1. Playing For Keeps (FilmDistrict, 2,837 Theaters, 106 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Okay, here’s a film I know absolutely nothing about. I have seen no ads, read no articles, hear nothing about this film.

So, I am going to try an experiment. I am going to try and figure out what the plot of the film is from the poster alone. This should be fun because it is one of the blandest posters I have ever seen.

Okay, Gerard Butler is in it and he name is above the titles. Soooo, romantic comedy? Okay, we do have a tagline. That helps. “This holiday season, what do you really want?”

Now, on to the pictures of the other actors. Judging by the fact that Butler’s picture is the largest, we can assume that the size of the picture on the poster mirrors the impact of the actor in the picture. Dennis Quaid and Jessica Biel’s are rather large, Uma Thurman is small, Catherine Zeta-Jones is tiny.

Okay, here we go. Here’s my shot at the plot: Butler plays a roguish bachelor who plays the field and dates much younger women. However, he feels like he should settle down like his best friend (or possibly older brother), Dennis Quaid, who has left the bachelor life behind and found matrimonial happiness with Uma Thurman. Armed with a new set of priorities. Butler thinks he has his life plan set. Unfortunately, life throws a curveball at him in the form of Zeta-Jones, an age appropriate woman who he feels he should go for, and Biel, a much younger woman who he has a lot in common with but someone Butler is hesitant to pursue because he feels it would be backtracking into his old life. Before the end of the movie, the obvious choice becomes clear to Butler (and the audience) and they live happily ever after.

Let’s see how close I came. Here is the plot synopsis from IMDB:

A former sports star who’s fallen on hard times starts coaching his son’s soccer team as a way to get his life together. His attempts to become an adult are met with challenges from the attractive soccer moms who pursue him at every turn.

Quaid apparently plays a jealous husband. And Biel his ex-wife. Nice. Well, at least I came close with the whole “getting his life together part.”

1.The Tooth Fairy (FOX, 3,344 Theaters, 101 Minutes, Rated PG): My one problem with this film is that it seems to be based on the conceit that Dwayne Johnson, formerly known as The Rock, deliverer of the “People’s Elbow,” in a tutu and a pair of fancy wing would automatically be funny. That logic didn’t really work for Hulk Hogan in Mr. Nanny,so I doubt that it would work here.

Johnson has had some success with the kiddie fare over at Disney (as a matter of fact, I had to look twice to be sure this film wasn’t from Disney as well), so he might bring a lot to it that will rise it above the limited expectations.

Johnson plays a hockey player who, for some reason, is forced to become a tooth fairy. He decides to bring his own style to the job, hilarity ensues, and he learns something in the process.

2.Extraordinary Measures (CBS Films, 2,549 Theaters, 105 Minutes, Rated PG): There was once a time where the cinematic Harrison Ford never met a problem he couldn’t punch in the face. Now, he older, and he’s playing a character faced with a problem that I’m sure he’d like to punch in the face if he could.

It is strange to see Ford in the wise old doctor role. But, hey, outside of Indy, we really don’t want to see him punching out people anymore.

This story is based on the true story of the Crowley family whose children are afflicted with a terrible disease. Ford plays the doctor who is working towards a cure. He also serves as producer on the film.

The film has been a butt of a few jokes since the trailer was release, most especially focusing on Ford’s snotty response to the idea of working through the night to find a cure, but it does seem to be a cut above the typical disease centered movies.

3. Legion (Sony/Screen Gems, 2,476 Theaters, 100 Minutes, Rated R): Let’s see, based purely on the trailer, this one features machine gun-toting angels, elderly women who turn into wall-crawling demons, and another stop on the downward spiral that Dennis Quaid’s career has become. Seriously, in the past 12 months, he’s been in G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, Pandorum, and this one. And as the films get smaller, so do his parts. Yikes. Not a good trajectory

Although, to be fair, this film does have a pretty good cast joining Quaid. Everyone from Paul Bettany to Charles S. Dutton. Too bad the film looks  just awful.

A small town waitress is unknowingly pregnant with the savior of the human race. However, God is pissed at us and doesn’t think we deserve to be saved. He sends a host of angels down to Earth to kill Jesus 2.0. The only thing standing in their way? The Archangel Michael and a group of feisty, angel-fighting humans. 

So, if the baby was placed in the unwed mothers womb the same way the last savior was, then God in this movie is killing his own kid. That makes even less sense than angels using automatic weapons to kill each other with.

1. 2012 (Sony/Columbia, 3,404 Theaters, 158 Minutes, Rated PG-13): The Mayans, rumor has it, belives the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. Roland Emmerich has decided to apply this myth to his disaster movie template and to see what happens.

You might think I am exaggerating, but really. This is how it goes.: a catastrophic event (alien invasion, a giant lizard, a giant snowstorm, the end of the world) causes massive CGI destruction (every major landmark in the world, most of Manhattan, most of Manhattan again plus the rest of the United States, everything in the known world). While this is going on, our stoic yet sensitive hero (Will Smith, Matthew Broderick, Dennis Quaid, John Cusack) is compelled to be reunited with a loved one (their girlfriend, their girlfriend that stabbed him in the back but still loves him anyway, his son, his daughter) and ensure their safety (by blowing up the aliens, by blowing up the lizard, by relocating to Mexico, by getting on a massive space ark).

