“I live. I love. I slay…I am content.” – Conan The Barbarian

The most legendary Barbarian of all time will return Friday, August 19, 2011.

A quest that begins as a personal vendetta for the fierce Cimmerian warrior soon turns into an epic battle against hulking rivals, horrific monsters, and impossible odds, as Conan realizes he is the only hope of saving the great nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil.

Deftly adapted from the original works of Robert E. Howard and faithful to the mythology and psychology of his iconic character, Conan The Barbarian stars Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Saïd Taghmaoui and Ron Perlman. The film is directed by Marcus Nispel, and written by Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood.

Visionary director Tarsem Singh, who has spun stuff like The Cell, The Fall, transports us in this epic tale of treachery, vengeance and destiny in Immortals. It looks rather stylish as a visually spectacular 3D action adventure.

The story concerns a power-hungry king razes ancient Greece in search of a legendary weapon, a heroic young villager rises up against him in a thrilling quest as timeless as it is powerful.

The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army rampage across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king’s mission.

The movie opens in theaters November 11, 2011.

You’ve seen our giveaway of Winter In Wartime thanks to my able cohort Kenna, and now, we’re going to tackle it right here for a review. The folks out at Sony sent me a copy to cover too, and now, we’re going to check it out right here.

Winter In Wartime takes us to a snow-covered village in the midst of Nazi-occupied Holland in 1945. Specifically, to a thirteen year old boy named Michiel in said Nazi-occupied Holland, who has found himself only somewhat willingly dragooned into the resistance after aiding a downed British paratrooper. Michiel finds himself in a much more dangerous world than he ever imagined possible, and is desperate to find who he can trust, and who won’t turn him in to the Nazis, themselves progressively more desperate as Hitler’s two-front war finds itself collapsing on either side.

It’s an interesting concept, but fair warning: this movie is shot mainly in Dutch, with optional French audio, and the only bone Anglophiles will get is subtitles in English and some dialogue that isn’t subtitled for some reason. So, know this going in in case you’re put off by subtitles. Me, I prefer them, even in English-language film, so I can always be sure of the dialogue, which is why I was deeply saddened to see that the actual English language dialogue for some reason didn’t get a lick of subtitling.

You might wonder about a movie like this; foreign language film has a not-altogether unearned reputation for being dull and inaccessible, but at the same time, you know many World War II movies have proven exciting. This one will be somewhat in the middle, a mix of inaccessible and exciting. It’s a strange mix, no mistake–call this an action-drama hybrid, which is always a strange animal in its own right–and will spend more than a bit of time talking while throwing in some interesting twists and thrills from time to time.

The end result is surprisingly watchable, and not so much as a hint of the ending is given away in advance. You’ll have a pretty good time here, especially if you like World War II fare and don’t mind a shortage of action in favor of more drama.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Winter In Wartime a somewhat surprised eight out of ten–it’s a little short on action, but makes that up with a surfeit of drama and suspense. All things considered, it’s a very welcome title that does a nice job.

What would you do if you were suddenly a whole lot smarter than you are right now? That’s the basic premise behind Limitless, a copy of which the folks out at Fox sent out for us to review, and it’s a question that has a lot of answers, including more than a few you wouldn’t expect.

Limitless follows Eddie Morra, a writer whose career–indeed, his entire life–has seen better days. Much better days, in fact. He’s burnt out and sinking fast…until he discovers a pill whose existence is kept quite mum. This pill has the power to unlock a human mind’s full potential, and Eddie uses it to the fullest. But when the bill comes due, in the form of horrendous side effects and the drug’s original makers, it just might be enough to kill the formerly limitless Eddie Morra.

Say what you will, this is unique. And uniqueness is one of those great rarities in Hollywood, a town where the best move is most often the one that was mostly already made. And Limitless is an idea that hasn’t been done. Frankly, I can’t recognize any other parallels to this one out there, and that makes it something special.

The idea itself, meanwhile, is a doozy–a smart pill? It’s the kind of thing people have been wondering about since there were pills, and now we’re getting a look at just what that might be like. And a world in which people can become brilliant with the aid of pharmaceuticals is a bizarre world indeed.

