New Releases for the Week of February 18, 2022

UNCHARTED

(Columbia) Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Antonio Banderas, Stephen Waddington, Tiernan Jones, Rudy Pankow. Directed by Reuben Fleischer

Based on the best-selling videogame, this long-in-gestation project features Nathan Drake at the very beginning of his adventures. A street-wise thief, he hooks up with a seasoned treasure hunter to search for a fabulous treasure that Nate’s brother was also on the hunt for before he disappeared, but other, less savory, characters are also looking for it.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Adventure
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: PG-13 (for violence/action, and language)

A Fairy Tale After All

(Vertical) Emily Shenaut, Gabriel Burrafato, Tobin Cleary, Amy Morse. A stubborn teenage girl finds herself magically transported to a kingdom of magic and fantastic creatures.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Fantasy
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grille Sunset Walk
Rating: NR

The Cursed

(LD Entertainment) Boyd Holbrook, Kelly Reilly, Alistair Petrie, Roxane Duran. In the late 1800s, a peaceful country village is suffering from uncharacteristic murders and disappearances. A big city pathologist is summoned to help discover what’s behind it, but he discovers an evil far more insidious than anything he could have imagined.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: R (for strong violence, grisly images and brief nudity)

Dog

(United Artists) Channing Tatum, Jane Adams, Kevin Nash, Q’orianka Kilcher. A former Army Ranger is tasked with bringing a bomb-sniffing dog with PTSD to the funeral of the dog’s former partner. Each battling their own demons, they find themselves on the trip of a lifetime.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: PG-13 (for language, thematic elements, drug content and some suggestive material)

Finding Carlos

(Vertical) Maximus White, Michael Andreaus, Branjae, Jabee Williams. A teenager with a skateboard has to learn to live with his estranged dad, even as he pursues his passion for hip-hop and dance. The story is inspired by the classic holiday celebration of The Nutcracker.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Family
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grille Sunset Walk
Rating: NR

Jockey

(Sony Classics) Clifton Collins Jr., Molly Parker, Moises Arias, Logan Cormier. An aging jockey, looking to win one last championship, has his life turned upside down when a talented young jockey confesses that he is the older jockey’s son. Previously reviewed in Cinema365; see link below under “Scheduled to Be Reviewed.”

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Cinematique Daytona
Rating: R (for language)

The Ledge

(Saban) Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Louis Boyer, Nathan Welsh. A young woman out on a rock climbing trip witnesses the murder of her best friend, capturing it on her cell phone. The killers will stop at nothing to escape justice, so she is forced to climb a treacherous mountain path, knowing that one wrong step could be fatal.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grille Sunset Walk
Rating: R (for strong violence, language including crude sexual references, and some drug use)

Ted K

(Super LTD) Sharlto Copley, Drew Powell, Travis W. Bruyer, Wayne Pile. A former university professor, appalled at how technology had begun to take over our lives, removes himself to an isolated cabin in the Montana woods. But despite his efforts to remain secluded, the modern world intrudes, driving him to acts of local sabotage and, eventually, sending deadly bombs, earning him the nickname of The Unabomber.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Enzian
Rating: R (for language, some sexual content and brief nudity)

COMING TO VIRTUAL CINEMA/VOD:

A Banquet (Friday)
Caught In His Web (Saturday)
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (Friday)
Double Play (Tuesday)
Erax (Thursday)
Fistful of Vengeance (Thursday)
Incarnation (Friday)
King Knight (Thursday)
Swim Instructor Nightmare (Sunday)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Friday)
They Live in the Grey (Thursday)

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

A Banquet
The Cursed
Dog
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
Fistful of Vengeance
Jockey
Ted K
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Uncharted

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New Releases for the Week of November 18, 2016

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

(Warner Brothers) Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller, Ron Perlman, Jon Voight, Dan Fogler, Johnny Depp, Zoë Kravitz.  Directed by David Yates

