Now Playing

(last updated: 5/16/12)

Here’s a list of recommended and or popular movies now playing in theaters. Movies marked with a are new releases.

Open in wide release:

21 Jump Street
The crappy early Fox show which launched Johnny Depp gets a modern comic spin with Oscar-nominee(!) Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as a couple of inept cops who go undercover as high school kids in order to break up a drug ring. Ordinarily this one would be instantly dismissible (much as I’ve grown to like Hill), but it’s getting pretty positive reviews. Grieco! Depp! Grieco! Depp!
Opened: (3/16/12)

The Avengers
Putting together a group of superheroes who aren’t quite enough by themselves to make for a satisfying movie turns out to work like a charm. Full of action and character-based humor, The Avengers takes a perilously long time to get going, but once it finally kicks in it delivers the goods. The biggest surprise is Mark Ruffalo’s terrific turn as troubled scientist David Banner and his alter ego The Hulk. None of the solo Hulk films have been satisfactory, but Ruffalo’s dry humor and the monster’s unchecked rage are just what this movie needs when it’s needed. Tom Hiddleston is also terrific as super bad guy Loki.
Opened: (5/4/12)

The Cabin in the Woods
Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Avengers) promised to shake up the “teens menaced in the woods” genre with his script for The Cabin in the Woods and if the critical raves are to be believed, he’s pulled it off.
Opened: (4/13/12)

Chimpanzee
How do you ruin 80 minutes of terrific nature footage? Two words: Tim Allen. In Allen’s defense, the writing he’s given is terrible. In the film’s defense, it’s aimed squarely at little kids and they’ll probably enjoy it.
Opened: (4/20/12)

Dark Shadows
Tim Burton and his usual suspects (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter) take a crack at the camp supernatural soap opera from the late ’60s. Depp is Barnabas Collins, an 18th century vampire unleased in the 1970s with his old nemesis (Eva Green) in pursuit. Michelle Pfeiffer, Jackie Earle Haley and Chloe Moretz co-star.
Opened: (5/11/12)

The Hunger Games
The first in a planned franchise based on Suzanne Collins’ popular series of teen novels about a dark future where 24 teens, 12 boys and 12 girls, are forced by the government to participate each year in a televised duel to the death. Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone, X-Men: First Class) stars as Katniss Everdeen, a girl chosen from a poor district who must compete with the more well-trained contestants of wealthier districts.
Opened: (3/23/12)

The Lucky One
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) is to literature what Thomas Kinkade was to painting. Depending on how you feel about that will probably determine whether you want to see another movie based on one of his books. This one has Zac Efron.
Opened: (4/20/12)

Think Like a Man
Steve Harvey’s best seller mining the differences between men and women gets the big screen treatment.
Opened: (4/20/12)

The Three Stooges
This was half of a good idea back when Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn were on board, but Sean Hayes and Will Sasso? No thanks.
Opened: (4/13/12)

 

Open in Limited Release (<500 theaters – check local listings):

Bernie
Richard Linklater’s black comedy about a beloved small town funeral director who befriends a bitter but wealthy old widow in a relationship that spirals toward tragedy requires an actor of absolute sincerity or it won’t work. Against the odds, Jack Black is that actor and he’s a perfect counterpoint to cranky Shirley MacLaine. Matthew McConaughey co-stars as the town lawyer who simply doesn’t trust Bernie’s motives.
Opened: (4/27/12)

Bully
Lee Hirsch’s moving exposé on school bullying focuses on the lives of 5 teenagers and in the process movingly personalizes a phenomenon that isn’t often taken seriously but that in extreme cases has contributed to teen suicides. Less an indictment of a system and more a wake-up call, Bully is a must-see for parents, teachers, school administrators and especially students who might not realize they’re not alone. Check out the LiC interview with director Lee Hirsch.
Opened: (3/30/12)

Casa De Mi Padre
Will Ferrell in a comic riff on a Spanish language telenovela? With subtitles? Sure, why the hell not? He plays Armando Alvarez who works his father’s failing ranch in Mexico. Just as it seems the ranch will be lost, his wealthy younger brother Raul (Diego Luna) shows up to save the day with a hot young fiancée Sonia in tow. Alas, Raul’s gains may be ill-gotten and Armando develops a thing for the Sonia. Somehow this all leads to a conflict with the local drug lord (Gael Garcia Bernal) with, one hopes, laughs along the way.
Opened: (3/16/12)

Damsels in Distress
Whit Stillman returns to the big screen for the first time in 14 years with this breezily funny comedy about college life. Greta Gerwig stars as the leader of a trio of women who run the campus suicide prevention program, but whose deeper mission seems to be to elevate the coarseness of fraternity life against all odds. Far too gentle and affectionate to be satire, Damsels loves its characters even while poking fun at them. Gerwig sparkles. Check out the interview with writer/director Whit Stillman.
Opened: (4/6/12)

Darling Companion
As of this writing, the latest from Lawrence Kasdan is currently getting worse reviews than Battleship. That’s too bad because it’s a charming if modest little film. Diane Keaton and Kevin Kline star as a long-time married couple for whom a missing dog becomes the catalyst for dramatic change, either for the worse or the better. Also with Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, Mark Duplass and Ayelet Zurer. Check out Jackson’s interview with Lawrence Kasdan.
Opened: (4/20/12)

