If only Dirty Harry were real
The new David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) film, Zodiac, is this week's biggest thriller, based on the true story of the notorious Zodiac killer, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain, Donnie Darko), Robert Downey Jr (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, A Scanner Darkly), and Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count On Me, Rumor Has It). Jim Carrey (Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar) stars in the new Joel Schumacher (Flatliners, Phone Booth) thriller, The Number 23, where he has trouble separating the real world from the fiction he is slowly becoming obsessed with. Another story of obsession, Perfume: The Story of a Murder is about going to the most radical lengths to capture and bottle a woman's scent, and stars Dustin Hoffman (Stranger then Fiction, Straw Dogs and Alan Rickman (Love Actually, Truly Madly Deeply), directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). The Contract is the story of an ex-lawman (John Cusack: Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity) who ends up guarding a hitman (Morgan Freeman: 10 Items or Less, Batman Begins), and a DA (Ray Liotta: Goodfellas) tries to untangle a murder in Slow Burn.
Renaissance is a new animated science fiction film, combining the look of Sin City and the future mythos of Blade Runner, where a cop (Daniel Craig: Casino Royale, Enduring Love) searches for a missing scientist in the year 2054. The highlight of the horror genre this week is Korea's The Host, where a family tries to reclaim their little girl from an amphibious monster, and James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Spike) stars in the chiller Shadow Puppets, where a group awakens locked in an asylum with no memory of their past.
Cashback is one of the smaller films this week, the story of an insomniac who takes a grocery store night job and meets a colorful cast of characters. An ad executive and his hard-partying brother have a wild forty-eight hours in The Long Weekend, and the writers of Seinfeld bring us a madcap caper with an ensemble cast in Live Free or Die.
New to our TV section is the second season of the suburban housewife turned drug dealer comedy Weeds, season three of the Adult Swim cartoon Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, the tenth season of the sci-fi Stargate SG1, and the complete animated slacker comedy Mission Hill.
