New Releases for the Week of March 9, 2018

A WRINKLE IN TIME

(Disney) Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Storm Reid, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Peña, David Oyelowo. Directed by Ava DuVernay

Meg Murry was devastated when her scientist father disappeared without a trace. Although others around her began to move on, Meg couldn’t. A brilliant girl herself, her studies began to suffer. Then, she is visited by three peculiar beings who inform her that her father is alive but in terrible danger – the whole universe is and only Meg can save the day. With her brother and a stalwart friend beside her, she goes on the adventure of a lifetime through space and time to find her father and save the universe. This is based on the beloved Madeline L’Engle young adult novel.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, video featurettes and promos here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, DBOX, DBOX 3D, Dolby Atmos, IMAX, RPX, RPX 3D, XD, XD-3D
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for thematic elements and some peril)

Before We Vanish

(Neon/Super Ltd) Masami Nagasawa, Ryûhei Matsuda, Hiroki Hasegawa, Kazuya Kojima. Three alien beings, acting as reconnaissance for an upcoming mass invasion of Earth, take over the bodies of three Japanese young people. From them they take every bit of their humanity – their emotions, their passions, everything that makes them human, leaving only hollow shells that are virtually unrecognizable to family and friends. This is a rare sci-fi film that has all the action you can imagine but at the same time is extremely profound, examining what the human spirit means – and how it is in the end our most devastating weapon.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: NR

Gringo

(STX/Amazon) Joel Edgerton, Charlize Theron, David Oyelowo, Thandie Newton. An American businessman heads into cartel-infested Mexico to pick up the formula for pill-form marijuana to bring back to his pharmaceutical company. However, double-crosses, betrayals and backstabbing turn his simple business trip into chaos. Can he survive the trip when there’s nobody he can trust?

See the trailer, video featurettes and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Crime Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language throughout, violence and sexual content)

The Hurricane Heist

(Entertainment Studios) Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson. A group of bank robbers sense opportunity when a hurricane closes in on a US Mint facility. Even when the storm turns into a Category 5 – the worst of the worst – they still make their play. $600 million can buy a whole lot of band-aids after all. However they discover the code they need to get into the vault is known by only one Treasury Agent who has acquired an unlikely ally; the meteorologist brother of one of their hostages. His knowledge of how hurricanes work sets apart this adrenaline-fueled thrill ride.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of gun violence, action, destruction, language and some suggestive material)

The Party

(Roadside Attractions) Timothy Spall, Kristin Scott Thomas, Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz. A woman hosts a celebration at her London home after her political ascension. As the guests arrive, some with news of their own, the dynamic slowly changes and when her husband drops a bombshell of his own, the party becomes less of a celebration and more of a psychological experiment.

See the trailer, clips and an interview here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language and drug use)

The Strangers: Prey at Night

(Aviron) Christina Hendricks, Bailee Madison, Martin Henderson, Emma Bellomy. A family on a road trip pulls into a mobile home park to visit relatives but find the park oddly deserted. Three masked psychopaths soon begin stalking them, terrorizing them and forcing them to go beyond their limits in order to survive.

See the trailer, interviews, a video featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for horror violence and terror throughout, and for language)

Submission

(Great Point) Stanley Tucci, Addison Timlin, Kyra Sedgwick, Janeane Garofalo. A former bestselling author now toils in a boring job as a creative writing professor at a small Vermont college. When he discovers a student with real talent, he takes notice. When her erotically-charged writing seems to be about her having a crush on him, he is aroused. But when she begins to manipulate him into foolish acts, he risks his career and family. This was reviewed last weekend by Cinema365; to read it, follow the link below under Scheduled For Review.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language and some sexual references)

Thoroughbreds

(Focus) Olivia Cooke, Anna Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Kaili Vernoff. Two high school graduates, reuniting after some time apart, are bonding over their differences and their mutual contempt for the overbearing stepfather of one of them. As the summer goes on, they goad each other onto a dark path that leads them to plan the removal of the stepfather. They contact a young hustler who claims he can help them with their problem, but if they are to straighten out their lives they will need to take matters into their own hands.

