Las Vegas), and Brandon Fobbs (The Wire).

The only thing more surprising than that group of actors is what they get to do. It seems that the film is about a group of elite soldiers who are on a covert mission "to retrieve a missing scientist from an undergound lab." Cruz sends them on the mission, and Perlman is the scientist -- so far, so believable. But get this -- the group consists of Gooding, London, G, Ward, and Manning. Yes, Taryn Manning is an elite soldier. While this strange collection of tough guys/girl are on their mission, they happen upon a priestly Rollins, "who tells them that an 'ancient evil' has been released, causing their greatest fears to come to life." (Team him up with Cheech's tough priest in Machete and they'd be an unstoppable force of religious power.) Rounding things out is Winstone, who is the ed-head of the group, and Moseley and Morris, who are part of the research team.

Keith Kjornes wrote the script, and it's going to be directed by Jason Connery, who just happens to be 007 Sean's son. The script sounds like any strange thriller, but man, this cast is weird enough that it could be completely enjoyable, in that pulp sort of way.

With Beowulf, the latest motion-capture film from director Robert Zemeckis, one of mankind's oldest tales is hurled up onto the movie screen using the cutting edge of new technology. As in The Polar Express, Zemeckis's first foray into motion-capture animated moviemaking, the actors are first shot on a soundstage, wearing motion-indicating elements that allow computers to turn their movements and facial expressions into sets of data; then, that data is animated by computers and artists, so that real motion and facial expressions can be re-cast in fantastic settings and melded with wild imaginings. As if that weren't enough, the resulting movie in this case has also been enhanced so the theatrical experience is 3-D; swords, dragons and flame leap from the screen, hovering right before your very eyes. It all sounds wonderful.

But, as so often happens in life, the execution falls somewhat short of the expectation. I know it seems like a betrayal of the critic's job -- to look deeper, to see beyond the obvious -- to begin with complaints about the animation in the film, but it would be even more of a betrayal of the critic's job to not point out the most obvious and glaring fact about Zemeckis's technique. Namely, that it looks horrible. A scientist working in the burgeoning field of the human perception of virtual simulacra would talk Beowulf's animation in the context of the "uncanny valley," the phenomena where, when confronted with a robot or virtual avatar that has a high degree of match to human movement and appearance, the human mind flip-flops and instead obsesses about the smaller elements of mis-match, jarred by the mistakes in the image instead of thrilled by the accuracies. (Confronted with a 98% accurate simulacra, for example, most people instead fixate on the 2% difference.) But I'm not a scientist working in the burgeoning field of the human perception of virtual simulacra; as a layman, I can only offer that in Beowulf (as in The Polar Express), Zemeckis seems to have created a world peopled by drowning victims brought back to life after a three-week soak: Pale, puffy, slow-moving revenants with no light in their eyes.

It was back in May of last year that news about the next Nick Cave/John Hillcoat collaboration hit the air -- Death of a Ladies' Man, starring Ray Winstone. But then the air went silent, until now. The actor recently talked with MTV about his future projects, and he says that he's still set to star in the film. If you're a Winstone fan, it might please you to know that beyond this, Beowulf, and the upcoming Indiana Jones movie, he's also looking into a role in The Minutemen (the latest indie from the Nee Brothers), and while he said he won't be part of King's X, he is joining Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tim Roth in 44 Inch Chest -- written by the men behind Sexy Beast.

But back to Death of a Ladies' Man. Yes, it is based on Leonard Cohen's song (Nick Cave is a fan and even performed on Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man), and it's much different than the previous Aussie western. The film focuses on a traveling salesman played by Winstone who is "addicted to sex" and uses "his door-to-door beauty products as a means to meet women." Considering the fact that the song has lines like: "He offered her an orgy in a many-mirrored room," I imagine this'll be a little racy.

Furthermore, this May, an interview with Cave was published in Harp, and he said: "John asked me to come up with another script, something small that he could do quickly. That said, it's now suddenly taking a long time to get going." He goes on to note that it's an English character study, and after a year of struggle, it will get made as soon as Hillcoat finishes a "big American film" -- which I presume is The Road. With Guy Pearce potentially replacing Viggo Mortensen, the film will finally get into production soon, and maybe Guy will follow along to the next. As a huge Proposition fan, I can only hope!

Okay, you twisted my arm -- I'll see the movie. Actually, I was planning on seeing it anyway -- I'm intrigued by how Robert Zemeckis keeps inching forward in his quest for photo-realism in the CG world. The Holy Grail of that being, obviously, faces. The faces of the characters in The Polar Express were aptly described by some as being like 'death masks' which probably frightened little kids more than wowed them, but you can't make an omelet, right? Based on the little bit I've seen of Beowulf -- on a small computer screen, mind you -- it looks like Zemeckis is still wrestling with that same problem. The faces don't seem to have a lot of life in them, but maybe it's such a technical challenge that inching forward a little bit at a time is the only way to go. Zemeckis, has, however, found a good trick for misdirecting us away from the faces -- shots of Angelina Jolie's naked breasts. The international trailer for Beowulf is being hosted over at ComingSoon.net, and it's mostly the same as the other trailer we recently saw, except that this one has a shot of Angelina from behind, a couple of her from the side and one of her straight-on naked from the belly-button up.

Speaking of Angelina, someone really needs to talk to her about the accents, because the voice she's sporting in this film seems like Dracula again, which is exactly what we heard in Alexander and even a bit in A Mighty Heart. When I spoke with her at the press day for Heart she talked about working with a voice coach and how some accents were more challenging than others, and I have no doubt she's talented enough to broaden her accent range, but she probably needs someone to tell her that it's necessary. We've heard Transylvanian Jolie -- let's hear something else.

I was lucky enough to get a seat in the packed house last night for a viewing of the first ever released footage from the upcoming Beowulf film, directed by Robert Zemeckis (or "Z", as Roger Avary calls him), and is written and produced by Neil Gaiman and Avary. The film is 100% CGI, and they used motion capture for all of the performances in the film. So close your eyes and picture Anthony Hopkins wearing a mocap suit with white balls all over it, and it's like you're on set!

Gaiman and Avary came down (to thunderous applause) to introduce the footage. Avary started to explain a bit but Gaiman thought this was something that would be best viewed without any setup at all. We then saw a short "taster" of material from the film set to a power rock soundtrack. Oh, and everything we saw was in REAL D (a 3D format), so we had to wear big giant clunky glasses, making us all look a bit like the late, great Roy Orbison. Pretty hot.

So, how many of you out there saw The Polar Express in 3D? Well, the 3D is that good, or in some cases much better. It's not extremely overdone, like everything seems fairly flat and 2D and then suddenly AHH! -- Grendel in your face. It's much more understated and subtle, more of an immersive aspect than a gimmick. After awhile you (thankfully) forget you're wearing the glasses, and it just becomes another part of the movie.