New Releases for the Week of September 13, 2019

HUSTLERS

(STX) Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Mette Towley, Keke Palmer, Mercedes Ruehl, Lili Reinhart, Cardi B, Usher, Frank Whaley, Dov Davidoff. Directed by Lorene Scafaria

A group of strippers, appalled at the behavior of their high-end Wall Street clientele, decide to turn the tables and take their portion of the American dream for themselves. This is getting some big Oscar buzz for Jennifer Lopez.

See the trailer, video featurettes and clips here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for pervasive sexual material, drug content, language and nudity)

Aquarela

(Sony Classics) Viktor Kossakovsky. This documentary explores the effect of water in all its forms – ice, liquid, steam, storm – on the planet and how we ultimately must learn to conserve and protect it if our species is to survive.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG (for some thematic elements)

Dream Girl

(Zee) Ayushman Khurana, Nusrat Barucha, Annu Kapoor, Vijay Raaz. A young man who has had little success in life finally finds a job he’s completely suited for – as a female friendship caller on an Indian love line. But when his beautiful voice inspires feelings of romance, things get a little bit out of control.

See the trailer, a clip and a featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: NR

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles

(Roadside Attractions) Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sheldon Harnick, Hal Prince, Austin Pendleton. One of Broadway’s most beloved musicals of all time, Fiddler on the Roof grew from a particularly bleak series of short stories by iconic Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem and grew into a major hit at a time when race relations, gender roles, sexuality and the role of religion were all evolving.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic elements/disturbing images)

Freaks

(Well Go USA) Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Grace Park, Amanda Crew. A 7-year-old girl grows up her entire life restricted to the inside of her house, believing that the world is inhabited by dangerous Abnormals. When a mysterious stranger arrives, she learns that the truth isn’t so simple – but the danger is very real.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs
Rating: R (for violence and some language)

The Goldfinch

(Warner Brothers) Ansel Elgort, Oakes Fegley, Finn Wolfhard, Ashleigh Cummings.  A young man whose mother died tragically struggles to get past the grief and loss. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller.

See the trailer, a clip and a video featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for drug use and language)

Official Secrets

(IFC) Keira Knightey, Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans. The true story of Katherine Gun, a young woman who worked for British Intelligence who discovered a damaging NSA memo in the weeks prior to the American invasion of Iraq. Disturbed by what she sees, she chooses to leak it and is eventually discovered and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Cobb Daytona, Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: R (for language)

Section 375

(Reliance) Akshaye Khanna, Richa Chadha, Meera Chopra, Rahul Bhat. A young woman accuses a famous and wealthy director of rape and sees him convicted. His wife hires a high-priced lawyer who appeals the case, arguing that the incident didn’t meet the standards of rape in Section 375 of the Indian penal code.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Courtroom Drama
Now Playing: Touchstar Southchase
Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content throughout, some language and nudity)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

3 Days with Dad
D-Day
Depraved
Gang Leader
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
Night Hunter
Pailwaan
Super-Size Me 2: Holy Chicken
The Weekend

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE/KEY WEST:

Gang Leader
Give Me Liberty
Haunt
High Heels
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
Miles Davis: The Birth of Cool
Pailwaan

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG/SARASOTA:

Can You Keep a Secret?
D-Day
Gang Leader
The Weekend

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Gang Leader
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Depraved
The Goldfinch
Hustlers
Official Secrets

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Imperial Dreams

The face of urban stress.

(2014) Drama (Super Crispy) John Boyega, Rotimi Akinosho, Glenn Plummer, De’aundre Bonds, Keke Palmer, Fat Dog, Nora Zehetner, Todd Louiso, Sufe Bradshaw, Maximiliano Hernandez, Anika Noni Rose, Ethan Coach, Justin Coach, Jernard Burks, Wilfred Lopez, Nik Petcov, Kelita Smith, Zilah Mendoza, Kandiss Edmundson. Directed by Malik Vitthal

In the years since John Singleton’s groundbreaking Boys N the Hood illustrated the agonies and the ecstasies of South Central Los Angeles, little has changed. The choices are few for those restricted by poverty and apathy; selling drugs and using drugs. Getting out of the cycle of violence and poverty has become nearly impossible.

