Clips round the 'ere: Runaways, Defendor and Brooklyn's Finest

This Wednesday finds us wrestling with our very own Cerberus. But this is no triple-headed hellfire and dog food-breathed demon hound we are trying to wrangle - rather it is a three-pronged assault of fresh movie clips. We have new trailers for Kristen Stewart-starrer The Runaways, Woody Harrelson's superhero Defendor, and the Big Apple cops 'n' robbers grittiness of Brooklyn's Finest.

First item on the clips agenda is a green band trailer for The Runaways, the biopic of the 1970s all-female punk band of that name. The movie might be out in just two-and-a-bit weeks in the United States but the trailer (which first surfaced on Apple) is still a pretty brief affair, with the focus on the rock 'n' roll rather than any off-stage goings-on. Floria Sigismondi writes and directs, and Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart star as lead singer Cherie Currie and guitarist Joan Jett respectively.

This writer must hold his hands up and confess to being less than crazy about rock movies - whether they be biopics proper or thinly-veiled fictions, such as Almost Famous and Velvet Goldmine – with there being nothing pleasing at all about the mini-genre's forced trade-off of the spontaneous, ephemeral appeal of pop music in favour of soap opera melodramatics and shiny, fragrant movie actors looking like they've been dudded up for a retro fashion shoot and sucking their cheeks in for some limply staged concert scenes. But while documentary generally seems a far better format for getting to grips with rock's rich history and cast of eccentric characters, The Runaways did at least manage to draw positive notices at Sundance in January, with particular praise being reserved for the young lead actresses.

Now, are you one of those sensitive souls who freak out when the mainstream comes trampling its ruddy great size-12s onto your carefully cultivated cultural patch? Is your first instinct always to run a mile when magazines, newspapers, TV, and websites are all simultaneously giving the big push to whatever movie or record or book has been agreed upon by all and sundry as that particular week's sizzling hot slice of hipness? Well then, if you are not already cowering under your bed from it with the tinfoil hat firmly affixed to your cranium, then you will surely very soon be living in dread terror of Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, which is going to be flipping everywhere that it isn't already over the next few weeks. However those of you who are sweating and trembling with the corporate advertising fear, yet are still desirous of some offbeat superhero shtick, could do worse than to tune their antennas to Defendor, starring Woody Harrelson as an unhinged traffic signaller turned costumed guardian of justice. A new trailer has just been released via Apple, and can be viewed below.

The trailer plays up the comedy aspects of Peter Stebbings' movie, with it being cast as a kind of lo-fi Mystery Men. Curiously Sony signed for worldwide rights on Defendor at Toronto back in September, but have decided against a wide theatrical release in the US, with Darius Films – the company that produced the movie – instead giving it a push into a limited numbers of theatres, starting last week in Los Angeles. So to find out how Harrelson gets on in his quest to thwart “Captain Industry”, the majority of US-based film fans will have to wait for Defendor's DVD release on 13 April (which just happens to be three days before the opening of – yes, you guessed it – Kick-Ass).

The tribulations of getting a movie made, let alone getting it into theatres, was on Don Cheadle's mind when he spoke to Collider recently. Interviewed as part of the publicity rounds for crime drama Brooklyn's Finest, Cheadle mentioned a planned biopic of Miles Davis which he was struggling to get up and running. Asked directly why it was so hard to make movies right now, the Boogie Nights and Ocean's Eleven actor replied:

“Because President Bush broke the world. Money done. Nobody has dough, and you know movies are corporate. Studios are corporations now. Movies are a small part of that business, so it's a very corporate model now, and it's not just movies. Anybody in here have a lot of money?”

Recessions are always a big squeeze from the top to the bottom of any economy, with the people on the lower tiers getting the stickiest end of the stick. Which is how it appears to be for the more modestly budgeted, 'quality' vein of film-making at present, as studios elect to divert resources away from that area, rather than scale back on their mega-budget franchises. But although Brooklyn's Finest is an independent production, it has not found itself short of big name talent, including director Antoine Fuqua, who ventures back into the kind of territory that gave him his biggest previous success, Training Day. He re-teams with one of the actors from that movie on Brooklyn's Finest too, as Ethan Hawke plays corrupt cop Sal Procida. Richard Gere is also a member of the fuzz, with his Eddie Dugan being (HONKING GREAT MOVIE CLICHE ALERT!!) just one week away from retirement. Cheadle plays undercover detective Clarence “Tango” Butler, while the role of drug dealer Caz is taken by Wesley Snipes, who finally steps back into a serious drama after spending the vast majority of the 21st century to date flitting round the globe to star in harebrained ass-kickers.

Brooklyn's Finest is out in the US this Friday and you can check out a TV spot for it below.