See the trailer and video featurettes here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for disturbing behavior, bloody images, language, sexual references, and some drug content)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

In Between

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

The Leisure Seeker
Let Yourself Go
Loveless
Oh Lucy!
Sheep and Wolves
Ye Mantram Vesave

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Bent
Happy End
Ye Mantram Vesave

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Ye Mantram Vesave

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

A Wrinkle in Time
Gringo
The Hurricane Heist
The Leisure Seeker
Oh Lucy!
Submission

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Miami Film Festival

Advertisement

Submission

Stanley Tucci clearly has a position of power over Addison Timlin…or does he?

(2017) Drama (Great Point Media) Stanley Tucci, Addison Timlin, Kyra Sedgwick, Janeane Garofalo, Peter Gallagher, Jessica Hecht, Ritchie Coster, Colby Minifie, Alison Bartlett, David Pittu, Henry Stram, Juan Castano, Matt Ballard, Ashley Trawinski, Stephanie Berry, Devin Norik, Kenneth De Abrew, S.J. Son, Nicole Orth-Palavicini, Malika Samuel, Deaven Brooks, Barbara Spiegel. Directed by Richard Levine

 

In an era which has seen the #MeToo movement grow into a national tidal wave of women standing up to name those who have raped, harassed or committed sexual misconduct against them, movies like this one stand out as a bit of a dinosaur.

Ted Swenson (Tucci) toils at a bucolic college campus in Vermont teaching creative writing courses which mainly consist of students reading their works aloud in class and the other students criticizing them, generally with banal cruelty. Ted is married to Sherrie (Sedgwick) who as a medical doctor is likely responsible for their beautiful split level home, although Ted had a bestselling novel years ago based on his own experiences growing up with a radical father who self-immolated in protest of the Vietnam war.

The follow-up however has yet to surface and his agent (Gallagher) has more or less given up on him, so Ted lives in this kind of literary hell in which he listens to badly written purple prose week after week without any let-up. The, one of his students – Angela Argo (Timlin) who has been one of the most vocal and vicious critics – finally after some liberal ego massage gets Ted to read the first chapter of her novel Eggs and he realizes at once he is looking at genuine talent.

Her novel is insightful and extremely erotic, a tale of a student who has become sexually obsessed with her teacher. Of course, Ted surmises that the teacher character is based on him and the student on her – Angela makes it perfectly clear that it is the case. However, Ted makes some ill-advised decisions after Angela continues to shamelessly manipulate him and puts everything at risk – his job, his reputation, and his family.

I guess in a way we can see this film as a way the patriarchy thinks about these sexual misconduct cases. We’re supposed to be sympathetic to Ted and yet he puts himself in a position where he can be seduced and doesn’t seem to realize that the whole thing is being orchestrated by Angela as a means of getting Ted to submit her novel to his agent. She seems sweet at first but sweet turns into demanding turns into seduction turns into accusatory. Angela is supposed to be the villain here but quite frankly, cases like this are far more rare than male authority figures using their power to manipulate vulnerable women into situations where they feel forced to have sexual relationships they don’t want.

The movie is based on a novel written back in 2000 by Francine Prose called The Blue Angel which in turn is loosely based on the Marlene Dietrich film of the same name which Angela is watching during the course of this film in a charming meta move. Movies of this sort are not uncommon – anyone remember the Demi Moore/Michael Douglas film Disclosure? – in which women are shown to have the upper hand in sexual politics although clearly that isn’t the case. It is the type of attitude that allowed the Harvey Weinsteins of the world to flourish.

While the subject is accidentally topical, the plot is predictable and cliché. The movie is saved by Tucci who gives his usual strong performance, although his voiceover narration particularly in the beginning of the film is particularly grating. The collegiate setting particularly in the beautiful countryside of New England is somehow comforting and gorgeous at the same time. That’s the college I’d want to have tenure at.