Young magizoologist Newt Scamander is returning home to Hogwart’s after a global tour collecting and cataloging all manner of magical creatures but is stopping in New York City briefly before the final leg home. However, things go dreadfully wrong when a No-Maj (that’s the American term for Muggle) starts a chain reaction of events that leads to the escape of some of the creatures locked in Newt’s magic case which could lead to dire consequences for both the Wizarding and No-Maj worlds. This prequel to the Harry Potter series, penned by J.K. Rowling herself, is set in 1926.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D
Genre: Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some fantasy action violence)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

(TriStar) Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel, Garrett Hedlund. A 19-year-old soldier becomes a hero after a harrowing battle in Iraq. Returned home for a victory tour, his story is told in flashbacks culminating in a spectacular halftime show at a Thanksgiving Day football game in which he and his fellow soldiers of the Bravo Company are meant to be an integral part. The movie has received some acclaim for the innovative filming techniques used by Oscar-winning director Ang Lee in immersing the viewer in the battle sequences like no other film before it.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: War Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language throughout, some war violence, sexual content and brief drug use)

Bleed for This

(Open Road) Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart, Katey Sagal, Ciarán Hinds. The pride of Providence, RI, boxer Vinnie “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza is on top of the world. He has just won the world championship and everything is going according to plan. Then, he is involved in a near-fatal car accident and ends up with a broken neck. Surgery that will guarantee that he’ll be able to walk again will end his boxing career so Vinnie elects to go without the surgery, although he could end up in a wheelchair. Told by everyone around him that he can’t do it, Pazienza is determined to go back into the ring – less than a year after the accident took him out of it. This is based on the inspiring true story of a boxer who didn’t have any quit in him.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Sports Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language, sexuality/nudity and some accident images)

The Edge of Seventeen

(STX) Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick, Blake Jenner. There’s nothing more awkward than high school, particularly when you aren’t one of the chosen few. However, when you’re golden boy older brother starts dating your best friend, awkward doesn’t even begin to describe it.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for sexual content, language and some drinking – all involving teens)

Gimme Danger

(Magnolia/Amazon) Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton, James Williamson, Scott Asheton. The story of Iggy Pop and the Stooges who came out of Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1960s and essentially created punk rock a decade before its time, and kicked a hole in rock music during an era when anything and everything went from a musical standpoint. Acclaimed filmmaker Jim Jarmusch takes us through the career of the Stooges and their front man, Iggy Pop, who continues to make relevant music today.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Musical Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian Theater (Friday, Saturday and Sunday only)
Rating: R (for drug content and language)

Loving

(Focus) Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas. The important story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple in Virginia at a time when living as man and wife was restricted to one’s own race. The two spent nine years fighting the draconian laws that would keep them separated and took their fight all the way to the Supreme Court. The landmark decision made interracial marriage the law of the land.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements)

The Take

(High Top/Focus) Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, Kelly Reilly. A pickpocket inadvertently foils the plans of a powerful but corrupt group in the French government to steal millions from French banks. He is set up to look like a terrorist and finds himself on the run. A rogue CIA agent realizes what’s happening and the two must join forces in order to take down the conspirators before they’re taken down themselves.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: AMC Loew’s Universal Cineplex, AMC Disney Springs
Rating: R (for violence, language and some nudity)

New Releases for the Week of September 5, 2014

THE IDENTICAL

(Freestyle Releasing) Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Seth Green, Brian Geraghty, Joe Pantoliano, Blake Rayne, Amanda Crew, Erin Cottrell, Chris Mulkey. Directed by Dustin Marcellino

 

Identical twins born during the Depression are separated at birth for economic reasons. One stays with his birth parents in poverty and becomes a rock and roll legend; the other is given to an evangelical pastor and his wife who are unable to have kids. He lives a more stable upbringing but is torn between trying to please his adoptive father and following his own muse.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Musical

Rating: PG (for thematic material and smoking)

Alive Inside

(Projector) Dan Cohen, Oliver Sacks, Doug Thompson, Yvonne Russell. The founder of a non-profit organization that uses music to help patients with severe memory loss must fight against the medical establishment and a broken health care system to combat the affliction and restore the sense of self that is lost along with the memories.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: NR

Innocence

(JSC) Kelly Reilly, Sophie Curtis, Linus Roache, Graham Phillips. A young teenage girl whose mother’s death in a surfing accident haunts her moves to Manhattan with her novelist father and tries to start over at an exclusive prep school. However, her hopes for normalcy are shattered when she discovers that the women who run the academy may be witches who retain their youth and vitality by drinking the blood of virgins – and guess who’s been saving herself for marriage?

