Movies Monday!

First up is California Solo, a feelgood film par excellence that finds Robert Carlyle discovering the pulchritudinous joys – lucky sod! – of Hollywood’s new favourite gal, Alexia Rasmussen.
“Lachlan MacAldonich is former Britpop rocker who has settled into a comfortably numb existence in farm country just outside Los Angeles,” reads the blurb. “By day, he works on an organic farm and travels regularly to the city’s farmers’ markets to sell produce. By night, he retreats to his crummy apartment to record Flame-Outs, his podcast that recounts the tragic deaths of great musicians. The only spark in his humdrum existence is Beau, a lovely struggling actress and amateur chef who frequents the Silver Lake farmers’ market.
“One night, Lachlan gets pulled over for a DUI, a charge that dredges up his past drug offence and threatens him with deportation. Lachlan’s only hope of staying in the U.S. is proving that his removal would cause ‘extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen spouse or relative. Lachlan contacts his estranged ex-wife and daughter, raising past demons that he must finally confront.”
 

 
A mere 24 years after first playing him, Bruce Willis returns on February 14, 2013 as the indestructible (tho’ susceptible to male pattern baldness) John McClane in A Good Day To Die Hard. This installment is set in Russia with Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yulia Snigir, Cole Hauser, Amaury Nolasco, Megalyn Echikunwoke and Anne Vyalitsyna among the supporting cast.
 

 
Talking of casts, the stellar one assembled by Dustin Hoffman for his directorial debut, Quartet, includes Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly. The comedic tale of four opera singers reunited in retirement, it’s due here in early January and looks a bit of an old-fashioned hoot.
 

 
Comedy of an altogether darker variety is supplied by John Dies At The End, the big screen version of what started life as a webserial and then morphed into a novel.
“It's a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit,” we’re told. “On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can't.”
 

 
 
It’s been rave reviews all round for The Central Park Five, Ken Burns’ Sundance-approved documentary about the black and latino teenagers convicted in 1989 for raping a white female jogger.
With politicians, pundits and the public baying for blood, the NYPD had quickly found their men who, despite denying the charges and claiming their confessions were beaten out of them, were jailed for between six and 13 years.
What seemed an open and shut case became an appalling racially motivated miscarriage of justice in 2002 when serial rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime.
The Five were released shortly after, but are still battling to be compensated for the years they spent behind bars.
 

 
Continuing with the same theme, and Peter Jackson is the producer of West Of Memphis, the story of the West Memphis Three who are still doing hard time for the satanic murders of three boys in the 1990s.
Eddie Vedder, Metallica and Johnny Depp are among those who believe them to be innocent.
 
 

 
We’re not convinced it’s necessary, but Fede Alvarez’s remake of Sam Raimi’s camp horror classic, Evil Dead, certainly contains the prerequisite amount of gore including a particularly unorthodox tongue piercing.
You need a YouTube account to watch this teaser trailer.
 

 
 
 
Another doc we’re dying to see is Addicted To Fame, which focuses on the film two-legged car crash Anna Nicole Smith was making at the time of her death.
Fact really is stranger than fiction as Smith lurches from one big screen disaster to the next.
A shame because beneath the booze and heavy duty prescription drugs, she seemed a sweet lady.
 
 

 
With the popcorn running out, we’ve just time for a quick Movies Monday peep at the new trailer for Jack Reacher – we hate to say it, but Tom Cruise looks rather good as Lee Child’s hard-bitten hero – and Stoker, a psychological drama starring his ex Nicole Kidman, whose new fire engine red 'do really suits her.
 

 

 
 
Movies Monday thoughts and observations can be sent to @stuartclark66