Ladies and gentlemen, our latest Rogue 10 is a hall of champions, an inventory of characters who didn't merely overcome adversity, vanquish their foes, triumph over evil, etc.  These heroes did all that, of course, but they did it all with tiny little wheels strapped to their feet.  Yes, this is a list of cinematic characters who roller skated to glory, whether on traditional or in-line skates.

The inspiration for this particular list is Roller Town, a comedy from Funny or Die favorite Canadian comedy troupe PicnicFace.  Roller Town takes place during an unfortunate time in the late 20th century during which roller skate-based recreation collided with disco dance culture, producing a gaudy abomination that turned every roller rink into a worship center for discotronics. 

In the film, local legend Leo, played by Mark Little, must save his sleepy beach town's rink when villainous mobsters attempt to turn it into an arcade.  As he fights the Man, wins the girl, and unleashes his groovy roller-meals on wheels, Leo takes his place in the long line of characters who have done all that traditional heroes do.  But they did it while skating. 

For your entertainment and in no particular order, we humble present the latest Rogue 10:

$upercapitalist, arriving in theaters, VOD, and iTunes this Friday, August 10th, presents a story of stranger in a strange land, based this time in the world of globalized high finance.  Derek Ting, who also wrote the screenplay, stars as Victor, an almost preternaturally gifted and profitable hedge fund analyst who is right at home in Manhattan. 

When his boss, played by Linus Roache of Batman Begins, sends the young man to Hong Kong, Victor finds himself in an environment that is wholly new to him.  His understanding of the culture, pace, and values in which he's immersed must develop quickly or Victor could be at the center of a financial catastrophe.

The backdrop of international megafinance provides an appropriately fast-paced, glamorous set-up for $upercapitalist, but the fundamentals of the story are broadly familiar.  It's what you often hear described as a fish out of water scenario for obvious reasons, with a capable character rendered altogether less capable by a completely unfamiliar setting And the new movie got us here at IAR thinking about other films that feature figurative fish out of equally figurative water.

Families often present themselves socially as far more functional and enviable than they might be behind closed doors.  This goes from little touches, like cleaning up the house before company comes over, to devastating secrets, like a demented kid in the attic who subsists entirely off of fish heads.

The Perfect Family, hitting theaters this Friday, May 4th, dramatizes this tendency as a comedic drama.  In the film, directed by Anne Renton, Oscar nominee Kathleen Turner plays Eileen Cleary, a matriarch who is determined to demonstrate just how healthy and wholesome her family is in order to win a Catholic Woman of the Year award.  Her efforts put her at odds with her grown-up children as she attempts to win, even at the expense of her family and their struggles.

The film, which also stars Emily Deschanel, Richard Chamberlain, Jason Ritter, and Elizabeth Pena, provoked some discussion here at IAR.  So, with The Perfect Family arriving this week, we thought we'd present our latest Rogue 10, a list of ten cinematic families who appear ordinary at first glance, but who are hiding some very fundamental dysfunction.

In his career as an actor, Jason Statham has quite frequently played unstoppable tough guys, and whether out of revenge, profit, or self-preservation, Staham characters have perpetrated violence against innumerable bad guys, good guys, and assorted anonymous henchmen.  In this Friday's Safe, written and directed by Boaz Yakin, Statham stars as a former NYPD cop and cage fighter who kicks ass in order to protect a helpless a young girl.

See, Catherine Chan plays a little girl who knows the numerical code to a safe containing an invaluable MacGuffin, meaning that Statham must safeguard her from corrupt cops, Triad gangsters, and the Russian mafia, all of whom would happily dispose of the child once they opened that safe.

The story of Safe had us thinking about the tried-and-true trope of serious cinematic tough guys whose primary goal is the protecting of otherwise helpless youths.  We're not talking about guys like Superman or Spider-Man, who rescue different kids on a daily basis.  Instead, this latest Rogue 10 lists, in no particular order, ten onscreen heroes who dedicate themselves to their youthful charges.

In the especially great 'Games' episode of the fantastic public radio series Radiolab, Stephen Dubner says that sports fandom is "a proxy for all our emotions, desires, and hopes."  Who hasn't experienced the elation seeing their team pull out a miraculous win at the last minute?  Sports movies take the inherent drama of spectator sports and increase their universality, including even non-sports fans on the stakes of a game, a season, an entire sport.

This Friday, the new drama Touchback uses football to tell an inspiring and family-friendly story of regret, redemption, and inspiration.  The film, which also stars Kurt Russell and Melanie Lynsky, follows Brian Presley as a hugely promising high school athlete whose dreams of professional glory are derailed by a knee injury.  Fifteen years later, he has the unique opportunity to change his own history.

Touchback's imminent release has everybody here at IAR thinking about the cinematic gridiron, and those characters who have provided inspiration to us in a variety of different ways.  So, with Touchback in mind, we've put together the latest Rogue 10, a listing, in no particular order, of especially inspiration football players.  Whether through grit, talent, determination, or sincerity, these ten characters are football players who bring audiences to their feet.

In Camel Spiders, the unapologetic B-movie throwback presented by Roger Corman, a band of soldiers and townspeople in Arizona must fight off a seemingly unstoppable species of creature unknowingly brought to the U.S. from Iraq by returning servicemen.  The SyFy movie, directed by Jim Wynorski and starring C. Thomas Howell and Brian Krause, is available for purchase and rental on Blu-ray and DVD as of today.

Of course, the camel spiders featured in the film bare little resemblance the real-life critters, which have been the subject of endless rumors since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Really, Camel spiders aren't the size of bowling balls, can't run thirty miles per hour, aren't poisonous, and technically aren't even spiders (they're solifugae, which are, however, in the Arachnida class).

Still, the sensationalized, scary movie version of camel spiders inspired us at IAR to think about a certain type of scary movie monster.  Basically, the little guys.  Of course hulking killers like Jason are scary, but what about the characters and beasts who can do just as damage even though they're about two feet tall or even smaller?  With Camel Spiders in mind, we're presenting ten examples of diminutive but nonetheless horrifying cinematic creations.

The Blu-ray and DVD release of My Week With Marilyn has us ruminating a bit.  When you think of a "blonde bombshell," with all connotations of physical idealization and centerfold lasciviousness, you immediately picture Marilyn Monroe.  In her Oscar-nominated performance Michelle Williams portrays Monroe a person of complexity, not separating her from her timeless sex-symbol status, but instead contextualing her sexuality as place as just one element both her public and private personas. 

It's a performance and a representation that calls for a different notion of the blonde bombshell, one not quite so exclusively dependent on physical perfection.

We might have simply trotted out a list of every gorgeous, captivating blonde from Brigitte Bardot to Adrianne Palicki.  Indeed we could've, but for this Rogue 10, we have instead focused on fictional characters who aren't bombshells because they're blonde, but are noteworthy bombshells who happen to be blonde.  These are blonde bombshells who do more than simply stun you with stupendous glamor and gorgeousness, they stop you dead with something special.