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: PG-13 (self-applied)

The Last of Robin Hood

(Goldwyn) Kevin Kline, Elle Fanning, Susan Sarandon, Max Casella. The great Errol Flynn in the twilight of his career has become enamored of a young actress named Beverly Aadland. Her fame-obsessed mother enables the affair but when it goes public, it puts the young girl in a spotlight of intense pressure and only fuels her mother’s obsession further.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Biographical Drama

Rating: R (for some sexuality and language)

Mary Kom

(Viacom 18) Priyanka Chopra, Darshaan Kumar, Sunil Thapa, Zachary Coffin. The true story of Kom, a female boxer in India whose dream was very nearly an impossible one. In a country where the perception of women doesn’t include strength and power, she took on the sports establishment to make her way into the boxing world – and defied the odds.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Sports Biography

Rating: NR

The Remaining

(Sony Worldwide) Johnny Pacar, Shaun Sipos, Bryan Dechart, Alexa Vega. Don’t you just hate it when you go to a wedding and the Rapture occurs instead? That’s what happens to a group of friends who discover that salvation and damnation ride on the decisions they make – but that they might not necessarily be so easy to determine which is which.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of terror, violence and destruction throughout, and thematic elements)

New Releases for the Week of August 22, 2014

FRANK MILLER’S SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR

(Dimension) Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Rosario Dawson. Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller

In Sin City, the corrupt rule and it takes a hard-bitten sort just to make it from day to day. At the center of the spider’s web is the gleefully wicked Senator Roark as a group of disparate citizens, all wronged in one way or another by the Senator, plot their vengeance in this collection of tales from the graphic novel series filmed in a highly stylized manner. Miller has written two vignettes especially for the film.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette, and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Action Noir

Rating: R (for strong brutalized violence throughout, sexual content, nudity and brief drug use)

Are You Here

(Millennium) Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler, Edward Herrmann. A womanizing weatherman determines to help his off-the-grid and somewhat not-altogether-there buddy inherit a fortune from his estranged father, a decision that is being challenged by his overbearing sister. This is the feature film debut from the creator of the hit TV series Mad Men.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Rating: R (for language, drug use and some sexual content/nudity)

Calvary

(Fox Searchlight) Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen. A Catholic priest in Ireland does his best to minister to his flock and take care of his daughter (from before he was a priest). However during confession with a mysterious man, he is informed that the man is going to murder him to make a statement about the Catholic church, knowing that killing a good priest will be far more effective than killing a bad one. However, the father isn’t going to take this lying down. From the director of one of Gleeson’s better performances in The Guard.

See the trailer, a clip and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: R (for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use)

If I Stay

(Warner Brothers/MGM) Chloe Grace Moretz, Jamie Blackley, Joshua Leonard, Mireille Enos. A young woman looks to have a bright future; a potential scholarship to Julliard, a loving family and a boy she’s crazy about and who’s crazy about her right back. In a single instant, everything changes and her world is torn apart. Hovering between life and death, the girl must make the nearly unbearable choice whether to fight and live with the boy she loves, or pass on and join her loved ones.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements and some sexual material)

Island of Lemurs: Madagascar

(Warner Brothers) Morgan Freeman, Patricia Wright, Hantanirina Rasamimanana. Journey to the real island of Madagascar, one of the largest in the world and home to an amazing array of creatures, some found nowhere else. Follow a dedicated scientist working to save the ancient lemurs of Madagascar from extinction.

