We are looking down a barrel of excitement with the new official poster from Jason Statham’s Safe. From producer Lawrence Bender of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill comes another thriller about an ex-operative’s (Statham) struggle to protect an adolescent girl and the vital safe combination she possesses. She is just too cute for words. Safe opens in movie theaters April 27, 2012.

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.

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.

We got a real doozy from the folks out at Warner Brothers, who sent over a copy of Unknown for us to review. I was glad to get this one in as it came out around the same time as something else–just what I don’t remember–so I definitely wanted the opportunity to catch this one.

Unknown follows Dr. Martin Harris, played here by Liam Neeson, who’s been doing a surprisingly able job as an action hero pretty much since his Fallout 3 voice work.  Anyway, Doc Harris got in a car accident out in Berlin, but it’s having a surprising effect. Not on Harris so much as everyone around him…who for some reason seems to have no idea who he is. But worse, he’s now being trailed by assassins, which means he’s got to not only run for his life, but at the same time figure out just what exactly happened to him in that car accident, what caused it, and how he can get his life back from it.

This is a Dark Castle picture, interestingly enough, which has given me some horror flicks that I’m personally very fond of, stuff like Ghost Ship, Orphan, and the House on Haunted Hill remake. So it’s certainly a surprise to see them engaging in more of a suspense / thriller sort of concept. I certainly wondered how they would fare in executing what was, for them, a somewhat divergent course of movie action.

And indeed, in the early going, they do a nice job of building tension. Something is very clearly going on here and it’s a definite mystery. They keep showing things in bits and pieces, which clearly fits with the overall theme of poor Martin trying to piece together just what exactly is going on. We’re just as much in the dark as he is, and that’s disturbing, but also quite clever.

And by the end of it, we’re going to find out something impressively sinister about the whole thing, and of course I’m not going to spoiler it for you. But believe me, it’s going to be quite worth the watching. A surprise it may well have been, but a welcome surprise, make no mistake about that.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this welcome surprise a full ten out of ten for putting up an incredible show, and for showing that there’s more to Dark Castle than just horror flicks. I’m really rather impressed with this, and seeing Liam Neeson’s career noticeably expand is a welcome sight.

Oh, a doubly good reason to be happy emerges today, folks, as we’ve got a lovely combination of joy coming our way. The combination in question is “Spanish horror” and “the IFC“, by way of Kidnapped. They may call it Sequestrados over in Spain, but for us, it’s Kidnapped, and it’s all kinds of awesome.

Kidnapped follows a family who’s recently moved into a new house. A stressful time, sure, but when the three of them get reasonably settled in, they have a nice family dinner to celebrate. Of course, it doesn’t last long when a group of armed men bursts into the family’s new house and breaks up the celebration by taking the entire family hostage. They’ve come for money, but they’ll get a lot more than that when the family starts fighting back.

You know when you kick your movie’s first five minutes off with a semi-conscious guy with his hands tied behind his back and his head in a tied-shut plastic bag, you know you’re in for something really big and impressive. It’s too unaccountably bizarre not to be impressive.

But it only gets substantially more so from there, and when I say more so, I mean, “more so”. It’s only going to get more violent, more nerve-wracking, and more downright unnerving from its already mind-blowing beginning. It’s easily one of the most aggressively disturbing thrillers I’ve run into in a long time. You could call this horror, sure as you’re born, but that’s almost a misnomer. This is a pure, wild hunk of thriller, and if you want stuff that will keep you up at night, this one should qualify.

I’ve always said that the scariest movies are the ones that feature events that might actually happen to you at some point. While being chased through the woods by an undead juggernaut with a machete and a kill count the size of Texas isn’t too likely, and thus not scary, getting your house broken into by thugs who mean to take your money and threaten your family to ensure your compliance is the stuff of front page news, and thus, is incredibly scary.

The Spanish have already shown their incredible talent for thrillers and horror film, and Kidnapped will not let you down if you’re fond of the scary. The IFC bringing this one into wider release is a development that’s just insanely welcome, and if you want something that will make you cringe in your seat, this is exactly the stuff you’ve been waiting for.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Kidnapped a full ten out of ten for being an intense and thoroughly plausible thriller that will leave you checking your door locks for days afterward. The IFC’s really got a winner with this one.

So the folks out at Sony sent a copy of Sniper: Reloaded out our way, which you just saw my cohort Kenna give away. Will you want a copy of it yourself? Stick around, because I’m going to fill you in on what you’re missing.

Sniper: Reloaded follows Sergeant Brandon Beckett, son of legendary sniper Thomas Beckett, who’s been sent to rescue a farmer from disputed territory somewhere in the Congo. But when a sniper ambushes Beckett and his men, leaving Beckett the sole survivor, he’ll have to learn his father’s craft–and from his father’s old instructor, no less–to go forth and bag himself a sniper before said sniper can finish what he started in the Congo.

