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Killshot
Sometimes a film comes with big names and notable filmmakers, but just can't get more than a barely-there release on the big screen. This is one of those films. An adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel about a couple embroiled in a mess with some sketchy types, this puppy comes from Shakespeare in Love director John Madden, and stars the likes of Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Thomas Jane, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Johnny Knoxville, and Rosario Dawson. EFilmCritic calls it "messy and unfocused." Skip it.

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Powder Blue
Now Jessica Biel might be lamenting her beauty and how that affects her career, but not so long ago she was taking it off for her work. This is that Christmas drama with the stripper (Biel), an ex-priest, an ex-con, and a mortician. It is, however, also (slightly) notable for being the film where Patrick Swayze plays the gentleman's club head "Velvet Larry." Skip it.

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New in Town
There's not much to perk up the last two "Skip It" picks, just another Renee Zellweger romcom -- this time, with Harry Connick Jr. She's an executive who winds up in a small town and discovers the charms of rural life. William Goss said it didn't have "even one iota of charm or humor," so Skip it on DVD and Blu-ray.

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Oh, the irony of ironies when the Dennis Quaid serial killer mystery The Horsemen had a tagline that said "Come and see," only to receive an unceremonious dump on something like 75 screens in early March and its first formal review just this week in Variety (and they had to catch it in Paris, apparently!). Box Office Mojo can't even claim any exact figures for what the thing grossed in its very limited run.

In similar straits was the Diane Lane/Mickey Rourke thriller, Killshot, which was formally dumped in Arizona and Arizona alone at the end of January. $18,000 on five screens -- way to capitalize on that Wrestler buzz, Weinsteins. But soon, scarcity will matter not for either film, as Fangoria says that the former film will get its DVD release on July 14th, while Amazon claims a May 26th bow for the latter.

There's no word on special features for Killshot yet, which makes me wonder if we'll see any sign of Johnny Knoxville's reportedly excised character... but maybe I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

So Erik-with-a-k covered the coming comedies of 2009, Scott was all over the horror picks (though his inclusion of Race to Witch Mountain still boggles my mind), Eric-with-a-c nabbed the family-friendly fare, and Elisabeth went over the geek fodder that awaits. But while I respect their calendar years and made-up math alike, I've opted to divide my list of 2009's action and adventure flicks into four categories: Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About, Action Flicks I Couldn't Care Less About, Action Flicks That I Hope Surprise Me, and Those Which Fell In Between. Enjoy!

Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About: First and foremost -- Watchmen (March 6th). It's one hell of a graphic novel and looks to be one hell of an adaptation (with or without the Giant Blank), but the only problem is it may not hit theaters on time if 20th Century Fox has anything to say about it. Both Fox and Warner Brothers are fighting over who actually owns the rights, and if a judge favors Fox comes January 20th (when the court date is set), we're looking at a delayed release and a whole ton of angry fans. Then there's Public Enemies (July 1st), which has me sold on not the subject matter, but sheer pedigree: Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as '30s gangsters. (It doesn't hurt that the earliest word ranges from damn good to great.) On the skimpier side, I can only hope that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17th) streamlines its source material as the previous one had, and I can only hope that Crank 2: High Voltage (April 17th) lives up/down to the depravity of its predecessor. There's one last action movie that I couldn't care more about because, well, I've already seen a version of it. The international cut of Taken (January 30th, though reportedly opening with some R-dodging trims) is about as brisk and butt-kicking as one might hope out of a man-on-a-mission kidnapping thriller, and if you disagree, I'll send Liam Neeson to change your mind.

Gallery: Watchmen

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

If they got some sort of financial bonus for every year they kept an unreleased movie on the shelves, I could understand it -- but this is getting a little ridiculous. According to a rather interesting L.A. Times piece, the Weinsteins are taking all their movies (save for Zack and Miri, The Reader, and perhaps the inevitably brilliant Extreme Movie) and bumping them back to next year. That includes some oft-delayed titles like Killshot and Fanboys, as well as higher-profile stuff like Crossing Over (with Harrison Ford and Sean Penn) and Shanghai (with John Cusack). Ah yes, and the highly-anticipated adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cormac McCarthy novel The Road.

