New Releases for the Week of April 19, 2019

THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA

(New Line) Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Tony Amendola, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen. Directed by Michael Chaves

A young social worker and her kids find themselves being stalked by the legendary La Llorona, the Weeping Woman. In order to save her family, the social worker must put their lives in the hands of a disillusioned priest who is practicing a strange sort of mysticism taking them to a realm where faith and fear collide.

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

Breakthrough

(20^th Century Fox) Chrissy Metz, Josh Lucas, Topher Grace, Mike Colter. Based on a true story, this film dramatizes the story of the Smith family whose son falls through the ice into a lake. Miraculously he survives but in a coma. His mother marshals her family, friends and neighbors to begin a national prayer campaign to save her son.

See the trailer, clips and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Christian Family Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for thematic content including peril)

Finding Julia

(XL141) Andrew McCarthy, Ha Phuong, Kieu Chinh, Richard Chamberlain. A Eurasian acting student is having trouble fitting in, caught between East and West. Recurrent nightmares about the accident that took her mother’s life begin to make her question her own sanity.

No trailer currently available
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Mystery
Now Playing: Regal Oviedo Marketplace
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, sexuality, violent/bloody images, and language)

High Life

(A24) Stephen Eric McIntyre, Timothy Olyphant, Joe Anderson, Rossif Sutherland. A quartet of drug-addicted petty criminals get set to pull out what they think is a foolproof heist robbing bank ATMs by posing as repairmen but things don’t go quite as planned as is usually the case for that sort.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for drug use, pervasive language and some violence)

Kalank

(FiP) Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Madhuri Dixit, Sanjay Dutt. A small village on the Northern Indian frontier goes through severe changes as the partitioning of the country is about to get underway. A forbidden romance unearths secrets long buried and rivalries long simmering as violence threatens to overwhelm love.

See the trailer and clips here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Touchstar Southchase
Rating: NR

Penguins

(DisneyNature) Ed Helms (narrator). Steve, an Adėlie penguin in the Antarctic, hopes to start a family in the frozen wasteland of the South Pole, but nothing ever comes easy in the most inhospitable place on earth.

See the trailer, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Nature Documentary
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: G

Peterloo

(Amazon) Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, Tim McInnerny, David Bamber. In 1813 a cavalry charge into a peaceful crowd demonstrating for democratic reform in a field near Manchester became known as the Peterloo Massacre. Oscar-winning director Mike Leigh brings this mostly forgotten historical event back to life.

See the trailer and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Historical Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: PG-13 (for a scene of violence and chaos)

Teen Spirit

(Bleecker Street) Elle Fanning, Rebecca Hall, Zlatko Buric, Agnieszka Grochowska. A shy teen on the Isle of Wight impulsively enters a national singing contest and to everyone’s surprise makes it all the way to the finals. Her manager, a former opera star, tries to help her navigate the pitfalls of stardom but will it be enough?

See the trailer, video featurettes and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Musical
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Barnstorm Theater, Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Cobb Daytona, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Port Orange Pavilion, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: PG-13 (for some suggestive content, and for teen drinking and smoking)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Athiran
Daddy Issues
Her Smell
Jersey
Kavaludaari
Last Fool Show
Little Woods
The Pilgrim’s Progress

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

3 Faces
Amazing Grace
Athiran
Jersey
Kavaludaari
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Ramen Shop
Yellaipookal

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Amazing Grace
Athiran
Drunk Parents
Jersey
Kanchana 3
Kavaludaari
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Stuck
Yellaipookal

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Amazing Grace
Athiran
The Brink
Dead Man
Her Smell
Jersey
Kavaludaari
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Woman at War

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

The Curse of La Llorona
Little Woods
Penguins
Ramen Shop
Teen Spirit

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Florida Film Festival, Maitland/Winter Park FL

Advertisement

Top 5 Starfests

One of the big draws of The Expendables (see review) is the star power; many of the biggest stars in the action genre of the last 20 years make an appearance in the movie. Loading up a movie with as many stars as you can fit in is nearly as old as Hollywood is itself; having multiple stars draws across various fanbases and give the movie a wider potential audience to draw from. Some movies exist for little reason beyond just getting those self-same stars into the same movie; how many people would have seen Heat for example had it not had both Pacino and De Niro in it? At their best, Starfests can be a romp allowing big stars to shine in small little-more-than-cameo roles. These are my favorites.