Watchable mainly because of the strong cast, Submission fails on a number of levels. From a political correctness standpoint, it comes off as somewhat of an anachronism in an age when we are beginning to stand up and take notice of the treatment that women have had to endure in relative silence for decades. Moreover, the way the story is told is rife with clichés and worse yet doesn’t particularly add anything to the narrative. I’m not against the idea of a story about an amoral seductress manipulating a naïve professional for her own ambition but this is the wrong time for that kind of story to be told. I’d much rather see movies that illustrate the reality of what women in the workplace have endured and continue to endure even today.

REASONS TO GO: Tucci is always a treat to watch. As it turns out the plot is very topical. The collegiate vistas are oddly comforting.
REASONS TO STAY: Viewers may get the sense that they’ve seen this all before. Cliches abound throughout the film. The narration is a bit grating.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some strong sexual content, nudity and plenty of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Angela watches the classic Marlene Dietrich film The Blue Angel which gave the source novel its title.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/4/18: Rotten Tomatoes: 67% positive reviews. Metacritic: 49/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Elegy
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Chasing Great

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)

Cop Car

The beginning of a bad idea.

(2015) Thriller (Focus World) Kevin Bacon, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford, Camryn Manheim, Shea Whigham, Sean Hartley, Kyra Sedgwick (voice), Loi Nguyen, Sit Lenh, Chuck Kull, Thomas Coates, Justin Barr, Adam Barr, Kathleen Bentley. Directed by Jon Watts

Actions have consequences. We learn this at an early age, usually because we’ve done something foolish or wrong. The consequences are almost always some form of punishment; having a favorite toy or device taken away, being grounded, made to stand in a corner (if we are very young) or maybe being sent to bed early without desert (horrors!). Of course, the more egregious the offense, the worse the punishment.

Travis (Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Wellford) are a couple of nine or ten year old kids who have decided to run away from their Colorado Springs subdivision. They are traipsing along a vast prairie (being kids, they haven’t particularly thought this through, having only a Slim Jim to sustain them and no water), Travis saying an expletive and Harrison repeating them. It’s all fun and games until they get to a specific word which Harrison is loathe to repeat. Even kids have their limits.

Then they come across something cooler than an F-bomb – an abandoned cop car. At first, the boys timidly run up to the car and having touched it, scurry back fearfully. like some bizarre ritual of counting coup. Eventually they work up the courage to get inside and of course at first it’s all play acting and fun…but then they find the keys.

Sheriff Kretzer (Bacon) is not so amused when he returns to find his car gone. You see, he was in the midst of burying a body and had come to fetch a second from the trunk of his car. Having his homicidal activities discovered just would not do. So he goes out to find the pilferers of his official vehicle, while the kids, blissfully ignorant of what’s going on, go on the joy ride of a lifetime.

Watts, who on the strength of his efforts here won himself the director’s seat for the upcoming Spider-Man reboot, takes a story that’s been essentially told before, strips it down to its essence, and gives us one taut, well-made thriller. The boys’ ignorance of how things work – they have no clue how to operate a car and make some pretty significant mistakes because of their inexperience – helps keep the tension level high. There’s a sequence when they’re trying to figure out how to fire the guns, peering down the barrels of the firearms and you are absolutely certain that one of the kids is going to get their heads blown off. Da Queen was literally viewing that sequence through her clenched fingers. She wasn’t the only one, either.

It helps that the two juvenile actors he cast are completely natural. They are full of bravado, crazy naive, and bonded together like only little boys can be. They are out on an adventure and are very much, as little boys are, shoot first ask questions later sorts. As I mentioned earlier, thinking things through is not their strong suit. While Travis is clearly the ringleader, the true strength belongs to Harrison – again, as is often the case with little boys. They’re like any little boy you might meet in your neighborhood; a little less supervised, a little wilder, but nonetheless recognizable. That helps the movie a great deal the longer it goes on and is one of the strengths of the film overall.