This is like the anti-Idiocracy staring us in the face. Instead of a world where the average is brilliant in a world full of dullards, now we’re looking at a world in which people can suddenly become the brilliant average in the world full of dullards.

It’s a wildly complex plot, too, with loads of twists and turns. It’s both science fiction and impressive thriller at the same time, which is in itself a unique prospect.

Frankly, this is one of the better movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s impressively written, acted, and done. Robert De Niro’s back in one the best roles I’ve seen in some time, and the whole thing is nothing but a huge shot of awesome. If you like science fiction, crime drama, or thrillers in general, Limitless will be just that, delight without limits.

The end result is that the Screenhead Ten Scale is going to fork over a whopping ten out of ten for Limitless, a unique and very well crafted piece of science fiction thriller that’s all too plausible and beautifully well done. This is definitely one to watch.

Battleship Trailer is promoting the Summer 2012 release, the battle for Earth begins at sea. Whatever happened to Hasbro’s board game of the same name? I thought Battleship was based on the board game. It is obvious the movie is about a battle at sea with awfully big aliens compared to Earth’s tiny battleships. Oh, if you haven’t noticed, there is a love story, too. I am curious, though. Does anyone in the movie say “You sunk my battleship!”?

Anyone else remember the Turbulence series? They made three of them, though the latter part of the series went direct to video. And when the crew out at Anchor Bay sent out a copy of Turbulent Skies for me to review, I thought they were getting into the remake game. What I found, though, was something of a different color entirely.

Turbulent Skies joins Devain Industries, who have just created a plane that’s impervious to pilot error. But when the Devain family decides to pack said plane with a pack of VIPs for a celebratory maiden flight, they discover that just because a computer’s doing the piloting, it’s not really that impervious to pilot error after all. Now, with a pack of VIPs on board and the Pentagon planning to shoot first, it’s up to a regular old human pilot to execute a daring mid-air transfer in a bid to save them all.

See what I mean? Almost nothing to do with the original Turbulence series.

It has the feel of a SyFy original movie, though with the key caveat that this is actually pretty good, something that most SyFy original movies can’t quite claim. They do a nice job of building suspense, and the whole thing is actually pretty believable as far as science fiction goes. Science fiction often suffers from believability issues, and this is something that’s downright plausible compared to most anything we see.

Admittedly, there are problems here. There’s a bit too much of a propensity for dramatics here–sometimes, it reminds me of old Simpsons episodes, where someone, usually a general or the like, would glare into the camera and grate out “Get me Jack Killington,” or something like that. Turbulent Skies is way too much like that for its own good. Plus, a good chunk of this is going to look remarkably familiar--just watch for the plane to get all Skynet after a while and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Still though, leave aside the scenery chewing and the familiarity, and what you’ve got is a good, if clearly low-budget, romp that has a decent idea of what it’s doing, and does so reasonably well. This isn’t one for someone looking for a deep and complex title, but for a lazy Saturday afternoon or a popcorn-muncher with friends, well, Turbulent Skies will fill the bill nicely.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Turbulent Skies a seven out of ten. Although it’s got plenty of missteps and other errors in it, it does do a reasonably good job of what it set out to do. It’s not the best thing you’ll see, but it’s certainly a worthwhile effort from Anchor Bay.

This week saw the announcement of an array of films for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which starts on September 8th.

Leading the pack is Luc Besson’s latest film. Surprisingly, it doesn’t involve guns or hot naked bods. Rather The Lady is a biopic of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy politician who spent over a decade under house arrest and away from her family in the militant Burma. This change of pace for Besson will be an interesting pic. Also debuting will be Alex Payne’s long-awaited follow-up to Sideways, The Descendants, which stars George Clooney, as well as Cronenberg’s Freud/Jung tale A Dangerous Method, and Cannes darling The Artist. And for a complete list of films check out the official site.

The Toronto Film Festival is an essential industry event, and often a platform for releasing some of the biggest independent and arthouse films of the year. It often marks the start of movie awards buzz, and indeed the winner of last year’s festival People’s Choice awards was a little film called The King’s Speech.

Sometimes a movie doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it still has a lot to like about it. That’s about what we’re going to get with Tekken, a movie that doesn’t make much sense, but still features plenty of action. And the folks out at Anchor Bay have sent us out a copy of Tekken to review, a dose of total lack of sense but a big pot of action all in one convenient dose.

