New Releases for the Week of February 3, 2017

RINGS

(Paramount) Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D’Onofrio, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan, Chuck Willis, Patrick Walker. Directed by Javier F. Guttieréz

It is whispered that once there was a videotape, one in which if you watched it you would be marked and in seven days after first viewing it you would die. When a woman’s boyfriend gets caught up in the subculture surrounding the urban legend, she sacrifices herself to save him and finds out that the horror doesn’t end there – that there is a movie within the movie, one that nobody knew existed and one that will bring her face to face with Samara herself.

See the trailer and the first three minutes of the movie here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for violence/terror, thematic elements, some sexuality and brief drug material)

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

(IFC Midnight) Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Ophelia Lovibond, Olwen Kelly. A small town coroner and his son who assists him receive a body one dark and stormy night; the body of a woman who was found in the walls of a home where a terrible massacre took place. The two begin to perform an autopsy on the body but strange and disturbing things begin to happen…and soon it becomes apparent that this strange body might be at the center of it.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for bloody horror violence, unsettling grisly images, graphic nudity and language)

The Comedian

(Sony Classics) Robert De Niro, Leslie Mann, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito. An aging comic icon, seeking to reinvent himself in a new era of stand-up instead gets into a physical altercation with an audience member and is sentenced to community service. There he meets the daughter of a predatory real estate developer who could be the key to his future.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Epic Theaters of Clermont, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Winter Park Village, UA Seminole Towne Center
Rating: R (for crude sexual references and language throughout)

Neruda

(The Orchard) Gael Garcia Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Pablo Derqui, Alfredo Castro. In 1948 the Chilean president banned the communist party in Chile as the Cold War went into full swing. Poet and member of the Chilean Senate, Pablo Neruda decried the actions of the President and was forced to go into hiding. A dogged police inspector pursued him only to find the poet and academic was one step ahead of him at nearly every turn. This, Pablo Larrain’s latest film, was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

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

The Space Between Us

(STX Entertainment) Asa Butterfield, Gary Oldman, Britt Robertson, Carla Gugino. Gardner Eliot is the first human to be born outside of planet Earth – his mother was one of the original colonists of Mars but she died giving birth to him and never revealed the identity of his father. As the boy grows up, he becomes more obsessed with finding out who his father is and in the process begins an online relationship with a girl named Tulsa in Colorado – not the girl named Denver in Oklahoma which is what he was originally after. Anyway, when Gardner gets a chance to go to Earth he takes it, hoping to experience the home planet he’s never known only to discover that his fragile physiology will kill him if he remains there too long.

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: Teen Romance
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for brief sensuality and language)

Un padre no tan padre

(Pantelion) Héctor Bonilla, Zamia Fandiño, Jacqueline Bracamontes, Benny Ibarra de Llano.  When 85-year-old Don Servando Villegas is kicked out of the retirement home he lives in because of his antisocial behavior, his son is forced to take him in to the commune where he lives with his girlfriend and son. As the logline describes it, old age meets new age as the elderly gentleman discovers that the family we’re born into isn’t always the one we create for ourselves as we make our journey.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Regal The Loop
Rating: PG-13 (for drug material, some language and partial nudity)

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Pick of the Litter – December 2016

BLOCKBUSTER OF THE MONTH

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

(Disney) Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelsohn, Riz Ahmed. The first Star Wars movie not to be part of a trilogy but to be a stand-alone adventure makes its debut this Christmastime. It is set in the world of the first film. The Rebel Alliance has discovered that the Empire is building a monstrous new weapon, one that could turn the tide of the rebellion and even end it completely. They hatch a desperate plan to steal the blueprints to this weapon, a weapon known as the Death Star. December 16

INDEPENDENT PICKS

Best and Most Beautiful Things

(First Run) Michelle Smith. This Florida Film Festival jury award winner from this past April’s event is finally getting a theatrical release. The documentary focuses on Michelle Smith, a blind and autistic young woman who has decided that the obstacles stacked against her are not going to keep her from living her life to its fullest. Already a bit of an outcast, she finds a home in the fetish community and develops a BDSM romance that might just rescue her and allow her to live life the way she chooses to. The film has been submitted to the Academy for consideration for a Best Documentary award at the 2017 Oscars. December 2

 

Burn Country

(Orion) Dominic Rains, Melissa Leo, James Franco, Rachel Brosnahan. A former Afghan war journalist is exiled from his own country. Looking for a place as far removed from his former home as possible, he settles on a small Northern California town and gets a job on their local newspaper. Never could he imagine that the town had its own secrets, its own war and its own danger. December 9

The Brand New Testament

(Music Box) Pili Groyne, Benoit Poelvoorde, Catherine Deneuve, Franҫois Damiens. Would it surprise you to know that God exists? Maybe not, but I’m sure it would blow your mind to know that He lives in Brussels with His wife and daughter. Furthermore, it might or might not catch you off-guard to know that he’s a bit of a dick, which annoys his daughter endlessly. So to get back at her daddy, she texts everyone on Earth the date of their death which throws the whole world – and His plan – into chaos.  December 9

Ghostland: View of the Ju’Hoansi

(Autlook) Simon Stadler. The Ju’Hoansi are the oldest culture on Earth but their traditions that go back literally to before Homo Sapiens walked upright are coming under fire. Conditions in Namibia have led to them being banned from hunting. Forced by circumstance to join the civilized world, members of the tribe are brought through the Kalahari desert and into Europe to experience the modern mechanized world. We are treated to a fascinated look as to how outsiders view our modern culture and their insights just might surprise you. December 14

Neruda

(The Orchard) Gael Garcia Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Alfredo Castro, Mercedes Morán. From Oscar-nominated director Pablo Larrain comes this delightful and maybe even true story of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda who became a fugitive in his native Chile when he joined the Communist party shortly after World War II. Assigned to arrest the corpulent poet, Inspector Oscar Peluchonneau is led on a bizarre game of cat and mouse throughout the country with Neruda trying to humiliate the government and Peluchonneau trying to represent its competence. December 16

I, Daniel Blake

(Sundance Selects) Dave Johns, Hayley Squire, Sharon Percy, Briana Shann. Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Loach looks at the British safety net as a carpenter, injured and unable to work, falls through the cracks of the disability process in the UK. He also meets a single mother trying to make ends meet with government assistance also wading through an often confusing bureaucracy. While this is set in Britain, there are certainly a lot of things here that those in America who have had to get government assistance will nod grimly at – in an era when those kinds of assistance programs may end up being slashed to the bone.. December 23