This weekend sees the release of Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, about a soldier who returns from a grueling tour of duty in Iraq only to learn that he's being sent back for another one. The movie's not bad: very passionate, very angry, a bit didactic, and liberal to the core. (See our own Eric D. Snider's SXSW review here.) The "liberal" part is no surprise, at least not if you've been listening to the conservative pundits who have torn into Hollywood for what they see as anti-war propaganda masquerading as entertainment. Those same pundits like to gloat about Iraq War movies' perceived financial failure, holding up their box-office receipts as proof that the American people either aren't interested or aren't on the same page.

But have the Iraq War movies we've seen in the past couple of years actually performed all that poorly? And even if they have, does that have anything to do with public distaste for liberal Hollywood or its "propaganda"? Take a look at some numbers and share your thoughts after the jump.

When we commit acts of terror in the name of fighting terrorism, have we in fact become as bad as the bad guys we're supposed to be fighting? That's the question director Gavin Hood addresses in Rendition, which tackles the controversial practice of "extraordinary rendition," whereby suspected terrorists can be whisked off to other countries where "enhanced interrogation techniques" (electrocution, beating, and the ever-popular simulated drowning) are considered acceptable, so as to glean information from the suspected terrorist that might end up thwarting plots and saving countless lives.

The basic premise of Rendition: Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is an Egyptian citizen with a green card who's been living and working in the United States since he was 14 years old. He has a lovely American wife, Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), a cute little six-year-old kid, and a baby on the way. He coaches his son's soccer team. He's a chemical engineer with a $200K salary and a nice house in the suburbs of Chicago. He could be you or me or someone we know. And one day, on his way home from a business trip to South Africa, Anwar is taken aside by security at the airport and secreted away for questioning about his alleged involvement with a terrorist whose cell phone number has been traced making phone calls to Anwar's cell phone. How does Anwar explain this? Unfortunately for him, he can't.

Once again, last week's number one movie eluded most of us who took part in our weekly prediction game. Only Bubba8193 and Ray successfully foresaw that Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married would take first place, and I was again surprised by how well The Game Plan held on to second place in its third week out. Here's the final tally:

Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married: $21.3 million
The Game Plan: $11 million
We Own the Night: $10.8 million
Michael Clayton: $10.3 million
The Heartbreak Kid: $7.2 million

As for this week...

30 Days of Night
What's It All About: Vampires invade an Alaskan town during a month long stretch of arctic night.
Why It Might Do Well: Halloween's on the way, and I'm sure I'm not the only one looking to get my creep on at the multiplex. The film is based on an acclaimed graphic novel and produced by Sam "Evil Dead" Raimi. I see this taking the number one spot.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Ain't gonna happen.
Number of Theaters: 2,700
Prediction: $21 million

The Comebacks
What's It All About: A parody of inspirational sports movies.
Why It Might Do Well: Moviegoers looking for something familiar will probably recognize a similarity to the likes of Date Movie and the Scary Movie franchise, and its opening in more theaters than any other new film this week.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Director Tom Brady also gave us the Rob Schneider vehicle The Hot Chick. Need I say more?
Number of Theaters: 2,800
Prediction: $12 million

Gone Baby Gone
What's It All About: Ben Affleck directs and Casey Affleck stars in a film about two private investigators hired to look into the disappearance of a little girl.
Why It Might Do Well: There's some strong buzz for this one (91% at Rottentomatoes.com), and the film is based on a novel from the author of Mystic River.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Confusion may result if the public mistakes this for a sequel to Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill.
Number of Theaters: 1,500
Prediction: $7 million

Rendition
What's It All About: Reese Witherspoon plays a woman searching for her husband who has been detained by the CIA on suspicion of terrorism. Jake Gyllenhaal also stars.
Why It Might Do Well: Topical storyline mixed with some appealing leads will probably sell tickets.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The story may be too topical, making some people uncomfortable.
Number of Theaters: 2,200
Prediction: $11.5 million

See more after the jump ...

We don't have to wait two years! We only have to wait one! In case you can't tell, I'm excited to hear the solo Wolverine spin-off will be hitting theaters in 2008, rather than 2009, as we've always thought. But is it true? According to IESB, it is. The site spoke with Wolverine director Gavin Hood -- twice -- and claims the guy said Fox is pushing the thing out next summer. However, Hood is also quoted as saying production doesn't even begin until either December or January and that it would take four months to shoot. So what is it, guys, is he starting filming in just under a month, or is he starting in a few months?

