The Adventures of Gunny Sgt. Swagger

After several weeks without gunfire, we've brought in the Oscar winner Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directed Shooter, where a Marine sniper (Mark Wahlberg: The Departed, The Italian Job) is framed for an attempted presidential assassination. Craig Brewer, who also attracted a lot of Oscar attention with Hustle & Flow, directed the story of a wayward girl (Christina Ricci: Monster, Pumpkin) and the blues man (Samuel L. Jackson: Pulp Fiction, Snakes on a Plane) who tries to save her in Black Snake Moan. Bernie Mac (Ocean's Eleven, Bad Santa) and Terrence Howard (Crash, Idlewild) star in the true sports uplift story of 1970's swim coach Jim Ellis in Pride, who inspired a team of kids in inner-city Philadelphia. Similarly, Peaceful Warrior is the story of an Olympic-bound athlete taught an enlightening secret by the mysterious Socrates (Nick Nolte).

The Bow is the new picture by Kim Ki-Duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring; 3-Iron), centered on the relation between a sixty year old man and the young woman he'd raised since she was six, and intends to marry. The new romantic comedy Four Last Songs stars Stanley Tucci (The Terminal, Shall We Dance) and Rhys Ivans (Danny Deckchair, Enduring Love) in a story about musicians and muses, and Wedding Wars is a comedy about the debate over gay marriage. The two new horror films this week are James Wan's (Saw) haunted ventriloquist dummy movie Dead Silence, and the horror mocumentary Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which is both an actual slasher film and a Scream-style deconstruction of the slasher genre.

Out two new documentaries are Something to Cheer About, about the first all-black basketball team to win a state championship circa 1955, and Darwin's Nightmare, focusing on the introduction of new predators in Tanzania's Lake Victoria depleting the local food stock. New television releases include the first season faux-psychic investigators in Psych, as well as the fourth season of Reno 911! and the third season of Monk.