coming to a theatre near you

Rendition
In what promises to be both a timely critique of torture and an Oscar contender of the same caliber as 2005’s Munich, this fall’s thriller Rendition delves into the post-9/11 concept of ‘extraordinary rendition’: the abduction of American citizens to places unknown for the purpose of extracting information without interference from that pesky Bill of Rights. Reese Witherspoon stars as the desperate wife of an Egyptian chemist whose mysterious disappearance from a South African flight cannot be explained. Jake Gyllenhaal, a CIA analyst on his first intelligence assignment, is given the duty of eliciting information from Witherspoon’s husband, erroneously believed to have been behind a Middle Eastern terrorist bombing. Rounded out by all-stars Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, and the legendary Meryl Streep as the calculating head of the CIA, Rendition is a guaranteed must-see. Rendition opens October 19th.

Saw IV
Despite the notable handicap of being dead, the Jigsaw Killer makes at least one more foray into completely grossing out teenage boys with mindless, complicated gore in the upcoming Saw IV. Any semblance of a plot beyond chairs made of whirling blades seems impossible, but in this film FBI profilers follow the lead of Saw’s producers and continue to beat a dead horse when they fall into Jigsaw’s ‘final’ trap, which moviegoers can only hope is a promise. The captive agents have only ninety minutes to work their way through a series of sickening traps, or face deaths inconceivably grotesque. The audience will have a hard enough time not dying of boredom. Saw IV opens October 26th.

Bee Movie
Anthropomorphic insects get one more chance to redeem themselves after the miserable Antz and saccharin A Bug’s Life in DreamWorks’ Bee Movie, a computer-animated film starring Jerry Seinfeld as a wisecracking bee in a turtleneck. The studio has been leaking the trailers for over a year, but only recently was it revealed that the movie has more narrative than newspapers hitting Jerry’s bee character unconscious. Barry B. Benson (he’s a bee, so alliteration becomes a requisite), finds the repetitiveness of honey production to be stifling career-wise, so he leaves the hive and finds the wonderful world of Manhattan waiting for him, along with a breathy, bug-loving florist, voiced by Renée Zellweger. Though obviously improbable, the film looks charming, with small smiling insects doing small smiling-insect things, all with good humor and mild cracks at capitalism. How the romantic chemistry will play out between a bee and a Midtown florist is yet to be determined, but with a PG rating, don’t expect a repeat of Equus. Bee Movie opens November 2nd.

-scott bixby '11