As action movies go, this is some pretty good stuff. A little more adventure than action, though, because a hefty chunk of the first third is focused more on a journey than anything else. But still, it’s pretty good stuff.

Oddly enough, for a movie about soldiers and snipers, there won’t be a whole lot of gunplay going on, which is actually kind of weird. It’s downright disconcerting that a movie that’s actually called “Sniper: Reloaded” doesn’t really have all that much reloading going on. Some might say that this is a reflection on the nature of a sniper itself–a sniper’s highest goal is to land a kill with every shot, thus not needing a whole lot of ammo in the first place.

And I’ll give them due credit for this one: they really know how to do some interesting plot twists. There are a few good surprises in here that I didn’t see coming, though there are also a couple good surprises that I did see coming, which does kind of diminish the overall effect.

Still though, Sniper: Reloaded does put up a good fight, even if it does get a little predictable at times. It’s play off some old action movie riffs, but it does do a few new and interesting things that I–and probably you–won’t see coming, so it will do a decent job as far as action movies with a little bit of adventure and thriller thrown in just for good measure.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this half-empty magazine of a movie a six out of ten for doing a fair job of things, but sticking just a little too hard to the conventions to be anything truly impressive.

First off, a happy Good Friday to all our readers who celebrate it out there, and though it made the pickings today somewhat sparse, I managed to take advantage of the day to get an eyeful of Hanna, which will turn out to be pretty impressive, for the most part.

Hanna takes us out to Finland, where sixteen year old title character Hanna has been living with her father. Her father, meanwhile, has an unusual purpose in mind for his little girl. He’s been training her to be an assassin most of her life. Eventually, Hanna finds herself “ready”, and tells her father the same, kicking off a series of events in which Hanna is picked up by CIA agent Marissa Wiegler, who takes her to a safe house in Morocco. Marissa has a mission: to kill Hanna’s father, as he knows a secret that can’t be made public. But Hanna’s got her own mission: to kill Marissa. Who will kill who? Who will survive? And what does Hanna’s father know that makes him of such interest to the CIA?

One thing that’s clear, even just from the trailers, is that this thing has a lot of action going on in it. That’s plenty clear. And you’ll get a whole lot of wild freaky gymnastics out of the film’s lead, who frankly I don’t even recognize.  Indie fans and action fans alike are going to go absolutely bughouse over this one because there’s so much action in it, and from relative unknowns. It took me a stop on the IMDB to finally recognize both Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett

Though sometimes, the action is a little hard to swallow; Saoirse Ronan, the girl playing Hanna, is a little on the preposterous side as she flings herself headlong into action films yet doesn’t quite seem to have mastered how to actually show emotion while she’s doing it. I understand that part of this is related to the plot, but normally, when you’re to the point where you’re kicking a guy in the head, you expect at least a little bit of an angry look. Though it can be said that this is a really masterful move on her part–and frankly, I won’t argue with those who do–I just found it stretching things a bit.

And the worst part is, by the time you get to the end, anyone who cracks a “teenage mutant ninja” joke will actually not be too far off. I hate it when off-color jokes become stark reality.

Still though, Hanna is going to provide a great, and only slightly trippy, action thriller romp that will keep most anyone satisfied. I do, however, find they dropped the ball a bit with the ending by making it not so much end as stop. Normally this is a symptom of survival horror fare in which the world continues on but our look at it is complete, but in an action thriller I do expect a bit more of a defined ending.

These are minor problems to say the least, and easily ninety percent of Hanna is a terrific movie that will bust you in the metaphorical chops, even if it leaves you metaphorically bleeding by the side of the metaphorical road with the ending.

The Screenhead Ten Scale in turn gives Hanna a nine out of ten for being mostly an absolute jewel of action fare, but with a couple of small nicks that keeps it shy of a really great movie.

We’re carrying on with a look at Scream, ahead of the grand resurgence of Scream 4 this Friday, as we segue into Scream 2, a copy of which the folks at Lions Gate sent out for us to review. And while this one is starting to wear thin, there’s still quite a bit to enjoy here, so settle in for more of the grand meta-fun that is Scream 2.

Scream 2 takes us back to Woodsboro, where Gail Weathers’ book, The Woodsboro Murders, has been published, and now made into a feature film called Stab. Stab’s doing pretty well at the box office, but this example of art-imitating-life-imitating-art-imitating-life isn’t going to go over well with the killer known as Ghostface, even though we did sort of see Ghostface put paid to back at the end of the previous Scream. Sort of.

Once again, Scream 2 will be a marvelously twisted meta-fest, as we get all sorts of commentary on the natures of Hollywood and movie adaptations of books and how things can get confused when life imitates art, and then only gets weirder when art imitates life imitating art. Plus, of course, for the horror buffs there will be plenty of blood and stabbings to go around. Lots and lots of stabbings.

Plus we’ll get extra fun here, including the return of most of the cast, including former brief mention (now current plot point) Cotton Weary. As well as a whole new set of rules–the rules of the sequel: a bigger body count and more elaborate deaths.

