There’s also hopes that a Wright-directed Ant-Man clip will be the after-the-credits Easter Egg attached to next year’s Iron Man 3.

With Marvel slated to make a big announcement about their secret film project at Comic-Con, this test reel news only adds to the speculation. However, Latino Review have reported that Guardians of the Galaxy have been chosen for Marvel’s 2014 release. Just last month, the website reported that Black Panther would be the mystery film on Marvel’s slot. Those reports were debunked. So take the Guardians report with a grain of salt. We won’t really know until Comic-Con whether or not Latino Review are correct or once again totally full of beans.

Though there isn’t any action in this clip, it sets the table nicely for an intergalactic showdown between hoodlums and space invaders. Apparently, the sets and action are top-notch, but you’ll just have to take the reviewers’ word for it as this clip is more a tension-building device than anything else.

So go ahead and appreciate the exposions and action that AREN’T in this clip.

Block gets started right away with a gang of teens led by Moses (John Boyega) mugging Sam (Jodie Whittaker). They’re interrupted by an alien crash landing on a car, so they hunt it down and kill it. Then the bigger creatures invade and the gang has to fend off the attack from their apartment building, in siege-style gory action.

'Attack The Block' Red Band Shows Its Teeth

Writer/director Joe Cornish knows how to structure these types of thrillers. He finds many different confined spaces for the kids to hole up in until they’re forced to fight off a creature or two or twenty. Cornish also stages many narrow escapes with the creatures right behind the heroes. Of course there are other humans against Moses’ gang, one older and some even younger.

Most importantly, Cornish nails the character building scenes in between. This is where we get to know the individual gang members, where they’re forced to form an uneasy bond with Sam and work out the issues of their encounter earlier that night. The film is sincere while the characters may take an irreverent view of having to reveal their emotional issues. Questions about Sam’s boyfriend are particularly insightful.

6 photosJodie Whittaker

The creature design is a triumph. The initial alien looks like a puppet with Giger-esque qualities. The main aliens may be CGI but it’s a design that hides its CGI-ness. It never looks like they were tennis balls that become aliens later. They could have come from space, and they keep coming relentlessly.

The language is very British but only to the extent that Trainspotting or even Shaun of the Dead is. There were a few lines I didn’t get, but I’ll just assume they were awesome. The ones I did get were references to “Narutu,” a poignant (though incorrect) theory of gentrification and a comparison to 28 Days Later. It makes sense that those are their references. And all their prepaid cell phones are running out. That’s not an issue we have in American movies and it sets another deadline for suspense.

A John Carpenter-esque score completes the tone of a hardcore shoestring yet totally effective action-horror. Those are the kinds of indie movies we want to see, where it’s the ideas that stand out. We’re lucky to have so many genre-bending homage movies this year.

Now that the film is coming to America, we have a red band trailer for Attack the Block that gives a better look at what all the praise has been about. It’s shows a lot of action, scares, and a clearer idea of the film’s sense of humor. Looks like a clever comedy that doesn’t pull any punches.

Roll With New 'Attack The Block' Trailer Featuring Basement Jaxx

Attack The Block is the directorial debut of Joe Cornish.

But I should probably hold off on the mescaline with all these inner city youths around. Their access to swords and explosives is far too easy. If anyone needs me, I’ll be hiding under the pile of coats in Nana’s room. (Guardian)

Directed by Joe Cornish, the movie focuses on a group of inner city youths who have to defend their home against alien invaders. Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper had this to say, “Steve Bersch screened this film for me and I fell completely in love with it.  The film is, at once, charming, scary, funny, hip, clever and completely hits its mark. I hope this is the beginning of a long relationship with these incredibly talented filmmakers.”

Early buzz is that the film is fantastic and I look forward to seeing it in the theater here when it is eventually released. But don’t feel too bad if you spent all that money on a ticket to Europe. They have really good KFC’s in England. I can’t put my finger on it, but they are better than they are over in the States. (Deadline)

Attack the Block was the hot ticket of SXSW. Edgar Wright’s name must have let people know that it’s something special. He produced it for first-time feature director Joe Cornish. A lot of people didn’t even get into the SXSW screenings so they’ll be waiting for it’s theatrical release, which so far is only secure in the UK for May.