Bacon is a reliable presence. This is the kind of role he’s done before. The actions of the sheriff are never fully explained; we see him at one point flushing an impressive amount of cocaine down the toilet so we assume that it’s a drug thing, but why he has the two men set for a dirtnap is anybody’s guess. We do know that he’s a vicious and clever sort, not above putting a civilian in the line of fire if it is to his advantage; we are used to our policemen being concerned with our own safety so it never occurs to us that the orders we are getting are not given with that in mind. In some ways, this movie mirrors the public’s changing perception of the police. It’s not that there haven’t been bad cops in the movies – there have been bad cops in the movies as long as there have been movies – but it’s the way we look at this bad cop that’s different.

A couple of times during the movie it did feel like some of the sequences felt a little bit forced in order to advance the story; that happens a lot in these sorts of films although in fairness less often here than in other examples of the genre. There’s an encounter with a motorcycle cop that is very well-written from a tension point of view, but it seems to exist in the story only to show us how clever the Sheriff is. A good rule of thumb for filmmakers is that if a scene isn’t germane to the overall story other than to illustrate a character’s personality trait, it probably doesn’t belong in the movie.

Sure, some of the plot points are a bit contrived but for the most part this is a movie that feels like it could happen and maybe it already has. As thrillers go this one is well done, not quite to the level of last year’s Blue Ruin but certainly in the same ballpark. This is a well-constructed, well-executed edge of your seat entertainment that deserves a spot on your radar.

REASONS TO GO: Nice tension. Good performances by the kids who behave like kids.
REASONS TO STAY: A bit contrived in places. Bacon has played this role before.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity, a fair amount of violence, a scene of drug usage and kid peril throughout.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The voice of the dispatcher is done by Kyra Sedgwick. In addition, the Quinlan County on the side of the cop car doesn’t exist in Colorado or any other state.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/21/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 79% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
BEYOND THEATERS: VOD (Check your cable or satellite provider), Amazon, iTunes
COMPARISON SHOPPING: :Evidence
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Grandma

New Releases for the Week of September 11, 2015

THE VISIT

(Universal) Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Patch Darragh. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

A brother and sister go to rural Pennsylvania to visit their grandparents. At first things are pretty much as you might expect; and older couple happy to see their grandkids but the longer they stay, the stranger the behavior of the elderly people begins to seem. Soon they realize that something sinister is going on and their chances of getting home alive are worsening but they can’t get their mom to believe them.

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: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity and for brief language)

90 Minutes in Heaven

(Goldwyn) Kate Bosworth, Hayden Christensen, Dwight Yoakam, Rhoda Griffis. A man in a car accident is declared dead and left under a tarp before being transported to a hospital. He experiences heaven until a pastor’s prayers bring him back to the living. Now in excruciating pain, he fights to regain some kind of normalcy while pining for what waited for him in heaven. Eventually he wrote a book on his experiences which became a New York Times bestseller.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and a promo here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Faith-Based Drama
Now Playing: Amstar Lake Mary, AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Downtown Disney, AMC West Oaks, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Epic Theaters of Clermont, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal The Loop, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13  (for brief violence)

The Challenger

(Fox Searchlight) Michael Clarke Duncan, S. Epatha Merkerson, Kent Moran, Justin Hartley. An ex-boxer trying to make it as an auto mechanic is simply not making ends meet. When he and his adopted mother are evicted, he is forced back into the one thing that he’s been struggling against – boxing. With the help of a legendary trainer, he will do whatever it takes to keep he and his adopted mom off of the streets. This is the late Michael Clarke Duncan’s last film.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Sports Drama
Now Playing: Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: PG-13 (for some sports violence)

Cop Car

(Focus World) Kevin Bacon, Camryn Manheim, Shea Whigham, Kyra Sedgwick. Two young boys discover what seems to be an abandoned police vehicle in a secluded glade and decide to take it for a joy ride. This incurs the wrath of a brutal county sheriff and leads to disastrous consequences.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for language, violence and brief drug use)