Bambi (Boyega) is boyishly handsome and just home after serving a 28 month stretch for armed robbery. His son Day (the Coach twins) has been staying with his Uncle Shrimp (Plummer) while Bambi’s girlfriend and baby mama Samaara (Palmer) is also in jail for a non-violent crime.

Bambi wants to be a good role model for his son and stay on the straight and narrow. Shrimp has other ideas. He wants Bambi to resume his place in Shrimp’s gang. Bambi would much rather get a job. However, the system is stacked against him; the state has filed for child support on behalf of Samaara, cranking a debt that Bambi can’t pay without a job. He can’t, however, get a job without a driver’s license and he can’t get a driver’s license with that child support debt on his record. It’s beyond Catch-22; it’s Catch-23.

As hard as it is for Bambi to stay straight, the thug life continues to intrude. His cousin Gideon (Bonds) is on the run from a rival gang who mean to murder him and Bambi’s proximity to Gideon is putting both him and Day in danger but Gideon is one of the few who are out to help Bambi make it on the level. Bambi’s mom (Zehetner) is a raging alcoholic and his half-brother Wayne (Akinosho) who has a partial scholarship to Howard’s business school but needs money to make up the difference so he can actually go to college is thinking of taking a short cut that may lead him down the same path that Bambi is trying to get off of. An act of violence puts everything in flux and puts Bambi even more at risk than he has been, leaving him and Day as vulnerable as can be, living out of a car that doesn’t run with a pair of skeptical detectives (Hernandez, Bradshaw) and a social worker (Rose) on Bambi’s back.

This is one of those movies that I really wanted to like a lot more than I ended up doing. Clearly Vitthal has a good eye and ear for inner city drama, and knows how to tell a good story. The trouble is, this is the kind of story that doesn’t really tell us anything new. Particularly in the light of recent events in Baltimore, Ferguson and other places around the country, we’re particularly sensitive to the plight of young black men in predominantly African-American communities that are riddled with poverty, crime and drugs. While this story is sadly not one far from the stories of many young African-American men, I get the sense that it has been told more than once and more than once in this very Film Festival.

That said, Boyega (who was tremendous in Attack the Block) has the chops and the looks to be the next Hollywood superstar. In my review of that movie, I compared him to Denzel Washington and certainly he has that kind of charisma and screen presence. Here, in a much more subdued and less obviously heroic role, he struggles with his conscience and his frustration, knowing that the easy way out is to revert back to the old life, but that it would lead him to exactly the same place – if not a cold, steel slab in the morgue.

The rest of the cast are fairly solid, with the Coach twins doing particularly well as Day; the father-son dynamic between the two is genuine and affecting. Very often actors this young have a difficult time bonding with their screen parents but in this case that’s not the case. The heart of this movie is Bambi’s devotion to Day and if we don’t believe that, we don’t believe the movie. That the movie is convincing on that end is admirable.

I take it that the slang being used here is genuine to the time and place; at times I had difficulty figuring out what some of the characters were saying and subtitles would have been genuinely appreciated. While some might write this off as a feature-length rap video (and with some justification), that would be a bit presumptive. This is a solid film by a filmmaker with potential that is dominated by an actor who may well be a great one in the very near future.

REASONS TO GO: Star-making performance by Boyega. Loved the father-son dynamic. Captures the Catch-22 of the modern inner city.
REASONS TO STAY: Doesn’t really break any new ground. At times needs subtitles to follow the inner city slang dialogue. A few too many cliches.
FAMILY VALUES: Violence and foul language throughout; some drug use and lots of adult themes.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Filmed at the actual Imperial Courts Housing Project in Watts.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/29/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 83% positive reviews. Metacritic: 64/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Fruitvale Station
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Homeless

New Releases for the Week of April 24, 2015

EX-MACHINA

(A24) Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Alice Vikander, Corey Johnson, Sonoya Mizuno, Claire Selby, Symara A. Templeman, Gana Bayarsaikhan, Tiffany Pisani. Directed by Alex Garland

A programmer at an internet search company wins a competition to spend a week with the reclusive CEO in his secluded mountain estate. Once there, he discovers that this isn’t a paid vacation; he’s been selected as the human component in a Turing test of a new artificial intelligence, testing the capabilities and essentially the self-awareness of Ava, who turns out to be much more than the sum of her parts and much more than either man could have predicted.