Either way, I'm still excited to know it's going into production soon. Wolverine, which star Hugh Jackman and Wizard magazine discussed in-depth recently, will lens in Australia and New Zealand and will apparently feature "other mutants such as Gambit" (but probably not Gambit; Hood merely acknowledged that "other mutants" would appear, and that could simply refer to Sabretooth, who we already know about). Other than that, IESB was only able to confirm that Wolverine would be rated PG-13 and that Hood seems to see the X-Man's story as something out of opera or Greek mythology, which he is more familiar with than comic books.

Despite my excitement as a fan of the comics and the character of Wolverine in particular, I have some reservations. I was probably one of the biggest critics of Hood's Oscar-winning film Tsotsi, and now that his follow-up, Rendition, is getting mixed-to-bad reviews, I hate to think that he'll also ruin Wolverine. The opera/mythology stuff intrigues me, but I hope he'll at least do some research into the comic books, and I hope he's more kidding than half-kidding in his telling IESB that he's only doing the movie to pay for his twins' college tuition. Let's pray Hood wasn't right in initially telling Fox that he's the wrong guy for this.

"Did we polygraph the Egyptian?"
"He came up clean."
"Polygraph doesn't mean diddly."
'We always say that when they pass."
"Put him on the plane. ..."

That exchange comes early in Gavin Hood's new film Rendition, between senior intelligence officer Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) and her underling (J.K. Simmons). 'The Egyptian' is Anwar El-Abrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer of Egyptian descent who's been living in Chicago for years, with a wife (Reese Witherspoon) and son and another baby on the way. But Whitman doesn't care about that; Anwar's phone has been receiving calls from a number linked to a known terrorist, so after a conference which sees him flying back to Chicago he's plucked from his flight, hooded and bound and taken to an unnamed North African country, where the head of the local intelligence branch, Abasi (Igal Naor), will try to crack him. CIA field paper-pusher Doug Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is there to observe, not to apply the electric shocks or pour the water until Anwar can't breathe or hurl him naked and shivering into a too-small cell -- because, hey, America doesn't do that stuff. But, through the Clinton-created, Bush-approved invention of 'Extraordinary Rendition," we can ask other people to do it, and pay them to do it, and make all the arrangements to have it happen. ... Anwar's suffering will stop when he tells what he knows. But what if he doesn't know anything?

The folks at New Line very kindly provided us this exclusive first-look at the one-sheet for Rendition (click the image for a larger view). I caught the trailer for Rendition when my husband and I went out on a date night to see The Bourne Ultimatum. We were in one of those theaters with the ridiculously enormous screens, and the Rendition trailer looked amazing. The film tells the tale of Isabella El-Ibrahim (Reese Witherspoon), whose Egyptian-born husband (Omar Metwally) disappears on his way home from a business trip. He's caught in the web of "rendition," a policy that allows the US government to transfer terrorism suspects to another country for interrogation. While Isabella tries desperately to find answers to why her husband has disappeared and where he is, CIA agent Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds himself questioning the interrogation methods being used to extract information from El-Ibrahim.

The film also stars Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin, two of my fave actors, and in the trailer, Streep is really turning on that icy-cold superbitch mode that she does better than just about anyone on the planet. Cinematical will have a review for you from the Toronto International Film Festival; if you're not going to Toronto, you'll have to wait until the film's October 12** October 19 release date to see it. Meanwhile, you can check out the trailer over on Moviefone.

**The release is indeed October 19. IMDb lists it as the 12th -- I guess that's what I get for not checking Moviefone's listing, which had the correct date.

I'm filling in for Matt this week while he's off lounging in Vermont. Mmmm ... lounging. This week I decided to focus on trailers that feature actors and actresses who are just so damn good looking. Bonus points go out to the person who can tell me who spoke the line used in the title of this post, and in what context.

Descent: If anyone could go up against Angelina Jolie in a Sexiest Hollywood Lips competition, it would be Rosario Dawson. In Descent, which first premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival, Dawson plays a college girl who is brutally raped by a guy she trusted. From there her entire world flips upside down as she struggles with the transformation this attack has caused, as well as whether or not she should exact revenge upon the guy who did this to her. The film was also slapped with an NC-17 rating, which means this ain't no after school special about coping with a brutal attack while sipping Juicy Juice in the park. Check out Ryan's coverage of the film from Tribeca; Descent is scheduled to hit theaters (or should that be "a theater") on August 10.

