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

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The Fountain

Just another 26th Century Icarus.

(2006) Science Fiction (Warner Brothers) Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Marc Margolis, Stephen McHattie, Sean Patrick Thomas, Donna Murphy, Ethan Suplee, Richard McMillan, Lorne Brass, Fernando Hernandez, Cliff Curtis, Janique Kerns.  Directed by Darren Aronofsky

There are some mysteries that fire the imagination and others that are so immense that they’re terrifying. Eternal life is like that. We as a species fear the unknown, and there is nothing quite so unknown as death. We try to avoid it, we shrink from it, we fight to stave it off and yet inevitably, it claims us all. Some come to embrace it, others in time learn to accept it. Others, however, never quite come to terms with it.

The Fountain is an attempt to breach the mystery and it is done in a way that reading a plot won’t really shed a lot of light as to what the movie is about. The storyline is this; in the 16th century, a conquistador named Tomas Creo (Jackman) has been given a mission by Isabel (Weisz), the Queen of Spain who has been beset by the Grand Inquisitor (McHattie) for her heretical thoughts which are a tad more liberal than his liking. A priest, Father Avila (Margolis) under her control has discovered the location of the Biblical Tree of Life which grants eternal life to all those who drink of its sap. Returning to Spain with such a treasure would shift power from the Inquisitor to the Queen, who has pledged that should Creo return successful he would have her hand in marriage. However, to get to the Tree he must fight his way through a bunch of annoyed Mayans in a heretofore lost pyramid.

In modern times, Dr. Tommy Creo (Jackman again), a brilliant medical researcher, is racing against the clock to find a cure for the extremely aggressive brain tumor that is slowly killing his wife Izzi (Weisz again), an author who is writing a book about a conquistador’s quest for the Tree of Life. She has left the final chapter unfinished, wanting her husband to complete the book for her when she is gone. Tommy, for his part, is driving his team relentlessly, causing his boss Dr. Guzetti (Burstyn) to remonstrate with him. She wonders if he shouldn’t be spending more time with Izzi in her last days rather than on this fool’s errand to find a cure. His teammates Antonio (Thomas), Betty (Murphy) and Manny (Suplee) are concerned that he’s lost his perspective. Tommy, however, is working on a plant from South America that may yield the cure he desperately needs for his starry-eyed wife, who is trying to make her peace with her eventual fate.

Five hundred years from now, a hairless astronaut named Tom (Jackman a third time) hurtles through the void in a transparent bubble-like spaceship with a dying tree with the intention of flying it into the center of a dying star. His motives are unclear; whether he intends to restore life to the star, or life to the souls of those the ancient Mayans believe went to this place to rest or perhaps some other theory altogether. He hallucinates the presence of his lost love who looks suspiciously like Izzi, practices yoga and meditates as the sphere speeds towards the nebula.

Director Aronofsky has made not so much a movie you watch passively but an event to be experienced. Critics and audiences alike have lined up on either side of the coin; the movie was roundly booed at its Venice Film Festival premiere and has received a critical pasting. However, those who get this movie absolutely love it. Aronofsky really doesn’t give you much room for anything else but absolutes here, which is ironic since the movie has a tendency to be vague with its message.

That message is left open to interpretation, with Aronofsky asking the viewer to reach their own conclusions about the movie. There is a certain 2001: A Space Odyssey feel, particularly to the 26th century sequence and there has been some grousing that this is a movie best encountered while stoned out of your mind. Not being a stoner, I can only imagine what this movie would be like whilst altered.

Jackman does his best work to date as the three Creos (which is Spanish for “I believe,” by the way). All three characters are alike in that they are extremely driven, but different in that they are driven in different ways. Jackman is at once a brutal conquistador, a brilliant but bereaved researcher and a serene Zen monk-like astronaut. Weisz, who at one time was not one of my favorite actresses but has been on a roll lately, makes the best she can out of a role which really doesn’t require much from her other than to smile beatifically most of the time and give soulful looks from a warm bath.

The effects are not CGI on purpose, as Aronofsky felt that would date the movie (not mentioned is that his budget was cut in half by the studio; undoubtedly he had to get a little bit more imaginative with the effects in order to pull it off, and cutting expensive CGI shots would seem to be the right way to go here). Still, there are some spectacular sequences, particularly on the Pyramid and then again as the spacecraft reaches the dying nebula. The whole she-bang is framed by one of the most beautiful scores you will ever hear, penned by Craig Mansell and performed by the classical group the Kronos Quartet and the rock band Mogwai.

This is not a movie for everybody. Several audience members walked out after about 20 minutes and the teenagers expecting some sort of space opera were completely baffled by what they saw. This is the kind of movie that requires an intellectual commitment, and a lot of people who go to the movies are out to turn their brain off, which is fine – I do it all the time. However, if you’re in the right frame of mind, exploring the mystery of eternal life and our attitudes towards it can make for a fine evening’s mental exercise. I realize I’m something of a voice crying in the wilderness, but The Fountain is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, but not many will share that opinion, and that’s fine by me.

WHY RENT THIS: Great performance by Jackman and thought-provoking script. Despite the lack of CGI, still beautiful to look at. Outstanding score by Mansell and performance by the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The triple timeline story is often confusing and frustrating to follow.

FAMILY MATTERS: There is some surprisingly violent action sequences as well as some sensuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The Xibalba Nebula refered to by Mayan astronomers as the place where departed souls enter the afterlife, is located in the constellation Orion.

NOTABLE DVD FEATURES: The movie’s torturous journey to the screen included an aborted first film that starred Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett that was halted not very far into production after creative differences between Pitt and Aronofsky and budgetary concerns from the studio led to the cessation. The feature “Australia” discusses this, although not in as much detail as we’d like.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $16.0M on a $35M production budget; the movie was a flop.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

TOMORROW: Happy Feet