When you think coming-of-age tales about teenage girls, you don’t typically think about sharp-witted assassins and brutal murder-for-hire, but that’s absolutely the case for Violet and Daisy, which stars Saoirse Ronan and Alexis Bledel. Obsessed with a pop idol named Barbie Sunday, the titular BFFs are everything you’d expect from teenage girls in the big city, except instead of babysitting and pet-watching for extra cash, they’re killing people.

And because they need money to buy the latest Barbie Sunday fashion, they take on a seemingly easy mark (James Gandolfini), only to find out that there’s much more than meets the eye to this gig. Honestly, I can’t remember ever watching a trailer for a film about assassins and thinking, “My God, that looks so sweet and inspiring.” What can I say? I’ve got the soul of an old romantic.

Danny Trejo also stars, so I believe that we are required by law to see this.

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Stimulus Whackage

Take it from this reviewer, there’s no finer date movie this season than Killing Them Softly. You and your special lady can hold each other close as Brad Pitt opens Italian guys’ skulls with a shotgun! Interlace fingers as you thrill to bloated Ray Liotta getting his teeth kicked in by a fat rapper! Heck, bring grandma and the kids! They’ll love James Gandolfini talking about cutting up hookers! And the best part is, it’s family entertainment that’s not just fun, it comes with an important message. Namely, “Everything sucks and people are assholes the end.”

If that sounds like a negative critique, it’s not, I loved this movie. Killing Them Softly is like that angry song you loved when you were 15, or that angry poem you wrote when you were 15. It’s a crime story-as-political-allegory that’s about as nuanced as a middle finger and as subtle as a pistol whipping, but what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in panache, consistency, and consistently graphic skull trauma. The main point director Andrew Dominik is making, that politics is just as messy and amoral for foul-mouthed, shit-smelling murderers as it is for candidates wearing American flag pins, isn’t a particularly unique or insightful one, but then neither is “Eat the Rich.” Tight, fast, brutal, and gleefully immature, like my lovemaking, it’s sort of a cinematic Motörhead song, not especially smart, but there’s a certain poetry to getting punched in the face. Art in the same way that a brick through the window has a beauty that transcends the thrower’s justification.

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NOOOO! Not Scoot McNairy!

After Seven Psychopaths turned out to be more about fartsy navel fingering than actual ownage, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly seems like it might be Fall’s last hope for a shoot ‘em up (release date: November 30th). It stars Brad Pitt as a hitman and James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta as a couple bad guys, plus Gloansy McGloane from The Town, and really, you don’t hire Gloansy McGloane unless he’s going to die violently.  He’s like a fat Irish Michelle Rodriguez. Less spice, more grit. Anyway, the latest trailer is below, and it has murder and Johnny Cash. That’ll do, Pitt, that’ll do.

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"I'm telling you, it does exist. Just a couple inches inside, then curl back towards yourself and feel for the fleshy thing."

After the jump, I’ve got the first trailer for Killing Them Softly, from Chopper/Assassination of Jesse James director Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, and Richard Jenkins. Oh, and Slaine, the fat Boston rapper who was in The Town. Anyway, everyone loved it at Cannes, so if you don’t like it, you probably aren’t doing enough cocaine just don’t have a European sensibility. It actually looks pretty great, but it’s fitting that James Gandolfini is in it, because I feel like we saw a very similar plot in a Sopranos episode.

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Welcome to the Rileys, starring Tony Soprano and Bella Swan, opened to middling reviews at Sundance in January (Adam Duritz was there!) and opens in limited release this weekend.  RopeofSilicon was able to obtain this red-band clip, and boy, Kristen Stewart sure has a potty mouth. She goes on and on about a guy trying to F her in the A, even though she says he has a pencil D, and then she’s all “F this” and “F that” and “I have to go take an Fing P.”

My word, has she been hanging out with ethnic wolves again?  A sparkling white Mormon vampire would never do such dirty things. What kind of girl does this guy think she is, Anne Hathaway?