Rendition:. Does it get any hotter than Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal? What if we add Peter Sarsgaard, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin to the cast? When her husband is kidnapped and sent off to some faraway "torture" prison for being a suspected terrorist, one woman (Witherspoon) hunts for the truth, one guy (Gyllenhaal) hunts for reasons and everyone else goes along for the ride. Has Oscar come knocking a bit early? Directed by Gavin Wood (whose Tsotsi won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language pic two years ago), Rendition arrives in your local theater on October 12. Check out the trailer below.

Hard as it is to believe in this lull of summer hallmarked by the usual hot-weather popcorn fare, we're edging ever closer to fall and the major fall film festivals, and Cinematical Indie will be bringing you heaps of coverage this year. Labor Day weekend, as always, means Telluride. Last year was our first year to cover the Telluride Film Festival; the fest is unique in that it doesn't announce its lineup until it actually starts, but that doesn't stop them from selling out passes well in advance of the fest every year, as film lovers converge on the small mountain town and triple its population for the weekend.

If you want to hit Telluride this year and haven't bought your passes yet, be prepared to pony up the big bucks; the Acme and Festival passes are sold out already, so you'll have to score yourself a $3500 patron pass if you want to attend. And good luck finding lodging in town at this point, unless you also want to dig deep and rent a spendy luxury vacation home -- but hey, if you that, drop me a line so I can come hang out -- we can talk movies while soaking in your jacuzzi overlooking the scenic San Juan mountains.

Unlike many of the top wage earner's I just wrote about, Meryl Streep never really worked her way up. From her second film, Deer Hunter, she jumped into a little Manhattan , and within two years of her media debut, which was a film theatrical performance of Secret Service, she won an Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer. Although she occasionally does something quirky like Death Becomes Her, she's always still Meryl, and always an acting powerhouse. I mean, would The Devil Wears Prada be as successful as it was without her?

It's just been announced that she's joining the cast of Rendition. You might remember the film from Matt Bradshaw's post about Reese Witherspoon starring, or when Erik Davis talked about the male leads -- Jake Gyllenhaal and my favourite SNL host, Peter Sarsgaard. Being directed by Tsotsi head Gavin Hood, the film has Gyllenhaal playing the CIA analyst who discovers a foreigner being questionably questioned by Egyptian secret police in Cairo . Witherspoon is the detainee's wife, and who is Sarsgaard? I don't think it's a wild guess to think he won't be the Egyptian-born man under interrogation.

As for Streep, well, she's the government official who orders the rendition, or extradition, of the national. I'm not sure how this will all fit together. According to Matt's post, the American, Witherspoon's Egyptian-born chemical engineer husband, is sent off after being deemed a political prisoner. So, is she the one that orders him off, or the one who tries to bring him back? Either way, it looks to be an interesting film.

Odds and ends from a very busy Wednesday:

• Though no reason was given, Sarah Jessica Parker has replaced Rachel Weisz in Smart People, a new comedy being directed by Noam Murro. Pic, which also stars Dennis Quaid, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page and Ashton Holmes, revolves around a recent widow (Quaid) who becomes increasingly bitter about life until he meets and subsequently falls in love with that chick from Sex and the City. I've always been on the fence regarding Parker. What do you think about her career choices post-Sex in the City?
• After watching Flightplan (ugh) last night, I was thinking about how I'm really digging Peter Sarsgaard lately. I don't know what it is about the guy (perhaps it's his calm, quiet and creepy demeanor), but he's suddenly shot up my "actors to keep an eye on" list. Variety reports the dude has just signed on to star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon ( I love how she's getting these big, serious parts now) in Rendition. Pic marks Gavin Hood's followup to Tsotsi and revolves around a CIA operative in the Middle East who becomes all shaded out when he witnesses some nasty police interrogations.
• Hey, remember that South Park episode where Rob Reiner invades the town in order to combat the spread of smoking amongst teens? He's all fat and can barely move, yet all he does is bitch about cigarettes? Well, in a related story, Harvey Weinstein has taken it upon himself to join the fight against nicotine addiction by placing anti-smoking ads in the Weinstein Co.'s DVD releases. Seriously. He wants to educate young people on the negative effects of eating your face off smoking. I say, good for him!