See the trailer, an interview, a clip and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: IMAX 3D

Genre: Nature Documentary

Rating: G

Mardaani

(Yash Raj) Rani Mukerji, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Sanjay Taneja, Jisshu Sengupta. A female police officer is faced with a crisis when her teenage niece is kidnapped by a crime lord and human trafficker. The young kingpin and the cop play a game of deadly cat and mouse with the teen’s life hanging in the balance.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Crime

Rating: NR

When the Game Stands Tall

(TriStar) Jim Caviezel, Laura Dern, Michael Chiklis, Alexander Ludwig. The inspiring story of Coach Bob Ladouceur and the De La Salle High School Spartans who at one time were riding the longest winning streak in the history of sports. In a matter of weeks the streak ended, the beloved coach suffered a massive heart attack and one of their most popular players was shot to death. The team and the community will face adversity of the sort they’ve never seen before – a true test of champions.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: True Sports Drama

Rating: PG (for thematic material, a scene of violence and brief smoking)

Heaven is For Real

A little father and son talk.

(2014) Faith (TriStar) Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Connor Corum, Marge Martindale, Thomas Haden Church, Lane Styles, Jacob Vargas, Thanya Romero, Danso Gordon, Rob Moran, Nancy Sorel, Darcy Fehr, Vivian Winther, Pete Hudson, Ursula Clark, Mike Mohrhardt, Bryan Clark, Randy Apostle, Julia Arkos, Candace Smith, Cruise Brown, Amber Lynn Partridge. Directed by Randall Wallace

Disclaimer: I’m not a big fan of organized religion or of faith-based movies. I have an aversion to being preached to. Not that I have an issue with people having faith or even religion – there are a lot of good things that organized religions do, but there are also some questionable things and I’m talking about all faiths here, not just one in particular. When someone tells me that there is only one way to get to heaven, I smell flim-flammery.

However, faith and religion are different things entirely. While religion tends to codify our faith, faith can exist without religion (but not vice versa). Religion helps those with faith understand just what it is they have faith in. However, when that faith is confronted with something that we can’t really explain, that faith is shaken to the core, severely tested. It all comes down to belief.

Todd Burpo (Kinnear) is a Wesleyan pastor in the small farming community of Imperial, Nebraska. Besides that, he repairs garage door openers, coaches wrestling and the local high school and is a volunteer fireman. If that wasn’t enough to fill up his day, he dotes on his four-year-old son Colton (Corum), his older sister Cassie (Styles) and his wife Sonja (Reilly) who also directs the music group at the church. If there ever was a Norman Rockwell life, Pastor Burpo was living it.

During a softball game, the pastor slides hard into third base and suffers a severe spiral fracture in his right leg, forcing him to the sidelines on all his endeavors for a few weeks. No sooner has he come back to work when he collapses on the altar during his sermon, felled by kidney stones. The medical bills begin to pile up and there isn’t enough money.

Things go from bad to worse. After a family trip to Denver, both Cassie and Colton come down with the flu. Cassie recovers but Colton doesn’t. He starts to get worse. His parents rush him to the hospital (which is a bit of a hike from Imperial) and once there, it is determined that Colton’s appendix had burst. He is rushed into surgery, but the outlook isn’t hopeful.

However, the little boy manages to pull through. Cue big sigh of relief from everyone involved. But then little Colton starts telling his Dad about his experience; how he found himself floating above the operating table and watching the doctors work on him. How he could see his mother calling friends on the phone and asking them to pray for him. How he saw his Dad in the chapel, yelling at God and venting. Todd is at first bemused by this; these types of experiences are not unheard of after all.

But then he tells his father that he actually visited heaven, and goes on to describe it. While he was there, he heard choirs of angels singing to him, giggling when young Colton asked if they could sing “We Will Rock You” by Queen (a Burpo family sing-along favorite). He also sees Jesus, riding on a horse that is all the colors of the rainbow. He sits in Jesus’ lap, and describes him as having blue/green eyes.

Todd passes this off as his son’s vivid imagination coupled with being surrounded with religious imagery all his life. Then Colton starts giving some details about people he meets in Heaven including a sister whom his mother had miscarried; neither Todd nor Sonja had told him anything about that incident. Todd’s faith is shaken to the core. How can he continue to be the effective pastor he has always been when he isn’t sure that his son has really had this experience he is so sure he’s had?