The rest of the connecting tissue is nonsense on top of nonsense.  Will we see any type of characterization? A good explanation of why the world is ending? Why there is a space arc and where it came from? Probably not.

However, if you love seeing famous landmarks destroyed, then this movie will be for you. You’ll probably get more of that than you could have ever dreamed of. At least 130 minutes of it.

2. Pirate Radio (Focus Features, 882 Theaters, 135 Minutes, Rated R): And here we have the sacrificial lamb to 2012.

This is loosely based on real life events in Britain during the 1960s. As a result of the government shying away from playing pop music in favor of jazz, a bunch of pirate radio stations sprung up in the waters around England and broadcast what the kids wanted to hear.

This film isn’t based on any one story, but a composite of a bunch of them. It involves a wacky bunch of DJs and the like undertaking a bunch of wacky adventures while being all subversive and stuff.

The film is written and directed by Richard Curtis of Love Actually and Notting Hill fame, and the cast if filled with a bunch of cast members from his previous films such as Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, January Jones, and Rhys Ifans, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the token big nmae American in the cast and Nick Frost thrown in for good measure. So it should be entertaining to say the least.

1.Fame (MGM, 3,096 Theaters, 107 Minutes, Rated PG): Not a very good week for originality. We have a remake, what seems like it could be a remake, and a graphic novel adaptation. We will eventually come to a time when every film will be a different version of the same film, half of them starring Will Ferrell.

This is the remake of the 1980 film of the same name. I guess it still revolves around a group of kids at a performing art school.

The main characters are all unknowns, but the teaching staff appear to be a bunch of quasi-famous names, including at least one carry over from the original in Debbie Allen. So it’s got that going for it.

One of the most interesting things about this remake is that the original was rated R and this is rated PG. Have we come so far that what was an R in 1980 is now a PG in 2009? Or have they cleaned this up a little to try and appeal to the High School Musical crowd? Let me know, would you?

2. Surrogates (Touchstone, 2,951 Theaters, 88 Minutes, Rated PG-13): This would be the comic book adaptation of the bunch. It adapts the 2005 Top Shelf miniseries.

It is set in the future where humanity lives their lives through robotic duplicates. When these duplicates start becoming destroyed, a mystery develops.

This is a little deeper than your usual comic book film, dealing with the concept of identity in a digital world. Metaphor, proof that comics aren’t just for kids anymore.

How will this do at the box office? Well, who knows? The concept is good, but if Whiteout is any indication, comic book movies that the general public doesn’t know that much about don’t usually do that well.

3. Pandorum (Overture Films, 2, 506 Theaters, 108 Minutes, Rated R); Finally, we come to the one that should be a remake. Can you guess of which movie?

The crew of a space-faring ship discovers that there is an “Alien” presence aboard. They struggle to find out what it is and find a way to fight it before they are all dead.

At least that is what the ads make it out to look like. Perhaps the film doesn’t really resemble Ridley Scott’s Alien at all. I’m sure there is some kind of twist that separates the movies from each other.

What I am amazed by is that Dennis Quaid is in this. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that he’s getting work, but between this and G.I. Joe, it feels like he is really slumming.

(Updated: Three more photos added below!)

A quintet of pictures from Stephen Sommer’s upcoming G I Joe have hit the web, with the studio dishing them out to various sites. But there’s no need to go clicking all over as we have them all collected in one place for you.

I’m not that impressed with them, though. When some cast photos leaked a few weeks back*, I noted that the Joe team uniforms all looked the same, a vast departure from the look of the action figures/comic/cartoon characters. The newly released photos feature Breaker, played by Saïd Taghmaoui, and Heavy Duty, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, weren’t in the batch of leaked photos, the armor the two are sporting is similar to what was seen in the other photos.

Moving on to the bad guys, we see Christopher Eccelson as Destro, the arms merchant who is the main villain of the film. If fans are waiting to see what he looks like in his famous metal mask, they’ll have to wait as Destro only gets it in the final scenes of the film and its probably a reveal they’re going to hold to their chest as long as possible.

Those who caught those earlier leaked photos will recognize the costumes on Sienna Miller as the Baroness and Byung-hun Lee as the ninja Storm Shadow. Nothing new to see here and that includes nothing new that instills any confidence in the production.

* Which I’m sure that no one right-clicked and saved on their hard drive, because that would be wrong…

Update: Three more pictures of Joe Team members have shown up. The first two of Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) showcase some more shiny black armor. What a surprise. In the last picture General Hawk (Dennis Quaid) is grumpy because Ferris Bueller looks better in a beret than he does.

Via Dark Horizons, Coming Soon, IESB, IGN, Latino Review, MTV Movie Blogs, CHUD, Collider and SlashFilm.