Despite the fact that The Weinstein Co. is losing employees by the fistful, Harvey W. insists that the reasons for the delays are legit: Killshot he wants to hold for Mickey Rourke's The Wrestler; Fanboys is waiting for a Comcast promotion in January; Crossing Over deserves to enter a non-crowded marketplace; and Shanghai isn't even finished yet. Regarding The Road ... hmph, it never came up.

The first time I came across a trailer for the Diane Lane/Thomas Jane/Mickey Rourke hitman thriller Killshot (only remaining on an AICN archive page and the errant DVD release), it was back in September of 2006. Since then, the Elmore Leonard adaptation has endured reshoots in January of 2007 and countless changes in release dates after that. Of course, there's also at least three test screening reviews that bring to light the entire removal of a character played by Johnny Knoxville from the film.

Now, not long after the Weinstein Company issued its latest round of supposed scheduling, Killshot's most recent date -- November 7, 2008 -- has been dashed away by this Los Angeles Times piece, and as pointed out, how does one struggle to release anything that John Madden, Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack and Quentin Tarantino all had hands in at some point? How does one struggle to even sell off domestic distribution rights to a film with this cast and that crew? The obvious answer is, of course, that the film is a downright dud, though the general pedigree and harshest reviews seem to suggest that it's not a total turkey.

The best-case scenario at this point is that the film rides the awards buzz of Rourke's performance in December's The Wrestler as suggested and gets a theatrical release in the early winter dumping grounds (through the Weinsteins' Third Rail arm, I'd bet), while the worst-case scenario is the film being directly downgraded to the level of a Blockbuster-exclusive curio. We shall see...

More release dates were moved around this week, as studios struggle to get the last quarter of 2006 in order. The most recent changes range from dumped indies to major releases rescheduled to increase Oscar exposure. Here are the details:

• First and most importantly, Alfonso Cuarón's spermless futuristic thriller Children of Men has been pushed back from mid-September to Christmas Day. Can you say ... Oscar? The buzz on this one is that the people at Universal think they've got an award-worthy film on their hands, and want to give it as high-profile a release as possible.
• Since we saw a production still from Killshot -- a story about a couple in witness protection (Diane Lane, Thomas Jane) being tracked by a hitman (Mickey Rourke) and his nutso protege (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) -- back in December, all of the perceptible progress on the film has been backwards. It was originally slated for release in March of 2006, but was then pushed back a full six months to October. And now? The movie's been pulled and not rescheduled. Yikes.
• Harsh Times, another film that has already appeared on release schedules several times this year (the most recent date was September 8), is now slated to hit theaters November 10. Directed by David Ayer from a script he wrote before penning Training Day, it's been described as very similar to that film in terms of character and structure, with Christian Bale in the central crazy guy role. It's hard to know here if the studio thinks Bale's reportedly flashy performance merits some attention during awards season, or if the date changes have been for internal reasons.
• Starter for Ten, an indie British flick, has been pulled by from its October release, and is now slated to hit some time in 2007. (From a personal point of view, I find this very irritating -- I already saw and wrote up a review of the thing, and it's not even coming out now?! Damn you, Picturehouse!) The movie is a well-acted coming-of-age story about a young man's first year at Bristol University; its 1985 setting is an excuse for a great freaking soundtrack, if nothing else.
  

Actually, it's just a single image - and a boring one at that. But it's nevertheless proof that the movie is actually happening, which is something to hold on to. Directed by Oscar-nominee John Madden and executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino - aka the busiest person alive who isn't Joss Whedon - Killshot is based on an Elmore Leonard novel about a husband and wife who "become entangled in a scam with a bumbling small time con artist..and his over-the-hill hit man partner." The husband and wife are played by Thomas Jane and Diane Lane (no word on if their character names also rhyme), and the con men are a potentially interesting duo: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mickey Rourke.

Until I hear a flood of negative reports, I'm going to try to stay optimistic about this one - Tarantino's not in it after all, and both the cast and story have a lot of potential. In addition, Leonard's novels tend to be sharply written and very smart, though a lot depends on the adaptation. The film is currently in post-production, and is due for release in March of 2006.