Wallace, who wrote Braveheart and directed such fine movies as The Man in the Iron Mask and Secretariat  makes some smart choices here. He allows viewers to make their own decisions as to whether Colton’s experience was legitimate and if he’d actually been to Heaven. His father believes it, that is for certain. Clearly, it’s not something that can be proven but it must be taken on faith.

That can be difficult. Church and Martindale play friends of the Burpos as well as members of the board of the church who have a difficult time in accepting Colton’s story (and both do bang-up jobs for the record), and worry about the effect that the growing media circus will have on their small town and their church. I found myself wondering why devout Christians would be anything but thrilled at “proof” that heaven is for real. I guess it’s as hard to see your beliefs proven to be true as it is to see them proven to be false.

Kinnear is the glue that holds the film together. He is rock solid, charismatic and crazy likable. We are reminded once again that he is one of those actors who should be an A-lister but for whatever reason has never gotten the role that pushes him over the top. Given the box office success of this film, we may finally get to see that happen.

As for the actor that played young Colton, I have to be honest although it doesn’t make me happy to do so – he is stiff and unnatural. I try to give leeway to young actors because it’s not fair to hold them to standards that you would hold an adult to. However, in this case because he’s so integral to the story and to the film, I would be amiss in not at least mentioning that you need to expect that his line readings can sometimes remind you that he is a kid reading words rather than a character saying them. There is a huge difference and it did for me at least take me out of the movie at times.

The movie and the book that it came from has sparked a certain amount of controversy. Some Christian publications have condemned the book for not having a Biblical version of Heaven – some film critics have panned the film for its depiction of billowing clouds, WASP-ish Jesus (although the painting of him that Colton identified as the Jesus he saw in heaven that was painted by a Serbian girl who had a similar experience looked distinctly Semitic to my eyes) and  angelic chorales was too over-the-top. I never realized that Heaven was such a controversial subject.

And of course, atheists and non-believers have been smug and snarky in their contempt for the film. It’s this kind of treatment that adds fuel for the Fox News assertion that there is a war on Christianity, albeit that on Fox News there’s always a war on something. People have the right to believe as they choose; just because you believe in one thing doesn’t make you automatically better than people who believe in another. Belief is not about being superior to everyone else; it’s about how you choose to live your life and what you choose to embrace as fact even if you cannot prove it as such.

Living in the Bible Belt gives me a certain perspective. Certainly most of the audience that is seeing this movie is Christian or leans that way. During many points in the film, there was audible sniffling and I’ll admit to getting misty-eyed myself. I suspect few atheists will go to see this and I can’t see a lot of non-Christians making the effort either. This is certainly aimed at one segment of the movie-going audience but it serves them well, yet for those who are less religious at least it treats the subject with respect and as I said earlier, allows us to reach our own conclusions.

I have my own conclusions and my own beliefs as to what happens after we die. The fact of the matter is, as Kinnear’s character says during the film quoting his grandfather, is that by the time we know for sure what does happen to us it’s too late to tell anybody about it. Maybe Colton actually did visit heaven; maybe it’s something that his mind did to help him cope with a crisis he couldn’t understand. We will never know for certain either way. Whichever explanation you choose to believe you have to take on faith. And that my friends is the crux of that human ability to accept things we cannot prove.

REASONS TO GO: Kinnear is solid. Raises some real questions about faith.

REASONS TO STAY: Gets preachy in places. Corum not the most natural of actors.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some medical situations involving a child as well as some thematic elements which small children may not understand or be disturbed about.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was filmed mostly around Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/5/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 49% positive reviews. Metacritic: 47/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Love Me

New Releases for the Week of April 18, 2014

TRANSCENDENCE

(Warner Brothers) Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Rebecca Hall, Kate Mara, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser, Clifton Collins Jr., Lukas Haas. Directed by Wally Pfister

A brilliant A.I. engineer is on the verge of a game-changing breakthrough when he is shot with a radioactive bullet by members of an anti-technology group. His wife and best friend know his only chance for survival is to finish his experiment – to download his intelligence and essence into a computer. Unsure about the ethics of such an endeavor, they nonetheless proceed – and soon discover their worst fears being realized.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, promos and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, IMAX (opens Thursday)

