Watching Movie Online

Release Date: January 8, 2010 (limited)
Studio: IM Global, Epic Slap
Director: Rick Jacobson

“Bitch Slap” is a post-modern, thinking man’s throwback to the “B” Movie/Exploitation films of the 1950′s – 70′s as well as a loving, sly parody of the same. Inspired by the likes of “Dragstrip Girl”; “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill”; “Kung Fu Nun” and the pantheon of Blaxploitation films, “Bitch Slap” will mix girls, guns, outrageous action and jaw-dropping visuals with a message… don’t be naughty!

At its core, “Bitch Slap” follows three bad girls (a down-and-out stripper, a drug-running killer and a corporate powerbroker) as they arrive at a remote desert hideaway to extort and steal $200 Million in diamonds from a ruthless underworld kingpin. Things quickly spin out of control as allegiances change, truths are revealed, other criminals arrive for the score, the fate of the world hangs in the balance and they are forced to confront a villain much worse than they ever expected… themselves. It’s the ultimate morality tale as, one by one, they realize the whole she-bang was a set-up and one of them may not even be human…

What also makes “Bitch Slap” different is a complicated “B” story device that runs throughout the film to illuminate character, backstory and relationship histories not previously revealed. Like the film “Memento,” these scene flashbacks take place in reverse, so by the end of the film, you have a wholly different take on who these women are and why they are behaving so badly. Bet you never saw THAT in “Jailbait Babysitter”!

So grab your popcorn and fasten your safety belt. With “Cult Classic” written all over it, “Bitch Slap” is gonna be one wild ride…

Starring: Julia Voth, Erin Cummings, America Olivo, Michael Hurst, Ron Melendez, William Gregory Lee, Minae Noji

Popularity: 26% [?]

Release Date: January 6, 2010 (NY)
Studio: Cinema Guild
Director: Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Ilisa Barbash

A paean to the waning world of the Old West, Sweetgrass captures modern cowboys’ overland journey, wrangling thousands of sheep, as they move across Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, amid sweepingly dramatic vistas and endless skies. Husband and wife filmmakers / anthropologists Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash spent three summers high in the Rockies among the herders and their charges to chronicle this extraordinary 200-mile journey.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Release Date: January 6, 2010 (NY)

Studio: Wynne Films

Director: Mai Iskander

Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, a Coptic Christian community on the outskirts of Cairo. It is the home to 60,000 Zaballeen – Arabic for “garbage people.” Far ahead of any modern “Green” initiatives, the Zaballeen survive by recycling 80 percent of the garbage they collect. When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of its trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community. Filmed over four years, GARBAGE DREAMS reveals a little-known, resourceful and resilient subculture at the moment when its very way of life is threatened. Shortly after viewing the film, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a donation of $1 million to support the work of The Spirit of Youth Association, an organization whose work is highlighted in the documentary.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Release Date: December 18, 2009 (conventional 3D theaters and IMAX 3D)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: James Cameron

“Avatar,” a live action film with a new generation of special effects, takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads an epic battle to save a civilization. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” first conceived the film years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist. Now, after four years of actual production work, “Avatar” delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.

The story’s hero is Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. Bitter and disillusioned, he’s still a warrior at heart. All Jake ever wanted was something worth fighting for, and he finds it in the place he least expected: on a distant world. Jake has been recruited to join an expedition to the moon Pandora, which corporate interests are strip-mining for a mineral worth $20 million per kilogram on Earth. To facilitate their work, the humans use a link system that projects a person’s consciousness into a hybrid of humans and Pandora’s indigenous humanoids, the Na’vi. This human-Na’vi hybrid – a fully living, breathing body that resembles the Na’vi but possesses the individual human’s thoughts, feelings and personality – is known as an “avatar.”

In his new avatar form, Jake can once again walk. His mission is to interact with and infiltrate the Na’vi with the hope of enlisting their help – or at least their acquiescence – in mining the ore. A beautiful Na’vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake’s life, albeit reluctantly, because even in his avatar body, Jake represents to her the human encroachment on the Na’vi’s unspoiled world.

As Jake’s relationship with Neytiri deepens, along with his respect for the Na’vi, he faces the ultimate test as he leads an epic conflict that will decide nothing less than the fate of an entire world.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Release Date: December 11, 2009
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Clint Eastwood

The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa’s underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

Starring:

Morgan Freeman

Matt Damon

Popularity: 10% [?]

Release Date: December 11, 2009
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Director: Tom Ford

Set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, “A Single Man” is the story of George Falconer, a 52 year old British college professor (Colin Firth) who is struggling to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). George dwells on the past and cannot see his future as we follow him through a single day, where a series of events and encounters, ultimately leads him to decide if there is a meaning to life after Jim. George is consoled by his closest friend Charley (Julianne Moore), a 48 year old beauty who is wrestling with her own questions about the future. A young student of George’s, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who is coming to terms with his true nature, stalks George as he feels in him a kindred spirit. “A Single Man” is a romantic tale of love interrupted, the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition, and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.

Starring:

Colin Firth

Julianne Moore

Matthew Goode

Ginnifer Goodwin

Nicholas Hoult

Popularity: 34% [?]

Release Date: December 4, 2009 (limited; expands: Dec. 11; wide: Dec. 25)
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Jason Reitman

From Jason Reitman, the Oscar® nominated director of “Juno,” comes a comedy called “Up in the Air” starring Oscar® winner George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate hatchet man who loves his life on the road but is forced to fight for his job when his company downsizes its travel budget. He is required to spend more time at home just as he is on the cusp of a goal he’s worked toward for years: reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.

Starring:

George Clooney

Vera Farmiga

Anna Kendrick

Jason Bateman

Tamala Jones

Chris Lowell

Popularity: 7% [?]

Release Date: December 4, 2009 (NY)
Studio: Variance Films
Director: Aaron Aites, Audrey Ewell

“Until the Light Takes Us” tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. “Until the Light Takes Us” goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of “Satanists running amok in Europe” to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and beliefs that led to this rebellion against both Christianity and modern culture.

To capture this on film, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived with the musicians for several years, building relationships that allowed them to create a surprisingly intimate portrait of this violent, but ultimately misunderstood, movement. The result is a poignant, moving story that’s as much about the idea that reality is composed of whatever the most people believe, regardless of what’s actually true, as it is about a music scene that blazed a path of murder and arson across the northern sky.

Starring:

Varg Vikernes

Fenriz

Popularity: 6% [?]