Based on the video game, Tekken takes us out to a period of time known as “just after the Terror Wars”, but could also more familiarly be called “next Sunday, A.D.”, because it’s not exactly a really far-flung future from the look of it. Governments have fallen, and have been replaced with corporations–more specifically, eight of them–collectively known as Iron Fist. To settle their differences, and keep the public pacified, war has been replaced with gladiatorial combat. The strongest corporation, the one that took over North America, is called Tekken. But the whole thing is facing its own downfall when one young man is about to rise up against Tekken following the death of his mother. And his rise may well bring Tekken down with it.

There’s plenty of fighting in here. Loads of gunplay, and more than a few examples of set-chewing histrionics so wildly egregious that you’ll be left cringing from the awful. But there’s plenty of action here, and it’s still a very entertaining exercise. Sure, it’s a familiar venture. It’s just like dozens of others before it. But that doesn’t make it any less exhilarating for the repetition.

The familiarity, though, is a bit of a problem. You can already tell where they’re going to go with this, possibly before the movie even starts. I’m not going to spoiler, mostly because I really don’t have to. You’ll have a pretty good idea of who will win within the first, oh, fifteen minutes or so.

You’ve seen this movie a few times, and you’ve probably enjoyed it. If you have, then you’ll love Tekken. If you haven’t, then chances are good you knew you weren’t going to watch it when you saw the first trailer. In fact, it’s a fair bet that your first reaction to the trailer is going to determine your interest in the entire movie. Did you like the trailer? That decides how you’ll feel about Tekken.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, which tends to like familiar action movies set in a dystopic, corporate-controlled world, gives Tekken a seven out of ten. It’s no great film, of course, but it’s a fun, entertaining bolt of action that does the job just fine.

Prepare for a big old chunk of retro, folks, as the folks out at Sony sent me a copy of Das Boot, a thirty year old title that’s getting a new shot of life on Blu-ray. But is it worth the plastic to give it another shot? The answer is an unqualified yes.

Das Boot follows a World War II submarine from the German U-Boat fleet, tasked with patrolling the Atlantic and destroying anything that gets close to Great Britain. They’re having a surprising run of luck, until an unseen enemy gets into the fray, leaving the crew of the U-boat in peril for their very lives.

It seems strange now to cast a World War II movie in which the Germans were both main characters and, in their own way, heroes. I can only imagine what a stir this might have caused thirty years ago.

Watching Das Boot comes with a disturbingly large number of warnings. One, this is just over three hours long, so clear your calendar. It’s also mostly in German with English subtitles, so be prepared for that. Also, turn your receiver down when watching this; cranking the surround on this is very much not recommended. I keep mine at about a quarter off the bottom for normal use, but the sheer number of explosions and water noises and the like made it untenable.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you; for a three hour movie with almost all German dialogue, Das Boot kept hopping right along at an excellent pace, with the perfect amount of suspense intermingled with the action. And, just to round things out, there are also plenty of funny moments in here to boot.

This is actually one of the best movies I’ve seen in quite some time. Sure, it’s got a run time to make Fellowship of the Ring look like a film school short by comparison, and it’s entirely in German, but it’s still quite a bit of fun. This is one of your great war movies, right up there with Saving Private Ryan, just from a different side. It may well be the best movie ever made about a submarine.

The plain and simple here is that, if you’re into war movies, you’re going to absolutely love Das Boot. It’s got violence and comedy and explosions and camaraderie and everything you expect, even if it is mildly disconcerting to actually hope the Germans get out alive in a World War II movie.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Das Boot a full-on ten out of ten; even if you’re not a war movie buff, you might well be by the time you get done with the action-packed and extremely well put together feast that is Das Boot.

Rise of the Planet of The Apes is looking might tight in this film clip where Caesar (Andy Serkis) protects John Lithgow, who plays James Franco’s dad and suffers from Alzheimer. The overall movie takes place in modern San Francisco. Franco’s character goes too far with genetic engineering, which leads to the development of highly intelligent apes. They start a revolution and a war for supremacy. The movie is directed by Rupert Wyatt and also co-stars Frieda Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and Tom Felton, obviously known for playing Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies.