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The Punisher, Frank Castle, continues his vigilantism against the mob and disfigures crime boss Billy Russoti who takes on the alias Jigsaw and sets out to kill Castle. Castle must simultaneously deal with a taskforce sent in by the United States government to deal with him. |||| Marvel Comics’ vigilante character The Punisher gets another big-screen chance in this third film incarnation of the character, this time from Hooligans director Lexi Alexander and Lionsgate Entertainment. Rome’s Ray Stevenson dons the skull T-shirt in this outing, which sets the antihero in New York against the scarred villain Jigsaw (Dominic West). Wayne Knight heads up the supporting cast as Microchip, the Punisher’s trusted weapons expert, with Doug Hutchison appearing as Looney Bin Jim, a second-tier villain out of the Marvel universe.

In Columbia Pictures’ comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Kevin James stars as the title character, a single, suburban dad, trying to make ends meet as a security officer at a New Jersey mall. It’s a job he takes very seriously, though no one else does. When Santa’s helpers at the mall stage a coup, shutting down the megaplex and taking hostages (Paul’s daughter and sweetheart among them), Jersey’s most formidable mall cop will have to become a real cop to save the day.

Barkley Michaelson is in a deep life rut. He’s struggling to finish his PhD thesis when his father, the learned Eli Michaelson, wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Barkley and his mother, Sarah, a renowned forensic psychiatrist, now have the ill-fortune of living with a man-eating monster whose philandering ways have gotten less and less discreet. As if Barkley’s world is not bad enough, on the eve of his father receiving the Nobel, Barkley is kidnapped and the requested ransom is the $2,000,000 in Nobel prize money. Needless to say, Eli refuses to pay it and so starts a venomous tale of familial dysfunction, lust, betrayal and ultimately revenge. In the words of Michel De Montaigne, the 16th century philosopher: “There is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead.”

Shooting for Nobel Son started on Thursday, October 6, 2005 in Venice Beach, California and ended on November 17, 2005. The official trailer and website were released on January 12, 2007.

At long last, Madea returns to the big screen in TYLER PERRY’S MADEA GOES TO JAIL. This time America’s favorite irreverent, pistol-packin’ grandmomma is raising hell behind bars and lobbying for her freedom… Hallelujer! After a high-speed freeway chase puts Madea (TYLER PERRY) in front of the judge, her reprieve is short-lived as anger management issues get the best of her and land her in jail. A gleeful Joe (TYLER PERRY) couldn’t be happier at Madea’s misfortune. But Madea’s eccentric family members the Browns (DAVID and TAMALA MANN) rally behind her, lending their special "country" brand of support. Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Hardaway (DEREK LUKE) is on the fast track to career success. But Hardaway lands a case too personal to handle – defending young prostitute and former drug addict Candace Washington (KEISHA KNIGHT PULLIAM) – and asks his fiancee and fellow ADA Linda Holmes (ION OVERMAN) to fill in on his behalf. When Candace ends up in jail, Madea befriends the young woman, protecting her in a "motherly" way as only Madea can.

The premise is simple: JCVD is in the middle of a child custody battle with the latest of his many wives. He’s out of money, his lawyers are about to drop the case, and the judge is inclined to give custody of his daughter over to his ex-wife. Even his daughter doesn’t want to live with him because she is embarrassed by her father.

His agent can’t find him a decent production, the scripts he’s working are full of holes and don’t make sense, and the untalented directors don’t respect him. He returns to his childhood home of Brussels: where he’s still considered a national icon. Local hero, Jean-Claude Van Damme, is at rock bottom.

When he goes into a post office to arrange a wire transfer to his law firm, he encounters a real-life hostage situation. Due to an unfortunate mistake, the police believe HE is responsible for the crime. As the events are played from different perspectives, we see Jean Claude in a desperate situation, acting as a hero as he tries to protect the hostages, while his fame and presumed guilt force him to take up the role of a negotiator. As media circuits pickup the story and a press circus engulfs the town, Van Damme’s parents are brought in to talk him down amidst a huge crowd of supportive fans and the hungry attention of the international community. Trapped between three unstable criminals and an over-anxious police force, Van Damme is forced to play a different kind of hero by accepting responsibility for crimes he didn’t commit and the life mistakes that he did.

Clint Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski, a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Kowalski is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy old man, who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor Tao, a young Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang member cousin, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Tao’s family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood.

The team behind the global phenomenon The Da Vinci Code returns for the highly anticipated Angels & Demons, based upon the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. Tom Hanks reprises his role as Harvard religious expert Robert Langdon, who once again finds that forces with ancient roots are willing to stop at nothing, even murder, to advance their goals. Ron Howard again directs the film, which is produced by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and John Calley. The screenplay is by Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp. When Langdon discovers evidence of the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati – the most powerful underground organization in history – he also faces a deadly threat to the existence of the secret organization’s most despised enemy: the Catholic Church. When Langdon learns that the clock is ticking on an unstoppable Illuminati time bomb, he jets to Rome, where he joins forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and enigmatic Italian scientist. Embarking on a nonstop, action-packed hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even to the heart of the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra will follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that mark the Vatican’s only hope for survival.

A loose remake of 12 Angry Men (1957), set in a Russian school. 12 jurors are struggling to decide the fate of a Chechen teenager who allegedly killed his Russian stepfather. Stepfather took teenager to live with him to Moscow, during Chechnya war, in which teenager lost his parents. The jurors: a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others represent the fragmented society of modern day Russia.A stray bird (a touch of New Age cinema) is flying above the jurors’ heads, alluding to tolerance.

A young farmer is tempted by the charms of a sophisticated city woman, who suggests to him that his dull wife might accidentally drown. He considers this plan, and imagines what his life might be like if he went to the big bad city.

Based on the famous Leopold and Loeb murder case (from which two other films, COMPULSION and SWOON, were also derived), ROPE both challenges and terrifies the audience. Alfred Hitchcock disdained the whodunit crime story, which he felt lacked emotional force, and ROPE shows the director’s preference for letting the audience know more than the characters onscreen. The film opens as two young men (Farley Granger and John Dall) strangle a friend just to prove they’re intellectually capable of committing the perfect crime. To add to the amusement, they hide the body in a trunk that will serve as the dinner table for a party honoring the deceased. The film hones in on an hour and a half of the party, with the constantly moving camera capturing the changing emotional atmosphere as the guests grow increasingly concerned about the fate of the missing boy. ROPE is a directorial tour de force, blending complex camera movement with intricate staging to present the entire story in near-real time in one location. Notably, the adaptation of the play by Patrick Hamilton was written by perennial Hitchcock actor Hume Cronyn.