Learning to Drive

(Broad Green) Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Grace Gummer, Jake Weber. A high-powered and self-obsessed New York book editor undergoing a divorce decides to become more self-sufficient. She signs up to take driving lessons so that she can visit her daughter in college in Vermont. Her instructor is Darwan, an extremely conscientious teacher and his patience inspires her to open up with him about her deeper problems. In turn, her volatile feelings about her disintegrating marriage bring out some feelings in him about his own impending nuptials.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language and sexual content)

Meru

(Music Box)  Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, Renan Ozturk, Jon Krakauer. Among mountain climbers, Conrad Anker is a legend. It is also considered that the Himalayan peak Meru is virtually unclimbable, towering 21,000 feet into the sky with the final portion being a unique shark’s fin formation that is nearly vertical and requires a different set of climbing skills than the first portion of the mountain, requiring an entirely different set of gear, all of which has to be lugged up the mountain. Anker and his team undergo the harshest conditions that mother nature has to offer, heartbreaking defeats and terrible tragedies just to make yet another assault on Meru. But can anyone climb the unclimbable mountain?

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for language)

The Perfect Guy

(Screen Gems) Michael Ealy, Sanaa Lathan, Morris Chestnut, Charles S. Dutton. After a painful breakup with her boyfriend, a beautiful young professional woman meets a handsome and charming stranger. At first he seems like a gift from heaven, but when her ex-boyfriend re-enters the picture and tries to win her back, the perfect guy suddenly changes into someone she doesn’t know – and someone completely terrifying.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes, a promo and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (opens Thursday)
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for violence, menace, sexuality and brief strong language)

New Releases for the Week of August 31, 2012

LAWLESS

(Weinstein) Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska, Dane DeHaan, Lew Temple. Directed by John Hillcoat

During Prohibition, a group of brothers in the Virginia hill country go from small town bootleggers to local legends to wanted men. They are the Bondurant brothers and they will take on the law while remaining true to each other and their own particular code of wrong and right. (Opened on Wednesday)

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Gangster

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity)

Celeste and Jesse Forever

(Sony Classics) Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Elijah Wood, Emma Roberts. They were high school sweethearts who married young. Now Celeste and Jesse are in their 30s and she wants more from her relationship than he is giving her, so they divorce. They want to remain best friends but as they begin to see other people and Celeste begins to re-evaluate her decision, this proves to be not as easy as it sounds – and it doesn’t sound easy at all.

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, sexual content and drug use)

Joker

(UTV) Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Chitrangda Singh, Sanjay Mishra. A small village is misplaced when the boundaries between India and Pakistan are drawn up, ending up in neither country. Isolated and forgotten, it is overrun by the inmates at the region’s largest insane asylum who take over. It is here a NASA scientist comes to build his device that is meant to communicate with alien cultures but there can be no culture as alien as the one in this village!

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure

(Kenn Viselman Presents) Toni Braxton, Cloris Leachman, Christopher Lloyd, Cary Elwes. A movie in which kids are encouraged to stand up, dance, sing along and act out. Bad idea. (Opened on Wednesday)

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Family

Rating: G

The Possession

(Lionsgate) Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Madison Davenport, Natasha Calis. A young girl becomes obsessed with a wooden box that she found at a yard sale. As her behavior becomes erratic and sinister her parents grow to realize that it wasn’t just any box that she had found – it had contained a dybbuk, a Jewish demon that consumes its victims from the inside. Can they stop it before their darling daughter is devoured?

See the trailer, a clip, a promo and a short film here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Supernatural Horror

Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic material involving violence and disturbing sequences)

Man on a Ledge

Sam Worthington hopes that Elizabeth Banks isn't watching his career plummet over the precipice.

(2012) Thriller (Summit) Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, Anthony Mackie, Edward Burns, Titus Welliver, Genesis Rodriguez, Kyra Sedgwick, Felix Solis, Bill Sadler, Robert Clohessy, Afton Williamson, Pooja Kumar, Frank Pando. Directed by Asger Leth

 

There are a lot of reasons why people climb out on the ledge of a tall building. It could be financial ruin, or a failed love affair. It could be a result of clinical depression, or drug use. Sometimes, the reasons aren’t all that obvious.