HONORABLE MENTION

There are several movies that didn’t make the top five but were worthy of mentioning here. Robin and the Seven Hoods (1962) was ostensibly a Rat Pack movie with Sinatra, Deano and Sammy, it also boasted Bing Crosby, Peter Falk, Barbara Rush, Victor Buono, Tony Randall and Edward G. Robinson, along with a number of Borscht Belt comics of the day. The Towering Inferno (1974) followed the tried and true disaster film formula of throwing a bunch of stars into a disaster situation and then have the audience watch to see who survives. Not only did it pair up Steve McQueen and Paul Newman for the first time, the stellar cast included William Holden, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Robert Wagner, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Robert Vaughn and OJ. Yes, that OJ. Clue (1985) was based on the popular board game and had the gimmick of shooting three different endings which varied depending on which theater you saw the movie in. The cast of characters included Madeline Kahn, Martin Mull, Tim Curry, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean and Lesley Ann Warren. Finally, Mars Attacks! (1996) was director Tim Burton’s homage to a series of collectable cards issued in the 1950s that depicted all sorts of gruesome killings perpetrated by rampaging Martians. Here, he set up a spectacular cast only to kill them off in some horrible way, including Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox, Danny De Vito, Annette Bening, Rod Steiger, Jim Brown, Glenn Close, Sylvia Sidney, Pam Grier, Joe Don Baker, Paul Winfield and Martin Short. Also cast in early roles were Jack Black and Natalie Portman before they were famous. 

5. THE GREAT RACE (1965)

 

This Blake Edwards-directed ode to the daredevil motorists of the early1900s relied heavily on silent cinema conventions and star power to motor it along. The race from New York to Paris featured Jack Lemmon as the Dastardly Professor Fate, whose car contained among other inventions, a smoke machine, a cannon and a scissor lift. Tony Randall  Curtis was the Great Leslie, whose eyes and teeth twinkled and gleamed like the Northern Star, sure to set all sorts of female hearts a-flutter at the time. Along for the ride was an impressive cast including Natalie Wood, Dorothy Provine, Ross Martin, Keenan Wynn, Peter Falk, Arthur O’Connell, Larry Storch, Vivian Vance and Denver Pyle. It can be seen regularly on broadcast television and is usually not that hard to find at your local video retailer.

4. THE LONGEST DAY (1962)

 

The story of D-Day is an epic canvas in and of itself, and Hollywood just about outdid itself when it rolled out the red carpet for the stars who played both front line soldiers and officers behind the scenes where the invasion of Normandy was planned. John Wayne headlined the she-bang, but among those who were also involved including (deep breath now) Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Robert Mitchum, Roddy McDowell, Curt Jurgens, Robert Ryan, George Segal, Edmund O’Brien, Sal Mineo, Fabian, Mel Ferrer, Robert Wagner, Stuart Whitman, Rod Steiger, Eddie Albert and Gert Frobe. It may not have been the longest day but it might have been the longest cast. It periodically shows up on broadcast television or basic cable; it can be difficult to find at video retailers, but as a classic is most certainly worth seeking out.

3. OCEANS 11 (2001)

 

George Clooney got together with his buddy Steven Soderbergh and decided to remake the Rat Pack classic of the same name, albeit much modernized but with the same jazzy sense of style. The two of them called a bunch of A-list friends to make a new Rat Pack for the 21^st century and an impressive list of talent it is; Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac, Elliott Gould, Carl Reiner, Andy Garcia, Scott Caan and Casey Affleck. You got the feeling that robbing the casino was not so much the point as was having a three-month long party in Vegas. Fortunately, what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas – it was a smash hit and inspired two sequels and there might have been more but for the untimely passing of Bernie Mac. Currently, it plays cable TV regularly and occasionally shows up on TBS and it’s ilk. If you don’t want to wait for it to show up on TV, you can easily find it at most rental outlets or retail stores if you want to add it to your own library.

2. MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)

A classic Agatha Christie mystery became a box office smash and Oscar winner in the capable hands of director Sidney Lumet. Albert Finney starred as the natty Belgian detective Hercule Poirot faced with a vicious murder on a train that as he investigates, he determines it has something to do with an infamous kidnapping that was obviously based on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. In this gorgeous period piece, everyone’s a suspect and when you have a cast like Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, Richard Widmark, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Michael York, John Gielgud, Martin Balsam, Wendy Hiller, Jacqueline Bisset, Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Roberts and Jean-Pierre Cassel, it doesn’t really matter who done it. This is one train ride I don’t mind taking over and over again and you certainly can; it makes regular appearances both on premium cable and basic cable. It is also fairly easy to find at video rental places, although generally you’re much more apt to be able to buy it online than you are in brick and mortar retailers.

1. AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956)

Producer Michael Todd’s epic version of the Jules Verne novel was beyond scale or scope. One of the most honored films of all time with five Oscars (including Best Picture), the movie starred the urbane David Niven as Phineas Fogg, with the Mexican comedian Cantinflas as the loyal manservant Passepartout, the cast included most of the biggest stars of the day, with Shirley MacLaine as the lovely Princess Aouda, but also in varying roles from cameos to featured roles, Frank Sinatra, Robert Morley, Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Charles Boyer, Cesar Romero, Cedric Hardwicke, Ronald Coleman, Robert Newton, Peter Lorre, George Raft, Red Skelton, Marlene Dietrich, John Carradine, Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, Andy Devine, Hermione Gingold, Edward R. Murrow and Trevor Howard. This remains one of the most entertaining movies ever made. It used to be a broadcast staple, but rarely shows up on cable these days; you’re probably better off renting it or buying it from your favorite retailer.