The Deep Blue Sea
Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives, Of Time and the City) returns to the bad old good old days of post-War England by way of Terrence Rattigan’s 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea. Against the backdrop of an emotionally repressed and class conscious country still reeling from the deprivations of war but with the social revolution of the 1960s not yet in sight, a doomed love triangle plays itself out among three people, each needing something the other cannot provide. Three wonderful performances from Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston (Thor, War Horse, Midnight in Paris) and Simon Russell Beale (Orlando, TV’s MI-5) invigorate a finely tuned but deliberately paced and emotionally claustrophobic psychological study of human desire.
Opened: (3/23/12)

Footnote
Israel’s foreign language Oscar-nominee is about a pair of dueling father/son Talmudic scholars. Sparks fly when dad is awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest scholarship honor. Check out the LiC interview with writer/director Joseph Cedar.
Opened: (3/9/12)

Goodbye First Love
From IFC: “Fifteen-year-old Camille (Lola Créton) is a serious, intensely focused girl who has fallen in love with cheerful Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), an older boy who reciprocates her feelings, mostly, but wants to be free to explore the world. When he leaves her to travel through South America, she is devastated. But over the next eight years, she develops into a more fully formed woman, with new interests and a new love-and the possibility that she’ll be less defenseless when Sullivan enters her life again. Filled with scenes that showcase her extraordinary ability to evoke moods and feelings, director Mia Hansen-Løve (Father of My Children) takes the story of a girl’s first romance and makes it into a singular experience, familiar in its broad strokes and yet so specific that it feels uniquely personal.”
Opened: (4/20/12)

The Hunter
What starts out as a thriller slowly transforms into a piercing character drama as a professional hunter (Willem Dafoe) is sent by a sinister biotech concern to Tasmania to track down rumors of one last Tasmanian tiger, a species long believed extinct. Though he’s a loner by nature, while there he takes an interest in the family he’s staying with when he finds out the man of the house has disappeared. Coincidence? I think not… Check out the LiC interview with director Daniel Nettheim.
Opened: (4/6/12)

^I Wish
Arthouse favorite Hirokazu Koreeda (Still Walking) returns with this kids’ eye view of the world. Two brothers who have been separated by divorce believe a miracle surrounding the opening of a new bullet train connecting their cities will reunite their family. Inspired by these two dreamers, two groups of friends set out to meet at the spot where the two trains will pass each other in either direction.
Opened: (5/11/12)

In Darkness
Agnieszka Holland’s latest film is based on the true story of Leopold Socha, a sewer worker in Nazi-occupied Poland who is paid by a group of fleeing Jews to hide them in the sewers beneath the city. It is at first purely a business arrangement motivated by the money he’s paid, but in time Socha’s conscience is awakened and he works to protect the men, women and children in his charge over the course of 14 months.
Opened: (2/10/12)

The Island President
Proof that sometimes the smallest voice can be the loudest and most urgent, The Island President documents the first year in office of Mohamed Nasheed, president of the tiny island nation of Maldives, and his crusade to reach a significant worldwide agreement on combating global warming at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. Once a political prisoner under the country’s oppressive former regime, Nasheed marshals his ample intelligence, charisma and passion to try to forge accord on a controversial issue between dozens of nations with competing and contradictory interests. At stake for the Maldives: a three foot rise in ocean levels would see the country where people have lived for thousands of years entirely disappear. Check out my interview with director Jon Shenk over at Awards Daily.
Opened: (3/30/12)

Jeff, Who Lives at Home
Jason Segel is 30-year-old Jeff who lives in his mother’s basement where he spends his hours smoking weed and watching TV. Welcome to a day in his life as he has to navigate the problems of his successful older brother Ed Helms (his wife Judy Greer may be cheating on him) while on a mission to buy wood glue for mom, who herself has discovered one of her co-workers may be a secret admirer. On one hand, I’ve had about enough of slacker man-children and Jason Segel barely moves the needle of interest as a big screen presence, but mumblecore kings Jay and Mark Duplass have earned the benefit of a doubt after their last two films Baghead and Cyrus. Susan Sarandon co-stars as mom.
Opened: (3/16/12)

Jiro Dreams of Sushi
A documentary about Jiro Ono, the 85 year-old sushi chef considered in some circles to be the greatest in the world. With Jiro nearing retirement, the focus falls on his son Yoshikazu to carry on the tradition, but Yoshikazu just can’t seem to live up to the standard of perfection set by his father.
Opened: (3/9/12)

The Kid with a Bike
Belgian art house favorites Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne return with another low key, naturalistic, unsentimental humanist drama. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, it’s the story of a young boy who has essentially been abandoned by his father, but who takes refuge with hairdresser Cecile De France (Hereafter) when she agrees to take him in. Despite the love he’s given, he continually acts out in response to his abandonment and proves perhaps a greater challenge than the well-meaning hairdresser can manage. It’s the stuff of heavy melodrama, but the Brothers Dardenne keep it reigned in, refusing always to take the path of easy emotions while filling their narrative with wonderful human moments. Check out LiC’s roundtable interview with the Dardennes here.
Opened: (3/16/12)