See the trailer, interviews, clips and featurettes here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (opens Thursday)
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for graphic nudity, language, sexual references and some violence)

The Age of Adaline

(Lionsgate) Blake Lively, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker. A freak automobile accident in 1935 leaves young Adaline ageless and deathless. However, immortality proves to be more of a curse than a gift and she spends 80 years hiding her secret and running away from life until she finds the possibility of love. A weekend with his parents though threatens to expose her secret, leaving her to make a momentous decision.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and preview video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (opens Thursday)
Genre: Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for a suggestive comment)

Brotherly Love

(Freestyle Releasing) Keke Palmer, Cory Hardict, Faizon Love, Macy Gray. Philadelphia’s Overbrook High has been one of the most prestigious basketball powerhouses in the country ever since Wilt Chamberlain played there. Now, a young student there has been named the number one prospect in the country. Dealing with high school alone is no easy task but to have that kind of pressure on top of it is nearly impossible.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Sports Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Downtown Disney, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: R (for violence and language)

Desert Dancer

(Relativity) Nazanin Boniadi, Freida Pinto, Tom Cullen, Marama Corlett. Afshin Ghaffarian wanted nothing more than to express himself through dance. Unfortunately, he lived in Iran where the imams had forbidden dance and any attempt for him to learn how to was met with terrible punishments. After co-founding an underground dance group there, he runs afoul of Iranian authorities and is forced to flee his home, but he comes to Paris more determined than ever to achieve his dream.

See the trailer, interviews, clips and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama/Dance
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements, some drug material and violence)

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

(Amplify) Rinko Kikuchi, Noboyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard, Nathan Zellner. A Japanese office drone discovers a VHS copy of the Coen Brothers classic film Fargo. Fed up with her mundane existence and possessed of an imagination that can’t be held in by the confines of her dreary job and her tiny apartment, she seizes on the idea that the buried treasure in the film is real and that the cash is waiting for her to find in the rugged prairies of North Dakota.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: NR

Little Boy

(Open Road) Kevin James, David Henrie, Michael Rappaport, Emily Watson. A 7-year-old boy is devastated when his father is called off to fight World War II. However, chats with the family pastor lead him to believe that his faith can move mountains. And it seems that it may be literally true. However, will it be enough to bring his dad home safely from war?

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (opens Thursday)
Genre: Family Faith-Based Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material and violence)

The Salt of the Earth

(Sony Classics) Sebastiao Salgado, Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, Lelia Warnick Salgado. The life and career of Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado, whose pictures have shown stark beauty and the depths of human cruelty. His photographs have drawn attention to suffering and privation in the four corners of the earth. Noted German director Wim Wenders was so moved by Salgado’s work that he made a documentary about him, something Wenders isn’t particularly known for.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material involving disturbing images of violence and human suffering, and for nudity)

See You in Valhalla

(ARC Entertainment) Sarah Hyland, Steve Howey, Odeya Rush, Jake McDorman. A young woman returns home following the untimely death of her brother, finding her family as dysfunctional as ever. Old jealousies, feuds and disagreements resurface and the family seems to sink further into dysfunction until a brilliant idea to send off the brother in style is suggested.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: AMC Downtown Disney
Rating: R (for language, sexual references and drug use)

The Water Diviner

(Warner Brothers) Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Jai Courtney, Yilmaz Erdogan. An Australian farmer is devastated by the news that both of his sons were declared missing presumed dead in the epic battle of Gallipoli during the First World War. Four years after the battle, he journeys to Gallipoli to find out once and for all the fate of his sons and get some closure but with the help of a compassionate Turkish officer and the woman whose hotel he is staying in, he discovers hope amidst the carnage.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: AMC Downtown Disney, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for war violence including some disturbing images)

Shrink

The party’s over…

(2009) Dramedy (Roadside Attractions) Kevin Spacey, Saffron Burrows, Jack Huston, Griffin Dunne, Robin Williams, Pell James, Robert Loggia, Keke Palmer, Gore Vidal, Dallas Roberts, Mark Webber, Jesse Plemmons, Laura Ramsey, Ashley Greene, Joel Gretsch, Mina Olivera. Directed by Jonas Pate

We look to our mental health professionals to help us see us through our problems, help us overcome our addictions and in general feel better about ourselves and our lives. Like any physician, they are also human beings, subject to issues and pain of their own.

