THE WOMAN IN BLACK
Rated PG-13
Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer, Liz White, Alisa Khazanova, Tim McMullan
Updated February 3, 2012
We bid farewell to Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in 2011, but after a smash run on Broadway in How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, his acting career is broadening and shows no signs of slowing down.
Case in point: The Woman in Black, a new creepy horror/thriller that is now showing in theatres around the country, with Radcliffe in the starring role.
Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps. He’s a lawyer whose wife recently passed away and his grief and broken heart threaten to ruin his career.
Kipps gets an assignment in a remote village to tend to the affairs of an eccentric woman who recently died. When he arrives, Kipps is suspicious that not everything is as it seems in the drab, dreary town, and that the residents harbor many secrets that they have no intention of sharing with an outsider.
The people of the village try to keep Kipps from learning about the tragic events that occurred there, but he soon discovers the house belonging to his deceased client is haunted by the ghost of a woman determined to find something or someone she has lost.
And no one, not even the village’s children are safe from her vengeance. Take a look at the film’s trailer by clicking the link below. Creepy indeed.
The Woman in Black is rated PG-13 for adult thematic material, violence and disturbing images. Running time is 1 hour and 35 minutes.
THE GREY
Rated R
Liam Nesson, Dallas Roberts, James Badge Dale, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo
Updated January 27, 2012
As Connecticut’s winter of 2011-12 continues to be kind of a dud to snow lovers, you can get your fill of snow, ice and jaw-chattering cold in the new movie The Grey, is now showing in theatres around the country.
In the movie, a group of roughneck oil-riggers are on their way home from Alaska when their plane crashes into the Alaskan sub-arctic tundra wilderness. Most are able to survive the plane crash, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
The group of men is hundreds of miles off course and crash into the middle of nowhere. Temperatures are well below-zero, the wind makes visibility impossible, and staying warm and finding enough food to eat will quickly become life-threatening issues.
Then there’s the problem of the vicious pack of rogue wolves that are just as hungry for a meal of roughnecks and seem to be quite pleased that “dinner” has just dropped from the sky.
Neeson takes the helm as leader of the group of men, knowing they only have a small window of opportunity to escape icy, bloody deaths.
The Grey is rated R for violence, gore, rough language and disturbing situations. It is directed by Joe Carnahan.
In the movie’s trailer it is called a “man’s man” movie. So, guys, this one is for you.
MAN ON A LEDGE
Rated PG-13
Sam Worthington, Anthony Mackie, Jamie Bell, Elizabeth Banks, Edward Burns
Updated January 27, 2012
You’ve probably seen a few movies where there is a scene with a man or woman on the ledge of a tall building threatening to jump. While it may be a crucial scene in the movie, chances are the entire film is not based on jumping from a ledge to end it all.
In the new movie Man on a Ledge, that’s pretty much what the film is about. And word is it is a heart-pounding thriller.
Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, a man who takes drastic steps to prove his innocence after being convicted and sent to prison for stealing a rare, prized diamond. Nick insists he is innocent and eventually escapes from prison.
On the run from the law, Nick is left with nowhere else to go and decides to head for the ledge of a towering New York City high rise to get the attention of the world to his proclaimed innocence.
His actions do the trick, as New Yorkers are mesmerized by the story and start to gather at the base of the building to gawk up at the man on the ledge. Then of course, cameras begin sending out live pictures to the world.
But as police fervently negotiate with him to come off the ledge, they begin to suspect the daredevil stunt is masking a deeper truth about his tarnished reputation.
Nick enlists the help of his younger brother and the two somehow cook up a plan to make the entire situation work out in his favor, but the margin for error is about as wide as the ledge he’s standing on.
Man on a Ledge is rated PG-13 for violence and rough language. Running time is 1 hour and 42 minutes. It is directed by Asger Leth. The movie is now showing nationwide.
RED TAILS
Rated PG-13
Nate Parker, David Oyelowo, Terrence Howard, Brandon T. Jackson, Ne-Yo
Updated January 20, 2012
In World War II, with losses to its allied forces personnel mounting, Pentagon officials are forced to consider unconventional options to keep troop numbers steady and the war effort positive.
That is the true story of the movie Red Tails, is now showing in theatres nationwide.
Meanwhile a group of African-American pilots from the Tuskegee training program, who have never seen any kind of real war action before, are in danger of having their group shut down and be sent home. Of course, in 1944, even though African-Americans played major roles in the U.S. military, they were not allowed to perform the same combat duties as their white counterparts.
That is until the Tuskegee airmen get a very interesting call from Pentagon brass.
With Allied forces numbers dwindling, the group from Tuskegee are called to duty to fight for their country; the same country that openly discriminates against them in almost every aspect of their lives.
The airmen take to the skies with something to prove and everything to lose to battle the enemy and help save the free world from Adolf Hitler.
And on a related note, on January 17, 2012, 95-year old African-American Navy Steward First Class Carl Clark finally received a medal of honor for his bravery in World War II. His act of bravery took place on May 3, 1945. It took 66 years for him to be recognized.
