We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: A proposal gone sour, a night at a remote family home and two people who can barely look each other in the eye? What else could go wrong? A lot. The romantic night James (Scott Speedman) had planned for himself and Kristen (Liv Tyler) had already gone south before they even got to the house, but things take an even more upsetting (and unsettling) turn when an unexpected knock on the door invites a whole host of horror onto the couple.

Super isn’t tied to the world of comics. Writer/director James Gunn didn’t make a satire or a spoof; instead Super is its own extremist beast. The Taxi Driver-inspired religious tale is a gritty, dirty, and dark comedy that just so happens to have the leads sporting superhero costumes. These aren’t your fluffy and perfect men-in-tights leads, but some seriously damaged individuals. There’s a jarring dichotomy to the film and its characters, which is something that split both critics and audiences back in April. Frank D’Arbo, a.k.a The Crimson Bolt, is a sympathetic and understandable protagonist, but you question his sanity. Libby, a.k.a. Boltie, gains great glee from slicing up goons in the bloodiest ways possible, and yet has an endearing charm to her psychopathic and wish-fulfillment ambitions. These are repellant characters on the outside, but understandably unstable in the inside. Here’s what James Gunn had to say about the fluctuating tone, writing a character driven film versus a set-piece driven film, and making possible psychotics sympathetic in Super:

IFC Films has released the first trailer for The Ledge, a psycho-sexual religious infidelity forced-suicide thriller starring Sons of Anarchy‘s Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler and Patrick Wilson. The latter plays a man driven mad with jealous rage after his wife (Tyler) falls for her handsome, grungy new boss. What’s most interesting about the project is that it’s from director Matthew Chapman, who has not directed a film since the late 1980s, a decade in which he made several sexually-charged thrillers, including the 1980 Helen Mirren vehicle Hussy. In fact, Chapman hasn’t done anything of great significance since since 2003, when he penned the John Cusack courtroom thriller Runaway Jury. But here he is, with a quality cast and a movie that appears to deliver some tense moments. Good for him, I say.

Everywhere you look there’s another superhero movie these days. Countless studio dollars, a stream of big stars and endless articles have been expended on the subject. Thor, Captain America and the Green Lantern headline an upcoming summer movie season that’s chock-full of various forms of masked avengers. Concurrently, there’s arisen a far less prolific counter-industry of satirically oriented films, such as Kick Ass, that attempt an indie-friendly examination of the questionable sanity and real world practicality of these figures. It’s these latter films that I’ve personally flocked to, having long-grown tired of the formulaic non-Christopher Nolan big-budget superhero aesthetic. Thus, James Gunn’s Super is – in the same vein as protagonist Frank’s heavenly calling to justice – a gift from above. In framing the birth of a real-life superhero as a disturbed man’s religious awakening, the Slither filmmaker gets to the heart of the grandiose self-absorption at the core of superherodom. To don a mask and tights, formulate a nickname and spend your nights prowling the streets, seeking out drug dealers and other unsavory elements, you’d have to be, well, more than a little bit crazy. Frank (Rainn Wilson), the luckless, depressed everyday schlub central figure here fits the bill, driven to unhinged rage when his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) leaves him for scuzzy drug kingpin Jacques (Kevin Bacon).

“It’s the size of Texas, Mr. President.” Does it get any better than that? Of course it doesn’t. Armageddon is without doubt one of the finest motion pictures ever created by humans. If that snippet of dialogue made audible by Mr. Billy Bob Thornton himself didn’t convince you, maybe this will. “You think we’ll get hazard pay for this?” I’m going to pretend you’ve been living under a rock since 1998 and summarize one of the greatest summer blockbuster films ever made for you. So Billy Bob Thorton is sort of the head honcho of NASA and one day he’s supervising a standard in-space satellite repair when all of a sudden a meteor shower rips his crew to pieces. We then cut to New York City, which seems to always be the city that gets destroyed in big budget disaster movies, and sure enough the meteors tear through the city demolishing Grand Central Station, decapitating the Chrysler Building [insert Unstoppable joke here] and finally, in a moment fraught with unintended significance, the camera slowly zooms out to show the twin towers of the World Trade Center on fire. Then we’re treated to quickly cut scenes of people yelling and running through hallways and trying to figure out why Keith David keeps calling. Essentially, a giant asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and no matter where it hits, it will wipe out all life as we know it. Jason Isaacs convinces the President that the best plan is to [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