Nick Cassidy (Worthington) is standing out on the ledge of the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Traffic has been diverted and the cops are everywhere. A police negotiator named Jack Dougherty (Burns) is assigned the case but Nick wants a woman – Lydia Mercer (Banks) to be exact. She’s been under a cloud recently ever since she lost a jumper on the Brooklyn Bridge who happened to be a cop.

He’s not just any guy; he’s an ex-cop who escaped from prison only a week prior. He had been accused of stealing (and selling) a $40 million diamond belonging to David Englander (Harris), a cutthroat Wall Street sort who has all sorts of people on his payroll. Nick is being aided by his brother Joey (Bell) and Joey’s girlfriend Angie (Rodriguez) in proving that Nick is innocent and that David still has the diamond – by stealing it.

The plot is pretty simple and straightforward, and Leth tries to keep it that way. While there are several feints and twists as befits any heist movie (and the heist is a central part of the film) for the most part it doesn’t veer too much from the main concept and that’s a plus that many more veteran filmmakers sometimes miss.

Worthington has had great success in the fantasy and science fiction action realms, although he hasn’t quite achieved the stardom you’d expect with movies like Avatar and Clash of the Titans under his belt. He won’t move much farther in that direction with his performance here; he’s a bit wooden and the charisma he showed in those two movies isn’t as much in evidence although to be fair he spends most of the movie standing on a ledge talking to Elizabeth Banks. Nothing wrong with that mind you – just not a lot to work with there.

Rodriguez who plays the sassy girlfriend of his brother adds much needed sparkle, not only visually (she’s quite gorgeous) but also in providing an emotional boost. She provides comic relief but seems to be having the most fun of anyone here and she lights up the screen whenever she’s on it. She has stardom written all over her.

The problem here is that there are a lot of logical missteps. For example one of the stunts has someone leaping off of a 21-story-building and landing safely on one of those air-inflatable stunt mattresses which in real life would have a person-sized hole in it if someone were to do that. Also the brother is supposed to be working class but he has all these sophisticated devices to help him get into the vault. Doesn’t make sense.

Also the film misses out on capitalizing on its location. New York is one of the world’s most recognizable and photogenic cities but the movie could just as well be taking place in Pittsburgh or Toledo, anywhere where there’s a suitable high rise. You never get a sense that they’re in New York – and they freaking’ filmed there! That’s a big no-no in my book.

The movie isn’t all that bad but it isn’t particularly good either. You get a sense that you’ve seen it before and done better throughout. It makes for a decent enough diversion but if you’re going to spend your hard-earned dollars at the box office there are plenty of much better films in theaters right now than this, even at this time of the year.

REASONS TO GO: Solid jobs by most of the cast. Rodriguez is nice eye candy.

REASONS TO STAY: Premise is a bit “been there done that” and there are some logical holes that subvert the plot here and there. Misses on capturing the essence of New York.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of violence and a few choice words.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Asger Leth is best known for Ghosts of Cite Soleil.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/16/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 32% positive reviews. Metacritic: 40/100. The reviews are on the low side of mixed.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Phone Booth

HEIST LOVERS: The heist sequences are pretty well thought-out and while not super-original, were enjoyable to watch.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Gothika

Gamer

No matter how mad Terry Crews gets, Gerard Butler just won't share his candy.

(Lionsgate) Gerard Butler, Amber Valetta, Michael C. Hall, Logan Lerman, Alison Lohman, Kyra Sedgwick, Ludacris, John Leguizamo, Zoe Bell, Terry Crews, Ramsey Moore, Aaron Yoo, Jonathan Chase, Brighid Fleming. Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor

Almost since the advent of Pong, certain parental groups have decried the violence in videogames. Once you’ve fragged enough aliens, monsters or opposing soldiers, what’s left to do?