Red Tails is rated PG-13 for sequences of war violence. The movie is directed by Anthony Hemingway.
EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Rated PG-13
Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis
Updated January 5, 2012
There have been a lot of movies, books and documentaries based on the horrific events of September 11, 2001. Add the new movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to the list.
The movie is based on a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, in which the main narrator of the story is a 9-year-old child named Oskar Schell. Oskar is the son of New York City progressives, he’s a vegan, plays the tambourine, is a whiz kid and has a sense of curiosity about just about everything he comes across.
Oskar’s father is killed on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center. Two years later, Oskar discovers a strange key in a blue vase in his father’s belongings.
The child believes that this particular key will unlock a final message from the father his misses so much. So he sets out on a journey across all five boroughs of New York to find the keyhole to which the key fits.
Along the way he comes across an eccentric variety of other New Yorkers who were also affected by 9/11 in a number of different ways, some very personal, some not as much.
While it would be tempting to say the movie and book are “based on a true story”, this previewers research has not been able to confirm that. A few New York book critics lambasted the book as taking advantage of the tragedy of 9/11 to tell a fictional story for financial gain.
You be the judge. An all-star cast stars in this movie that is showing in theatres around the country.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is rated PG-13 for emotional thematic material, a few disturbing images and some rough language.
HAYWIRE
Rated R
Gina Carano, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender
Updated January 13, 2012
Action-adventure movies with men in the starring role seem to be a dime a dozen.
This one has a woman as its star. And she means business.
In the new movie Haywire, now showing in theatres around the country, Gina Carano stars as Mallory Kane, a highly-skilled and trained government security contractor who works in some of the least-desirable and dangerous locations in the world.
Her job takes her to China, where she plays a major role in freeing a Chinese journalist who is held hostage by ruthless captors.
However, while there, Mallory is double-crossed and left for dead by somebody in her very own security agency…somebody she is very close to.
After being spotted alive, she becomes the target of assassins who not only know exactly where she is and what she has planned, but seem to anticipate her every move.
Mallory uses her black-ops military training to cook up a plan to expose the person who double-crossed her, but when that plan goes terribly wrong, she must put her skills into action to stay alive and discover the truth to turn the tables on her double-crosser.
For those not familiar with Gina Carano, she is a retired mixed martial arts fighter and has appeared on the television show American Gladiator.
Haywire is rated R for violence. It is directed by Steven Soderbergh.
CONTRABAND
Rated R
Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Lukas Haas
Updated January 13, 2012
Here’s a story of a tough guy who got out of a life of crime and started over as an upstanding citizen, only to have to return to crime to bail out his criminal brother-in-law.
The new movie Contraband is now showing in theatres around the country.
Chris Farraday’s brother-in-law Andy botches a major drug deal for his ruthless boss Tim Biggs. So Chris is forced back into the business of running contraband where he used to thrive to help settle Andy’s debt.
In his glory days of working the crime circuit, Chris is a legendary smuggler and is able to assemble a team of smugglers to head to Panama and return with millions of dollars in fake bills.
As we might expect in a loud, violent Mark Wahlberg movie, things quickly fall apart as the team of smugglers tries to obtain the counterfeit cash.
Chris is forced to dig deep into his bag of tricks to successfully navigate a treacherous criminal network of brutal drug lords and corrupt cops before the enemy turns their not-so-friendly attention to Chris’ wife and sons.
Contraband is rated R for violence, pervasive rough language and brief drug use.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL
Rated PG-13
Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Josh Holloway
Updated December 27, 2011
Tom Cruise steps into familiar shoes reprising the role of Ethan Hunt in the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible movie series. The newest spy thriller is called Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
This installment finds Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt in very hot water after a terrorist bomb blows up and destroys the Kremlin in Moscow. He is blamed for it and the Russian government categorizes the attack as an undeclared act of war.
As a result, the U.S. government initiates a secret operation known as “ghost protocol” and must disavow the entire IMF. Hunt and his team of agents are allowed to escape government’s custody in order to allow them to work outside the agency’s command structure.
When the IMF is ambushed, they are forced to operate without any kind of official support to locate the source of the intelligence into who actually attacked the Kremlin and the IMF.
In addition, Ethan soon learns he doesn’t really know if his fellow IMF agents working on the case with him have the same intentions and goals as he does. Trust becomes a major issue.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence. The movie was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Prague, Czech Republic, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and a few locations in the U.S.
The movie, which is directed by Brad Bird, is now showing in theatres nationwide and is also be playing in a number of IMAX theatres.
WE BOUGHT A ZOO
Rated PG
Matt Damon, Thomas Haden Church, Scarlett Johansson, Patrick Fugit, Elle Fanning
Updated December 15, 2011
Anyone who has ever been house hunting has come across the term “fixer upper”. For most of us it means a house that used to be better than it is now, but with a little TLC, could return to its glory days.
That’s the premise of the new movie We Bought a Zoo, just throw in 200 exotic animals as part of the deal.