Marley
Just in time for 420 comes this documentary promising the “definitive life story” of reggae superstar Bob Marley.
Opened: (4/20/12)

Monsieur Lazhar
Solid performances from adult and child alike enliven Monsieur Lazhar and raise it above the ordinary inspirational teacher drama. Fellag stars as a middle-aged Algerian immigrant who fills in at a Montreal elementary school after one of the teachers commits suicide in the middle of the school year. Not only must he overcome cultural differences, he’s got a group of children on his hands who are traumatized by the experience.
Opened: (4/13/12)

My Way
This epic Korean World War II film follows two soldiers, a Korean and Japanese, first fighting the Chinese and Soviets, then fighting the Germans as Soviet captives and finally defending the beaches at Normandy as prisoners of the Germans on D-Day. Got all that?
Opened: (4/20/12)

The Raid: Redemption
Charismatic Indonesian martial artist Iko Uwais stars as a young Jakartan policeman (and husband to a pregnant wife) fighting the good fight between the vicious criminal underworld on one hand and a corrupt police force on the other. The mission is simple: a team of elite cops are sent to infiltrate a 30-story apartment complex that serves as the fortress of a ruthless drug kingpin. Get in, get the guy, get out. Simple, right? Wrong. From the very start something seems wrong. Naturally things quickly go haywire and devolve into fusillades of bullets and fountains of blood. Before long, hopes of capturing the drug lord turn simply to getting the survivors back out alive. The Raid: Redemption is the rare action movie that actually lives up to the advance hype. It might not be deep, but it’s enough to hold together a relentless string of well-choreographed and shot action sequences and that’s enough for me.
Opened: (3/23/12)

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Lasse Halstrom (My Life as a Dog, Cider House Rules) teams up with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty) to adapt Paul Torday’s comic novel about a fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) recruited by a consultant (Emily Blunt) working for a sheikh who wants to bring fly fishing to the desert.
Opened: (3/9/12)

A Separation
At once a specifically Iranian film, but also a film that would be great at any time from any place, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation is a powerful look at morality and culture in the shifting sands between traditional and modern, religious and secular, male and female, middle and lower class and finally between generations. At the intersection of all of these dramatic threads, an Iranian couple decides to separate. The ramifications of their decision have effects that ripple outward and return amplified as circumstances and consequences overlap and become ever more complex. Throughout it all, no character is ever completely guilty yet neither are they entirely blameless. It’s not a story about right and wrong, it’s about navigating the spaces in between in an increasingly diverse and conflicted modern Iran. As complicated as it becomes, A Separation returns in the end to where it began and the simple but heartbreaking truth of a couple breaking up and a young girl having to choose between them. Always subtle, never overstated, A Separation is one of those wonderful films that quietly floors you and leaves you thinking about it for weeks afterward. Be sure to check out the LiC interview with writer/director Asghar Farhadi.
Opened: (12/30/11)

The Turin Horse
Here’s the official synopsis for the new film from international art house favorite Bela Tarr: “On January 3, 1889 in Turin, Italy, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, a cab driver is having trouble with a stubborn horse. The horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. After this, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan, until he loses consciousness and his mind. Somewhere in the countryside, the driver of the cab lives with his daughter and the horse. Outside, a windstorm rages. Immaculately photographed in Bela Tarr’s renowned long takes, The Turin Horse is the final statement from a master filmmaker.”
Opened: (2/10/12)

Undefeated
This Oscar nominee for Best Documentary is one of those “Better Living Through Sports” deals that turns football into a tool for social (and audience) uplift. This time the focus in on the troubled Manassas High School Tigers of North Memphis and their determined volunteer coach who struggles to remake the team of perennial losers without a single playoff win in the school’s 120 year history. It’s standard-issue feel-good material, but effective and ultimately very moving. Check out the LiC interview with filmmakers Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin.
Opened: (2/17/12)

We Have a Pope
What happens when the cardinal selected to be the new pope doesn’t really want the job? You might expect a farce to ensue, but writer/director Nanni Moretti (The Son’s Room) has something a little more thoughtful in mind. French acting legend Michel Piccoli (Le Doulos, Contempt, Belle de jour) stars as His Reluctant Holiness.
Opened: (4/6/12)

We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar) adapts the 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver with Tilda Swinton as the reluctant mother cursed with a son who appears to be a sociopath in the making. Critical praise has been consistent if not unanimous, and most agree that Tilda Swinton is once again fantastic. John C. Reilly co-stars.
Opened: (1/13/12)

^Where Do We Go Now?
The sophomore effort of Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki (Caramel) tells the story of a village where Muslims and Christians have lived together peacably but which is now in danger of being torn apart by religious war. The women, fed up with generations of conflict set out to put things right with the help of some wayward Ukrainian strippers and a lot of hashish. Whimsical, yet also fueled by equal measures of hope and frustration.
Opened: (5/11/12)