Dr. Henry Carter (Spacey) is a bestselling author and psychiatrist to the stars. He has a gorgeous home in the hills, a clientele that reads like the “A” list and the respect of his peers. But that home is an empty one – his wife committed suicide in it. He can’t bring himself to go in his bedroom any more. He numbs himself out on alcohol and pot. In fact it can be said that Dr. Henry Carter is a stoner of epic proportions.

That’s not to say he isn’t functioning. He still manages to see patients and doles out advice that at least sounds good. His patients include a hard-charging talent manager (Roberts) who gives no quarter in business and has no regard for anyone, a fading comic actor (Williams) who is a raging alcoholic but refuses to acknowledge his problem – he attends his sessions to be treated for a sex addiction that he does acknowledge. There’s also an actress (Burrows) whose career is handled by the talent manager that is slowly spinning into oblivion as he believes her age is an obstacle. She is married to a philandering rock star (Gretsch).

Into this mix comes Jemma (Palmer), a teen whose mother recently committed suicide. She is seemingly losing interest in everything except the movies; Dr. Carter’s father (Loggia) – also a well-respected shrink – urged him to take her on as a pro bono case. At the same time, Dr. Carter’s “step-godbrother” Jeremy (Webber), a struggling screenwriter, becomes friendly with Jemma and realizes her story is the one he was born to tell.

Yes, this is one of those ensemble pieces where all the stories of all these different people are entwined. It’s just not done as well as those other movies like Babel or Crash. The writers rely far too much on coincidence. It’s lazy storytelling and it happens way often here.

Fortunately the movie has some strong performances to fall back on. Nobody in the business does cynical as well as Spacey does and he delivers once again here, despite material that really could have easily been rendered into a 2D caricature. To the actor’s credit, he gives the character nuances and layers that give him a fully realized personality that allows us to really get involved in his story.

He is well-supported, particularly by the manic Williams who has had problems with alcohol in his career and clearly channels those awful years in is performance; Palmer is sweet and cute and adorable and is a breath of fresh air in the movie and James who plays Roberts’ personal assistant who is the love interest for Jeremy.

The opening shot, a panoramic take of the City of Angels from behind the Hollywood sign, shows a great deal of promise but then it falls into cliché-ridden seen-it-all-before-ness that not only doesn’t add any real insight to addiction or life in L.A. but doesn’t really add anything to the genre either. The only thing it really has going for it is Spacey and you can certainly see him in plenty of much better films.

WHY RENT THIS: Spacey is always interesting. Supporting cast is first-rate.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: A little bit formulaic. Some lazy writing – too many coincidences.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a good deal of alcohol and drug abuse in the film, and a whole lot of bad language. There’s some sexual content as well.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Michael Caine’s grandfather had a similar job to Hobbs.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a music video for the Jackson Browne song “Here” from the film’s soundtrack.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $303,431 on an unreported production budget; chances are this wasn’t profitable during its theatrical run.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Crash

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Gangster Squad

Ice Age: Continental Drift

 

Scrat is only a little bit obsessed.

(2012) Animated Feature (20th Century Fox) Starring the voices of Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Peter Dinklage, Seann William Scott, Wanda Sykes, Aziz Ansari, Jennifer Lopez, Drake, Keke Palmer, Heather Morris, Joy Behar, Nicki Minaj, Josh Gad, Alan Tudyk, Nick Frost, JB Smoove, Chris Wedge. Directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thumeier

 

There isn’t much we wouldn’t do for our families. We’d put our lives on the line to defend them. We’d do things that we don’t like doing to make things work. We’d go as far as we had to just to get together with them. Even though we fight like cats and dogs sometimes, when it comes down to it, our families are everything.

Manny the Mastodon (Romano) thinks so too. After everything he’s been through, his wife Ellie (Latifah) is the apple of his eye. His daughter Peaches (Palmer) is now a teenager (we saw her getting born in the last Ice Age movie) and like most teenagers, she’s terribly concerned with hanging out with the right crowd. She has her eye on Ethan (Drake), the dreamboat who has his own little entourage, although her BFF Louis (Gad), a kind of mole, is far nicer and cares about her as a mastodon…er, person.

Scrat (Wedge) the obsessive squirrel has tried to plant his acorn right in the center of things. Unfortunately, his determination has led to the cataclysmic break-up of the super-continent into the seven continents we know today. That action has inadvertently separated Manny from his family although fortunately Diego (Leary) the saber-toothed tiger is with him as is Sid the Sloth (Leguizamo) and his feisty but not altogether there Granny (Sykes).