Cornish’s film has teen street gangs fending off alien invaders on the streets of London’s hoods. Cornish met some press for breakfast at the Four Seasons in Austin to fill in the people who missed the film, and further excite the new fanboys who discovered it in Austin.

Territory is not just a British thing:

Joe Cornish: The issue of territorialism is a very big thing, especially with these young gangs in the UK and it’s not something I would want to encourage or be frivolous about because it’s a serious thing. One of the messages in the film is that these creatures are extremely territorial and they will kill and be greedy and selfish. They will take their territory. One of the bad things I wanted to express with the monsters is territorialism. Even though it’s never said, hopefully you understand that that’s one of the bad things and that’s kind of stupid. You know kids in the UK and I’m sure everywhere in the world, kill each other over territory in a meaningless way. That’s something I would want to highlight.

The monsters are metaphors for the real street kids:

JC: One of the ideas of the film is kids like that are demonized in the U.K. and they’re called feral and amoral so I wanted to make a monster that, if you took all the words that people call those kids in the press, I wanted to turn them into a monster, set that monster against the kids and bring the humanity out of the kids. It’s just to see the humanity in people really. I don’t think it’s a particularly new message, that there might be good in somebody who maybe has done bad.

But antiheroes are cool:

JC: It’s a trope that has slightly vanished from cinema because people are a bit frightened of antiheroes now. People are very keen to make the protagonist sympathetic in the first act, give him a wife and kids, have the kid be kidnapped. You get that in notes a lot, how is the audience going to invest in it? Some of my favorite films, Snake Plissken, Assault on Precinct 13, you’re not sure where you stand with the protagonist. For me that’s kinda cool. That’s what I wanted to try and do.

Cornish cast real kids with little acting experience:

JC: They’re all 16 and over. A lot of them are from backgrounds not entirely dissimilar to the kids in the story. A lot of them are local to the area where we shot it. In terms of working with them, it was an absolute joy. The arc of the movie is that you start with these masked kids. You don’t know how old they are. You don’t know who they are, what color they are. They’re just bandits. As the story progresses, you unpeel the layers and hopefully give them dimension and stuff. That happened a little on the set as well. You could see the talent but they were socially a bit shy. They wouldn’t make eye contact, they tried to be tough, tried not to let themselves be vulnerable but the beautiful thing was as we shot, they just became more and more relaxed. By the time we were through the rehearsal period even they were like friends.

And they reflect the multi-ethnic streets of the U.K.:

JC: I don’t actually think race has a huge amount to do with my film. I really wanted to give a young black actor the lead role. as someone who lives in a very mixed urban area, I don’t see it reflected on the screen very much. Apart from that, they were kind of interchangeable. I certainly didn’t cast with color in mind.

He’s bringing back hardcore movies for kids:

JC: We were kids at possibly the best time, not just for children’s cinema but what Lucas and Spielberg were doing wasn’t children’s cinema as we perceive it now. It wasn’t like four quadrant box ticking. Talk about penis breath in E.T., talk about Indiana Jones saying sh*t on the bridge. I wasn’t allowed to see Scanners yet I could see Raiders as a kid, so we just had this amazing period. For me, I think maybe it’s people of that generation just working that sh*t through because it had such an affect on us. Plus a feeling of the absence of that energy from contemporary cinema. Contemporary cinema’s become so polarized. It’s either for children or it’s an extremely sadistic horror. That sense where the energies were mixed up a bit and you didn’t know quite what you were going to get that was there in all of Lucas’s and Spielberg’s stuff has gone a bit.

The producers of that film are back with Attack The Block. The Inner City takes on Outer Space when an alien species heretofor unknown to science attacks project housing in South London. The residents rise up to become unlikely heroes although they’d rather stay home and play FIFA. You may be curious why Nick Frost appears as a guy who pals around with children but you can relax. He’s merely there to sell them drugs. No funny stuff.

It looks like fun summer entertainment. Early reviews are great, so here’s hoping it does well with American audiences as well. Otherwise, it will be filed away with Club Dread in the Films We Never Speak Of bin. (Empire)