Genre: Science Fiction

Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action and violence, some bloody images, brief strong language and sensuality)

2 States

(UTV) Arjun Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Amrita Singh, Revathy. A Punjabi boy and a Tamil girl face overwhelming obstacles in trying to get their parents to allow a marriage between the two of them. This is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Chetan Bhagat.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Bears

(DisneyNature) John C. Reilly (voice). Follows two new mama bears in the rugged, majestic and often dangerous terrain of Alaska as they try to teach their cubs everything they need to know to survive – while protecting them from the many dangers of the Alaskan wilderness.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Nature Documentary

Rating: G

A Haunted House 2

(Open Road) Marlon Wayans, Gabriel Iglesias, Jaime Pressly, Essence Atkins. After exorcising the demons from his last girlfriend, a man starts fresh with his new girlfriend and her two children in a new house. Unfortunately, supernatural trouble follows him as he starts to realize that it may not be the house that’s haunted – maybe it IS him!

See the trailer, interviews, clips and B-Roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Horror Spoof

Rating: R (for crude and sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violent images)

Heaven is For Real

(Tri-Star) Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Margo Martindale, Thomas Haden Church. Based on actual events, this details the story of a young boy who lies near death’s door and makes a miraculous recovery. When he comes to, he claims he has been to heaven and while there are those who are skeptical, his pastor father is disturbed that his son knows things that happened before he was born – things he couldn’t possibly know, providing a challenge to his faith and his beliefs.

See the trailer, clips, featurettes, interviews and B-Roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opened Wednesday)

Genre: Faith-Based Drama

Rating: PG (for thematic material including some medical situations)

Le Week-End

(Music Box) Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum, Judith Davis. A British company, married for umpteen years, returns to the scene of the crime – their honeymoon in Paris. Trying to rekindle the romance that has been missing from their relationship, they succeed and then some as the romance of the City of Lights takes hold.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for language and some sexual content)

Lotoman 003

(Panamericana) Dalisa Alegria, Fernando Carrillo, Julian Gil, Fausto Mata. This hit comedy franchise from the Dominican Republic makes it’s American debut in select theaters in the U.S.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: NR

The Lunchbox

(Sony Classics) Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nakul Vaid, Lillette Dubey.A frustrated housewife cooks lunch for her increasingly distant husband. When her lunchbox is inadvertently sent to the wrong recipient, a correspondence ensues between two lonely souls.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Romance

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material and smoking)

Make Your Move

(High Top) Derek Hough, BoA, Wesley Jonathan, Will Yun Lee.Two young people from completely different worlds meet in one of New York’s hottest underground clubs and discover that they have common ground in dance.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Urban Dance

Rating: PG-13 (for language including sexual references, and brief violence)

Race Gurram

(Ficus) Shruti K. Haasan, Ravi Kishan, Prikash Raj, Allu Arjun. Two brothers who are polar opposites and constantly squabble and play increasingly spiteful pranks on one another are forced to unite when a corrupt politician wants revenge against the one brother who contested his election.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Under the Skin

(A24) Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams, Lynsey Taylor Mackay, Dougie McConnell.  An alien masquerades as a human woman, using her amazing sexuality to snare human prey. As she spends more time on Earth however, she begins to change as she finds the complexity and joy of human life irresistible, putting her on a collision course with her own kind.

See the trailer, featurettes and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller

Rating: R (for graphic nudity, sexual content, some violence and language)

Flight

It rains on the just and the unjust equally.

(2012) Drama (Paramount) Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly,  Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman, Brian Geraghty, Melissa Leo, Tamara Tunie, Nadine Velazquez, Charlie E. Schmidt, Peter Gerety, Boni Yanagisawa, Garcelle Beauvais, Justin Martin, Rhoda Griffis. Directed by Robert Zemeckis

 

We take flying for granted. You are far more likely to be killed in a car wreck than you are in the friendly skies. We trust our pilots to be sharp and skilled, highly trained to handle any situation and get us to our destination in one piece.