They are floating about the sea on an ice floe when they run into Captain Gutt (Dinklage), an orangutan pirate who is also the self-styled ruler of the sea. His right hand woman is Shira (Lopez) who may just be a more ruthless cat than Diego, although you know the two are going to fall for each other. You know it.

Meanwhile, back at home the continental upheaval is taking its toll as Ellie is trying to lead the others to safety while Peaches alternately worries for her dad (who she had words with just before things went south) and still trying to fit in with the cool clique, while Louis frets. Will Manny ever see his family again?

The first Ice Age movies were pretty good and I enjoyed the camaraderie between the main trio of Manny, Diego and Sid. With each passing film more characters have been added into the mix and the films have been getting on the bloated side. As with the third film in the series, there seems to be less fun in the mix. You get the sense that this is just a paycheck for everyone involved, from the studio head on down to the animators and the voice talent. Sykes dos make a welcome addition, although her character is an insulting steroetype for the elderly which is disheartening. Still, she has some of the funniest moments in the film.

One thing it does have going for it is the 3D. I think it’s fair to say that the entire film revolves around 3 so that if you see it in 2D, you miss quite a bit. I don’t often recommend the upcharge but it is worth it here. However, don’t expect much logic or sense. As Sid says to Granny, “We fought dinosaurs. It didn’t make sense, but it sure was exciting.” Although I’d have to question the exciting part. Still, this is a feature length cartoon, not a lesson in history, zoology or geology.

As always, my favorite segments are the ones involving Scrat the Squirrel. This time, an awful lot of them already have appeared in the short films that Scrat has starred in which is a further sign that this franchise is running out of gas. I think it’s fair to say that I got a sense that I’ve seen it all before throughout the film, but in the case of Scrat I literally have.

There’s enough here to keep the small kids happy (and there were plenty of them even at the later showing that I attended which in itself is pretty sad – parents who keep their kids up to see a movie past their bedtime should have their heads examined) but the parents who go with them are going to be counting the minutes until the movie is over – and at a running time of well over an hour and a half, that’s a lot of minutes.

REASONS TO GO: The Scrat sequences are always entertaining. Smaller children will love it (although kids 3rd grade and older might turn their noses up at it as being for little kids).

REASONS TO STAY: Really, there isn’t much here that hasn’t been done before.

FAMILY VALUES: Some of the humor is a little bit rude (although not much) – and some of the cartoon violence might upset the very little.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Captain Gutt was supposed to have been voiced by Jeremy Renner, but his busy schedule precluded it so Peter Dinklage was cast instead.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/21/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 39% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100. The reviews are pretty negative.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Ice Age: The Meltdown

SCRAT LOVERS: While much of the footage with Scrat was shown initially in the short Scrat’s Continental Crack-Up that accompanied Rio, there are plenty of new scenes that highlight the obsessive squirrel.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: The Oxford Murders

New Releases for the Week of July 13, 2012

ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT

(20th Century Fox) Starring the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Seann William Scott, Peter Dinklage, Wanda Sykes, Jennifer Lopez, Aziz Ansari, Drake, Joy Behar, Nicki Minaj, Keke Palmer, JB Smoove, Alan Tudyk. Directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier

Scrat’s dogged pursuit of that perfect acorn has at last planet-changing consequences as it’s responsible for the break-up of Pangaea, the super-continent. Manny, Diego and Sid are caught in the middle as they’re literally torn away from their families and float away on an ice floe. To get back home to their families they will need to overcome the prehistoric obstacles of a cold cruel world and characters who are determined to prevent them from returning home.