In the near future, gaming has evolved to the next level. Instead of controlling pixels on a television or computer screen, technology developed by techno-genius Ken Castle (Hall) enables gamers to control actual human beings. At first, it’s fairly benign in the social networking game “Society,” in which paid actors act out the fantasy of their controllers, thanks to a nanochip embedded in the brains of the actors that allow the gamers to broadcast instructions directly into the brains of the actors, who then perform any action the gamers wish like a marionette on a string. Apparently what most gamers wish in this dystopian future is softcore porn and raves.

The next step in this process is Slayers, a game featuring death row convicts who battle it out in a gritty urban arena with automatic weapons and grenades. Should the convict survive 30 battles, they are given their release, inspiring a wealth of potential slayers.

The best slayer is Kable (Butler), who has come as close as anyone to achieving freedom. However, he knows a little bit too much about the nanotech developed by Castle, so the multi-billionaire has set Kable up to fall, using a very angry avatar named Hackman (Crews) who has no player, which allows Hackman to act independently without any lag time, a huge advantage over the other slayers who have a several second lag between gamer command and slayer action. Fortunately, Kable’s gamer Simon (Lerman) is very, very good at what he does.

Not everyone thinks this is a perfect world. A group of techno-terrorists who call themselves Humanz are led by Brother (Ludacris), who hack into the game feed, much to the annoyance of Castle and cause all sorts of havoc. A popular interviewer/journalist named Gina Parker Smith (Sedgwick) is also suspicious of what Castle is doing and wants to know more about the Humanz.

Kable doesn’t care about any of this. He’s more concerned about getting back to his wife Angie (Valletta) and daughter (Fleming). Angie is working as one of the actresses in the Society milieu, controlled by an astoundingly obese gamer named Gorge (Moore). Kable soon begins to understand that there is no winning the game, only escaping – and once he escapes, can he save his family from the slavery that Castle intends to unleash upon the world?

Neveldine and Taylor are best known for their movie Crank which was like a videogame on steroids, and was one of the most entertaining action movies of the past few years. They do have the action thing in the bag, as the Slayer action sequences are plenty cool. What happens in between is a little bit less copacetic. I can see where they’re going with this – a commentary on the desensitizing of society and the gaming culture in general. Still, it’s hard to believe that anyone would ever allow another human being complete control of their body, no matter how desperate they were.

Butler is becoming one of my favorite actors working, but this won’t be remembered as a role he nailed. Kable has pretty much no personality whatsoever and while you’re ostensibly rooting for him, the fact of the matter is that you don’t really have much reason to care for him. Hall is actually kind of entertaining as the nerdy but arrogant tech whiz who performs a lip-synch dance to the Sammy Davis Jr. chestnut “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with his lackeys (every good villain’s gotta have lackeys) doing a dance number along with him. That’s one of the better moments in the movie and shows the kind of flair, humor and imagination that the Neveldine/Taylor duo has at their best.

Unfortunately, this isn’t their best. A good videogame has a storyline that you want to follow through to its conclusion; at the very least, you can’t wait to experience what comes next. In this case, what comes next is predictable to the point where you’re checking your watch to see if its time to go yet. It isn’t the worst movie that will be released this year, but there aren’t many compelling reasons to go out of your way to see it.

REASONS TO GO: Some decent action sequences, and that’s about it.

REASONS TO STAY: Butler sleepwalks through his poorly written part. Neveldine/Taylor make movies for adrenaline junkies and this won’t sate even the most hardcore of fans.

FAMILY VALUES: Violence, a whole bunch of it and nudity, as well as sexual situations plus lots of bad language; not for the kiddies.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Rather than using graphics that say “The End” at the conclusion of a film, directors Neveldine and Taylor use “GAME OVER INSERT COIN,” bringing to mind videogames from the ‘80s.

HOME OR THEATER: Skip it altogether, but if you must see it, you can wait for the home video release.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

TOMORROW: The Hunting Party