Whip Whitaker (Washington) is such a pilot. He is cool calm and in command on the outside, his aviator shades and uniform inspiring confidence. He is piloting a short flight from Orlando to Atlanta. The weather is frightful; a severe storm making the take-off anything but routine. But that’s not the worst of it; mid-flight, the plane goes inexplicably into a nosedive and nothing the crew can do can pull them out. Whitaker pulls off an incredible maneuver involving lying the plane upside down and manages to set down in a field. There is loss of life (four passengers and two crew die in the incident) but compared to what might have happened the landing was nothing short of miraculous.

Whip wakes up in the hospital barely remembering what happened. He’s being hailed as a hero and the press is in a frenzy, eager to get an interview with him. His good friend Charlie Anderson (Greenwood), a fellow pilot and head of the pilot’s union, flies to Atlanta to navigate him through the NTSB and other procedures that occur after a crash with fatalities.

Then everything falls apart. It turns out that the blood drawn from him routinely after the crash showed that he had alcohol and cocaine in his system. Which, in fact, he did – the night before the crash he had partied all night with a sexy stewardess (Velazquez) who had somewhat conveniently been one of the fatalities. They’d drank like fish, snorted coke and had lots of sex. In fact, Whip had even mixed himself a little cocktail of orange juice and vodka during the fatal flight.

In fact Whip has quite a problem; he could face jail time and lawsuits. A lawyer is hired for him by the union, the whip-smart (couldn’t resist the pun) Hugh Lang (Cheadle) who is charged with getting Whip off the hook because should he be found liable, so would the airline that hired him which would effectively put it out of business and put a good many pilots in the unemployment line, which the union decidedly doesn’t want.

But Whip’s biggest problem is his own demons. He can’t seem to stop drinking, although he tells everyone around him he can quit on his own, no problem. He resents even the thought of being called an alcoholic and yet his binges seem to come at the worst possible times as if he himself is crashing far worse than the jet he had previously piloted.

His estranged wife (Beauvais) and son (Martin) want nothing to do with him, but all isn’t hopeless – he has taken up with the recovering addict Nicole (Reilly) who seems to be serious about her recovery. Maybe this hook-up which was a result of his own kindness might turn out to be his salvation. With an NTSB hearing which will determine his future approaching, Whip is most assuredly his own worst enemy.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, this isn’t a movie about a plane crash although the crash sequence, which lasts twelve minutes at the beginning of the movie, is flat-out amazing and horrifying at once – so much so that if you’re planning to travel by air anytime soon, you may want to hold off on seeing this until after you’ve fulfilled your travel plans.

What this really is about is addiction and as harrowing as the plane crash sequence is, the rest of the movie following Whip’s fall from grace is far more so. It really isn’t very easy to watch as Whip gulps down liquor as if it were Kool-Aid and he continues to deny that there is a problem.

Very few actors could pull this part off properly – we need to be repelled by Whip’s actions even as we are compelled by his compassion. Washington is so likable and charismatic that we root for him throughout even though his character’s self-destructive streak is so profound that deep down we know he’s going to let us down. I imagine it’s much the same living with an alcoholic in real life.

The supporting cast is pretty stellar as one. Reilly, an Irish accent, is pixie-like and has an odd vulnerability that is laced with gravitas. Cheadle, one of my favorite actors, comes through again as a competent professional who is nevertheless out of his depth with Whip and the frustration becomes very apparent soon. Goodman, as a party animal who is Whip’s supplier, is marvelous and Tunie as a stewardess is amazing.

But it is Denzel who steals the show and simply put, this is one of the best performances of his storied career. He has to be considered an early front-runner for the Best Actor Oscar race, and I almost guarantee that he’ll nab a nomination early next year. It would be a major miscarriage of justice if he did not.

There are plenty of movies that show the horrors of alcoholism but few have captured it this well. This might be a good primer for those who suspect someone they care about is an alcoholic, but for those who already know someone they love is this might be a little too close to home. Just fair warning.

REASONS TO GO: Nothing like what you think it’s going to be. Oscar-caliber performance from Denzel.