See the trailer, a featurette and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: PG (for mild rude humor and action/peril)

Cocktail

(Eros International) Deepika Padukone, Saif Ali Khan, Randeep Hooda, Diana Penty. Three natives of India, two women and a man, move into an apartment in London. The three become fast friends and party hard on the London nightlife scene but as both of the women begin to fall for the man, it becomes clear that a choice will have to be made.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Safety Not Guaranteed

(FilmDistrict) Audrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Kristen Bell, Jeff Garlin. Three cynical reporters for a Seattle alternative weekly investigate the man who placed an intriguing classified ad for their paper. They discover that he believes he’s invented a means of time travel and intends to go back in time once more. They, of course, don’t believe a word of it but he certainly does and when they discover that it isn’t meant as a scam – that he truly believes someone is going back in time with him, they wonder how far this journey will take him – and them.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R (for language including some sexual references)

New Releases for the Week of January 13, 2012

CONTRABAND

(Universal) Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Caleb Landry Jones, Lukas Haas, Diego Luna, J.K. Simmons, William Lucking. Directed by Baltasar Komakur

A former smuggler who had managed to escape the life of crime and go straight is drawn back in when his foolish brother-in-law screws up a drug deal and has to get rid of his cargo. Trying to make up for his brother-in-law’s foul-up not only brings him back into the life, but also puts his wife and sons into the crosshairs of the druglords and crooked cops who have a vested interest in his new cargo – counterfeit bills being smuggled in from Panama to New Orleans. He will have to rely on some very rusty skills if he is to see this thing through.

See the trailer, clips, promos, an interview and web-only content here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: R (for violence, pervasive language and brief drug use)

Beauty and the Beast 3D

(Disney) Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Angela Lansbury, Jerry Orbach. After a successful re-release of The Lion King last year, Disney once again moves to add a third dimension to another classic movie. While some (myself included) have bitched about the Mouse House squeezing every last dime from their classic films, it might be well to remember that they have had a history in the pre-home video days of periodically re-releasing their classics for those who haven’t seen it in a theater. Of course, they didn’t up-charge for those re-releases either…

See the trailer, clips, featurettes, music videos and a link to buy the movie at Amazon.com here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: G

Carnage

(Sony Classics) Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly.  The latest from director Roman Polanski is based on an acclaimed stage play. When a child injures another child in a Brooklyn park, the parents get together to discuss the situation in a civilized and adult manner. However as the evening wears on, the veneer of civilization begins to dissolve and the “adults” prove to be worse than children.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for language)

The Iron Lady

(Weinstein) Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Roger Allam, Anthony Head. The story of Margaret Thatcher, one of the most powerful women of the 20th century and an icon of the conservative movement. Her era as Prime Minister is roughly concurrent to the Reagan years here and was very similar in many ways – neither Reagan nor Thatcher would have been considered leadership material and yet through savvy politicking and an understanding of what their electorates needed, both became influential in the world of the 1980s and their leadership, for good or not, still has ramifications in the world today.

See the trailer, a promo, a featurette and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Biographical Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for some violent images and brief nudity)

Joyful Noise

(Warner Brothers) Queen Latifah, Dolly Parton, Keke Palmer, Courtney B. Vance. Two feuding divas in a church choir find their tiff growing when one’s grandson falls for the other’s daughter. On top of it all, their choir is competing in the National Joyful Noise Competition and their community is counting on them to bring home the gold, which is hard to do when their best can’t agree on anything.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Musical

Rating: PG-13 (for some language including a sexual reference)

Akeelah and the Bee

Keke Palmer is a bright new talent judging on her performance in Akeelah and the Bee.

(Lionsgate) Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett, Curtis Armstrong, J.R. Villarreal, Sean Michael, Sahara Garey, Tzi Ma, Eddie Steeples. Directed by Doug Atchison.

Often, we attribute courage to doing something beyond our means of doing, but taking it on anyway. Certainly, that takes a particular sort of fortitude, but there is a different type of courage, one that involves doing what you can do, at a moment when it is difficult to do it. It’s a less glamorous sort of bravery, much quieter than the other, but no less real.

What 11-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Palmer) can do is spell. She’s really, really good at it. She plays Scrabble incessantly on her computer. It is a means of connecting with her dad, who was murdered when she was six. It is a harsh reality but by no means an unusual one in South Central Los Angeles, where she lives. At night, she hears the sirens and the police helicopters; by day, she sees the gangbangers crouched low in their low-slung cars, low men in basketball jerseys. Stephen King would have recognized the type.

Akeelah is good at spelling, but she hides her bright light under a bushel basket. At Crenshaw Middle School, good can get you laughed at. Good can get you beat up. Good can get you isolated from everyone, and when you live in a war zone, you can’t afford to go it alone. At Crenshaw, it’s much safer to blend in and be invisible. Excellence isn’t a ticket out per se, but a ticket to a badge of ridicule.

