Cars. Blood. That British Diver.

I still have about 10 reviews to write for August, but my notes for half of them are in New Jersey. In the meantime, let's move to September.

Death Race (seen Sept. 2)

Death Race flaunts its B-movie roots before the opening credits finish rolling: the sound of screeching tires over a grayed-out Universal logo; a killer crash featuring a hockey-masked driver; executive producer Roger Corman, who made Death Race: 2000 in 1975. Director Paul W.S. Anderson (the Resident Evil franchise) strives to inject social realism with a floundering economy, laid-off factory workers, and bloodthirsty viewers paying $99 a pop to watch video of prison races that lead to such pleasant fatalities as decapitation. For the record, Death Race takes place in 2012, not 2008, and stars the yummy Jason Statham (returning to the fast cars of The Italian Job and the Transporter flicks) as our wrongly convicted, single-dad hero. It’s all noisy, bloody chaos, with hard bodies more important than dialogue, yet it has a most incongruous sight – two-time Academy-Award nominee Joan Allen, as a sadistic prison warden. The Bourne veteran is all clipped tones and high heels and pencil skirts, but her presence in this glorified videogame still mystifies me.