REASONS TO STAY: Those expecting an action film might be put off by the drama. May be too close to home for those who are alcoholics or have someone in the family who is.

FAMILY VALUES:  The depiction of alcohol and drug abuse is pretty graphic; so too is the crash scene that opens the film. There is also plenty of bad language, a good deal of sexuality and nudity.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is only the second R-rated film Zemeckis has directed (the first was Used Cars in 1980.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/23/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 77% positive reviews. Metacritic: 76/100. The reviews are solidly strong.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Days of Wine and Roses

AIRPLANE LOVERS: A very realistic look inside the cockpit of a jetliner, and you get a real sense of what it’s like to fly a commercial airplane.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Mission to Mars

Eden Lake

Kelly Reilly gets a different kind of facial.

(2008) Horror (Third Rail) Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender, Tara Ellis, Jack O’Connell, Finn Atkins, Jumayne Hunter, Thomas Turgoose, James Burrows, Thomas Gill, Lorraine Bruce, Shaun Dooley, James Ghandhi, Bronson Webb. Directed by James Watkins

We are trained from birth to jump at things that go bump in the night. We give form to our fears in all sorts of monsters from Godzilla to Dracula. The true horror however lies in the human heart.

Jenny (Reilly) and Steve (Fassbender) are a couple who are taking a weekend trip to an idyllic lake in rural England, a place Steve has happy memories of from his childhood. However when they get there, they discover that an impending development has closed off the lake. Disregarding the “Keep Out” signs, Steve drives into the park-like setting.

The lake doesn’t disappoint – it’s beautiful and placid. However, the couple’s peace and quiet is shattered by a group of teen hoodlums. Led by Brett (O’Connell), they’re mostly obnoxious and a bit intimidating. Rather than moving elsewhere, Steve decides to stay because “they were there first.” Not very mature and not very smart.

Things begin to escalate. The kids steal their car and their things. There are confrontations. They get physical. Brett’s beloved dog is accidentally killed. Things are about to get seriously ugly, and it will be up to Jenny to save them after Steve is seriously injured. Between her is a pack of rabid dogs in kid’s bodies that are baying for her blood.

Watkins makes a film that is a worthy successor to Straw Dogs and other 70s survival movies. Once things get rolling, you will be cringing in your seat and almost begging for the couple to make it. Steve and Jenny are extremely likable and the kids so utterly horrid that there is an easy rooting interest.

Fassbender has come on in recent years to be poised on the edge of stardom, but this movie was made before his higher profile roles of late. His role here is much more of a supporting part; for most of the second half of the movie he is essentially immobile and has few lines. Still, he has an innate likability and it shows onscreen here.

Reilly is really the star of the movie. Jenny is really put through the wringer here – dragged through the mud, burned, stabbed, beaten and betrayed – she is pushed to the limit and beyond. Reilly plays her as a fragile woman who has an inner strength that comes roaring out when cornered. She’s a likable heroine who can also be fierce, pushed to do things that are she must in order to survive.

O’Connell makes for a vicious and brutal gang leader, one of the nastiest to ever be seen on screen. When things get violent, he gets out of control, savaging his own gang members when he doesn’t get his way. O’Connell doesn’t make him sympathetic but he does make him human and not just a cartoon character. The brutality may be extreme but it comes from a realistic place.

This may be an extreme case but there have been reports of incidents of people being set upon by youth gangs in Britain. As things escalate to their conclusion, we can view this as a morality tale that leaves us with a few lessons. First, never underestimate the danger that comes from a pack of people; no matter how young they are. Second, it is a bad idea to stay somewhere when there are clearly dangerous people around, no matter how much it wounds your macho pride. Finally, never come between a boy and his dog. It can only end badly.

WHY RENT THIS: An excellent thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout. The leads are attractive.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The brutality can be off-putting.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a great deal of brutal violence, some nudity and sexuality, a whole lot of foul language and a brief bit of drug use.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Turgoose first gained critical notice for the movie This is England.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $4M on an unreported production budget; I’m thinking this probably made a little bit of money.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: The Other Man