A new principal, Mr. Welch (Armstrong) is trying to change things. The scores at Crenshaw continue to decline despite everyone’s best efforts, and funds for everything is tight. Still, he knows he has to come up with new and inventive ways to motivate these kids to achieve. He institutes a school spelling bee, part of the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition. The winner will go to the regional bee for L.A. County, while the ten best from that will go to the district bee for Southern California, and the three best from that will head to Washington D.C. for the national final. Welch, perhaps a bit over-ambitiously, wants to see a Crenshaw student make it to the finals.

To that end, he’s enlisted an old college buddy, Dr. Larabee (Fishburne) to help coach. Larabee, on sabbatical from his job teaching literature at UCLA, is not enthusiastic, but he does live in the neighborhood and was a national finalist himself back in the day, so he agrees to help.

Akeelah isn’t very enthusiastic either. Go in front of the whole school and spell? She might as well paint a target on her back. Then, she sees the national finals on ESPN and realizes that this is something she can do. She’s still a bit wary but is basically blackmailed into it by Principal Welch. Of course, she wins the school bee easily and Dr. Larabee, who can see something in her that he can work with, agrees to coach her for the nationals.

It isn’t easy. Akeelah has a lot of attitude and not a lot of support at home. Her mom (Bassett) has her hands full being a single mom with a son who is sliding towards a gang lifestyle, a daughter who left school after getting pregnant and Akeelah, who has been skipping classes. Talk of a spelling bee is foolish; she needs to concentrate on her studies.  She continues to study behind her mom’s back and manages to scrape by the regionals by the skin of her teeth. There, she befriends Javier (Villarreal), a Mexican-American kid whose father is a noted journalist and author; he’s attending a much wealthier school with the kind of facilities Akeelah can’t even begin to dream of. She also meets Dylan (Michael), an Asian-American kid from the same school who is cold, driven and pushed to winning by his father (Ma) who’s seen his son finish as runner-up at the national event twice; this will be Dylan’s last shot at it. As Akeelah gains more success, she finds that rather than getting humiliated, she is getting venerated. The whole neighborhood is behind her and in fact she is becoming something of a local celebrity. Still, the pressure is taking a terrible toll on Akeelah. Her best friend (Garey) won’t talk to her anymore, and Dr. Larabee has abruptly – and curtly – told her she has learned everything she needs from him and basically tosses her into the lake to swim or drown. As you can guess, this is an inspirational movie. You know it is going to end on a high note, but quite frankly how it arrives there and the nature of the high it finishes on is clever and well-done. Writer/director Atchison has done a marvelous job with this story, investing us in Akeelah’s fears and needs yet never talking down to us. It is certainly an afro-centric movie in that it consists of mostly Afro-American characters and quotes mostly Afro-American thinkers but it isn’t just for that community; Akeelah is a character anyone can relate to.

Much of the credit for that must go to Keke Palmer. This is a movie that she must carry and she does it so well that you wonder if Dakota Fanning could have done it any better (the answer: no). She is bright, charismatic but vulnerable and just such a good role model that you can’t help but cheer for her. When I say she’s a role model, that’s not to say she’s too good to be true; as a matter of fact, she does the wrong thing from time to time, but her instincts are to do the right thing and she tends to make the right choice. It’s actually fun watching her blossom, from a shy, frightened little girl into a self-confident spelling champion.This is a movie that moves to a specific rhythm, and it is a timeless beat. Akeelah and the Bee succeeds because you wind up liking Akeelah Anderson. While the other characters in it are solid (Fishburne and Bassett are solid as always, and who’d have thought Booger from Revenge of the Nerds could act?) you will leave this movie remembering Keke Palmer. You will also leave with a warm feeling, and that’s not half bad. You probably won’t leave the movie wanting to spell any better, but it’s a good bet that if you leave the movie wanting to be like Akeelah, that would be a very good thing.

WHY RENT THIS: In a word, Keke Palmer. While ostensibly about the situation in South Central, it is a story anyone can relate to. Solid supporting cast bulwarks this inspirational tale.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: A movie about a spelling bee is almost slow-moving by definition.

FAMILY VALUES: Highly recommended for young teens; suitable for any audiences however.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The character of Dr. Larabee is based on director Atchison’s real-life teacher Mr. Larabell.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There is a music video of Palmer singing “All My Girlz” which appears on the soundtrack.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Hunger