You can see what I mean, though, where it’s clearly all starting to wear just a little thin. It’s the original Scream pretty much the second time, except now they’ve traded innovation for sheer scope. It’s bigger, louder, bloodier, a bit more impressive, and frankly, you can see every jot and tittle coming. Every false start, every red herring…by the time you get to the end, the whole thing is starting to feel like you’ve been here already. The reason you’re feeling that is because, for the most part, you have been here already. Some parts of it are lifted whole and breathing from the original with really only minor alterations.

Still though, it’s a pretty exciting romp, and the last fifteen minutes or so will be packed full to bursting with sparks and shots and blood and even a couple minor explosions, which means it will be great for a night home at the movies.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the respectable if somewhat tarnished Scream 2 a seven out of ten. It’s certainly not what the first one was, nor nearly as significant, but it certainly put on a bang-up show in the meantime.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a hooker, and thought that Pretty Woman was a ridiculous farce, you’ll do quite a bit better with X. The folks out at IFC sent over a copy of X for us to review, and though, in the beginning, it’ll start a little weird and rocky, the main plot will get going soon enough.

X follows a couple of hookers–one a cynical veteran and the other a relative newcomer–who find themselves working a profitable threesome together one night when their john is abruptly shot in a business deal gone wrong. The rest of the night will be a downright disaster for these two women, and you’ll be there right along side them.

First off, folks, keep the kids way, way far away from this one unless you like the thought of having a whole lot of explaining to do. The first five minutes will be largely comprised of a bizarre sex performance to an audience of a roomful of well-heeled middle aged ladies. The poster alone shows you what’s going on here.

X isn’t the normal kind of thing we’ve seen from the IFC of late–this is no horror flick, in no uncertain terms–it’s a thriller with a few good elements of crime drama mixed in there. Though the content is deeply adult in nature, it’s still well worth the watch if for no other reason than it’s very deep and well put together. Gritty is this film’s second nature, and it’s going to put on the best gritty show it can. A movie so hard boiled it makes Easter eggs look like omelettes by comparison, X brings drama and thrills to the proceedings in a thoroughly believable–and thoroughly authentic–fashion. It’s believable, and that’s the best part about the whole thing. Can I say it’s absolutely authentic? No, I’ve never been a hooker. But I can believe this is what it would look like. I can believe this because X is a stark, but sharp, little thriller that will do a nice job of keeping your attention quite thoroughly riveted, and that’s quite good enough by me. It should be good enough for you too.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this gritty package of authentic thriller with just a pinch of crime drama thrown in an eight out of ten–this one is going to be terrific for anyone who likes your standard British crime drama, as well as most anyone else with a taste for action and thriller.

You know when you wake up in the middle of a wrecked car in the woods that something significant has happened. Did you cause the wreck in question? Were you here all along? And as you start to piece together the circumstances that led up to that significant something that got you in a wrecked care in the woods in the first place, possibilities, some more horrifying than others come to mind. And that’s what we’re dealing with with Wrecked, a copy of which the folks out at the IFC sent over for me to review for you guys today.

Wrecked follows a man who’s ended up in the situation I described above. The only problem is, he doesn’t remember how he got in that wrecked car in the first place. He’s also trapped inside it. Oh, and there’s a corpse in the back seat. Named George. And our boy’s got worse problems than that afoot–even assuming he manages to get out of that wrecked car without freezing to death or starving to death or dying from his injuries, he’s got to get his memory back to boot. And he may not like what he finds on the other side when he does.

It’s hard to believe that a movie–any kind of decent movie–can be constructed with a setting that is about one third comprised of “wrecked car: interior”, and yet, here we are. And by the time our boy sets off on his journey of self-discovery (and the discovery that he’s not exactly the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer with), it’s not hard to start wondering just where exactly Wrecked is going with all this.

But at the same time, it’s that sense of mystery, that strange feeling that you’re so lost, that actually, oddly, adds something to the horror this time around. I know it’s bizarre, but it actually scares me more, having no idea what’s going on, that vague feeling that I’m going around in circles with this plot…thinking about it leaves me very ill at ease.

And thankfully, they’ve got a proper actor handling this–what amounts to, anyway–one man show. Adrien Brody is going to do a great job here, and you should be duly impressed once you see just what it is he does.

Unsettling, folks, that is the word of the day. As a horror movie, this one doesn’t have the punch you’d expect, and as a thriller it doesn’t quite have the thrills you’d expect either. But for sheer unease, well, you’re not going to get much better than this. This is dark stuff. It’s chilling. It’s downright creepy in patches, but man, one thing it’s not, is dull. It kept me right until the end, even when I was lost and didn’t quite get it, I was still interested in keeping up.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Wrecked an eight out of ten–though it may be thoroughly baffling in some parts, IFC will still manage to bring in a sublimely creepy event that can’t help but keep you watching. Special note: just got word from IFC that says it’ll be available out at IFC Center this Friday, and streaming now.