A few bits of news have come down the pipe so close together that it is almost impossible they aren’t related. Ever since Michael Bay’s blockbuster hit Armageddon came out in 1998, film fans all over the planet have been clamoring for further adventures from Ben Affleck and company. Well, it’s now looking like things are coming together in a way that will allow everyone to get their wish. After a very public break, Aerosmith front man and current judge on TV’s American Idol Steven Tyler has confirmed via his Twitter account that the band is going to head back into the studio together. Tyler stated, “AEROFREAKSREJOICE, Joe & I sent smoke signals… shot the shit & chewed the fat for the last year… but just smoked the peace pipe for an hour today and are on our way to rock’in your fkin worlds this summer by locking our selves [sic] away somewhere w/ guitars and drums.” Aerosmith has had several hits going all the way back to the 60s, but they are, of course, best known for their contribution to the Armageddon soundtrack, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” Almost concurrent to this announcement, Tyler’s daughter Liv talked to FOX about she and her father trying to make some music together. “We sing all the time together. We always talk about doing something together. Sometimes when he is in the studio he’ll say ‘come down and sing backup or sing with me on this song.’ But I’m usually [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

There are certain expectations that come with any filmmaker’s work based off the movies that have come before. Their styles, attitudes, and overall creative skill-set are usually visible to some degree throughout their career. James Gunn is no different. His last feature, Slither, was an incredibly fun and gross monster movie that maintained a good balance between the laughs and the horror. That combined with his previous efforts should leave you unsurprised that his latest would include copious amounts of bodily fluids, a complete disregard for good taste, and a face made of fecal matter floating in a bowl. What you don’t expect to see are scenes of real beauty, wit, and sincerity floating in a sadly disjointed mess of a film.

The film I’m by far the most excited to see at the upcoming SXSW is James Gunn‘s dark superhero tale, SUPER. Everything about it sounds like the perfect film for nerds that crave divisive dark humor. Rainn Wilson as a wrench-wielding, head-busting vigilante? Awesome. Ellen Page as his annoying and narcissistic sidekick? Even better. The best part, though? Kevin Bacon as a slimy looking drug dealer. It’s been quite sometime since Bacon has done some solid scenery chewing and played the bad guy, which he rarely often does. I mean, who would have thought that kid from Footloose would one day be playing a charming wife-stealing drug dealer? Check out the trailer below.

One of the few minor highlights of Comic-Con this year was the charming and charmingly foul-mouthed Super from the totally well-adjusted mind of James Gunn. The film stars Rainn Wilson as a man who loses his wife to drugs and another man and straps on the spandex in order to get her back. Because, as we all know, every hot woman (including Liv Tyler) is helpless to resist even the schlubbiest of men if they’re skin tight in red tights and a cape. Brace yoursef. You, too, may not be able to resist sliding your tongue against the computer screen in an inappropriate manner when you see Dwight Schrute ready to fight for justice.

The real-life superhero movie is becoming a genre unto itself. With Special, Defendor, Kick-Ass and now James Gunn’s Super – the premise of regular men and women putting on costumes and fighting crime seems to be steadily growing. There hasn’t been a lot of information about the film, and without that information, it’s seemed a little generic. However, with the footage shown at Comic-Con this morning, James Gunn took a monkey wrench to that idea’s forehead and then shoved its grandmother out of her wheelchair. After all, if you’re going to make a film, why not make an “F’d up, low rent Watchmen“?

It’s 1964 in a Pennsylvania town. The Beatles and the rest of the British invasion have taken over the pop radio waves and encouraged a lot of small rock bands to dream big. One such band is the Oneders (pronounced Wonders, but commonly as O’Needers). When drummer Guy “Skitch” Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) joins the band with Jimmy (Jonathon Schaech), Lenny (Steve Zahn), the Bass Player (Ethan Embry) and Jimmy’s doting girlfriend Faye (Liv Tyler) they inadvertently turn one of Jimmy’s slow ballads into a fast-paced pop song, and before they know it are touring the country with a hit song.

Writer/Director James Gunn has done many things. Most recently, he’s become a beloved Twitter celebrity and delivered the uber-popular web series PG Porn. But beyond that, he makes movies.

Making them more “The don’t really know them that well, but we did meet them once’s.”

It’s been a few days, sure, but you know that you can’t resist another wonderfully packed edition of the Early Edition…

In the tradition of X-Men and Spider-Man, this version of The Incredible Hulk is a solid adaptation for the big screen that retains its comic book feel.

Aren’t you fed up yet with Marvel comic book heroes? Well, the folks in Hollywood and at Marvel Studios don’t seem to think so, as The Incredible Hulk rolls out Friday only weeks after the big success of that other Marvel hero, Iron Man.

After the emotionally draining experience that was Iron Man in early May, the fanboy inside of me was sure that there was no way that Marvel Studios could go two-for-two in the Summer of ’08. Go figure, I was wrong.

After being in comic books, on television and in a feature film in 2003, the Hulk franchise is getting rebooted. Like the television series, this film finds Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) on the run, trying to discover a cure for the gamma radiation that turns him into the Hulk when he gets angry.

I like a good horror movie, so I am a bit conflicted when it comes to the movie The Strangers.

Watching the “heroes” of The Strangers stick around to get butchered just gets silly. So why not get silly with the movie by knocking a few back.