Matt Damon plays Benjamin Mee, a recently-widowed father who decides to move his family away from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a pristine and beautiful countryside estate.
But there’s a big catch.
Part of the deal is that the estate is part of a run-down zoo and buying the home on the estate comes with strict conditions that the new owner must keep the zoo and its staff.
So Mee and his family set out to refurbish the crumbling zoo and bring it back to its former wonderfulness. The movie is based on a true story.
We Bought a Zoo is rated PG for a bit of rough language and some thematic elements. It is now showing in theatres nationwide. It is directed by Cameron Crowe.
WAR HORSE
Rated PG-13
Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Emily Watson, Toby Kebbell, Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan
Updated December 13, 2011
Fresh off a cover story on Entertainment Weekly, the wildly successful director Steven Spielberg is back in the director’s chair for the epic saga War Horse, which is now showing in theatres around the country.
It’s the emotional story of a very special horse named Joey and a young man named Albert (Tom Hiddleston) in Devon, United Kingdom at the beginning of the outbreak of World War I. The two develop an amazing friendship and become inseparable.
But when Joey is forced away from Albert and shipped to France after being purchased by the cavalry, everybody who comes in contact with the horse is in some way inspired by him. That includes the British cavalry, German soldiers, another horse and a French farmer and his granddaughter.
During the fog of war, Joey gets caught up in enemy fire, with death and disease all around him. He then begins an amazing journey, where he actually plays a role in fighting those on both sides of the war, before he gallops away to a faraway place away from the raging violence.
Even though long-since separated, and never able to forget this magnificent horse, Albert embarks on a journey to locate him to return him to Devon, even though this journey will not only put the horse’s life in jeopardy, but his very own life as well.
War Horse was also a play based on the book of the same name by children's writer Michael Morpurgo.
The film is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of war violence. It is distributed by the Walt Disney Studios and was filmed in the United Kingdom.
YOUNG ADULT
Rated R
Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Collette Wolfe
Updated December 9, 2011
The new movie Young Adult is about a successful big city author who returns for a visit to her small hometown.
Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, who is an author of teen literature. She returns to her hometown to relive the good ‘ole days. The good ‘ole days in her mind, that is.
Her former high school sweetheart, who just happens to be happily married to someone else, is not so thrilled when Mavis makes a very aggressive move on him to rekindle their old romance. After all, he has let Mavis go and moved on with another woman.
Mavis is not too happy to discover this and her return home proves to be more difficult than she thought it would be on a number of fronts.
But during her stay, she forms an unusual bond with another former classmate, who hasn’t quite gotten over the good ‘ole days of high school either.
Young Adult is rated R for some rough language and sexual content. Even though the movie's title is not all that interesting, it should be noted that on the movie poster, they want potential moviegoers to know that Young Adult is from the director of Up in the Air and written by the writer of Juno. That gives the film a bit more street cred.
The movie is now showing in limited release in theatres around the country.
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
Rated R
Michelle Williams, Eddie Radmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Julia Ormond, Dougray Scott
Updated November 21, 2011
By now you’ve seen photos or video of Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in the new movie My Week with Marilyn. The resemblance between the two is uncanny.
Williams steps into the role of one of the most famous movie stars of all time and reviews of her performance so far have been fantastic.
In the movie, British writer and filmmaker Colin Clark, who in real life passed away back in 2002, meets actress Marilyn Monroe on the set of Laurence Olivier’s “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Marilyn is at the top of her career and is quite arguably the biggest movie star in the world.
But behind the scenes, Marilyn doesn’t really have it together.
During filming, Marilyn experiences emotional breakdowns and difficulties. It was a pre-shadowing of her spiraling out of control later in life. Clark comes to her aid on the set of the film and a romance between the two blossoms.
Colin helps to make the week of filming a pleasant experience for Marilyn, but it isn’t enough to save the doomed star from self-destruction down the road.
My Week with Marilyn is rated R for rough language. Running time is 1 hour and 36 minutes. The movie is playing in a limited number of theatres around the country. It is directed by Simon Curtis II.
THE MUPPETS
Rated PG
The Muppets, Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Zach Galifianiakis, Jack Black, Donald Glover, Danny Trejo, Rashida Jones
Updated November 23, 2011
Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie and Animal are back on the big screen. For those of us who grew up loving the Muppets and absolutely ate up their silver screen capers, this is most welcome news. The Muppets are back baby! I can hear the theme music now.
In The Muppets, opening in theaters around the country on Thanksgiving Day, the Muppets have all gone their separate ways. Fozzie now performs at a cheesy casino in Reno in a tribute band called The Moopets. Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor for Vogue Magazine in Paris. Animal is a patient at an anger management clinic. Gonzo is in a high-powered executive in the plumbing business. Kermit misses all his old buddies.
When Walter, the world’s biggest Muppets fan visits Los Angeles and discovers the old Muppets stomping grounds is about to be razed to make way for oil drilling, he and his friends Gary and Mary from Smalltown, USA team up to stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever to save the Muppet Theater. It won’t be easy, as they need to raise $10 million.
Kermit leads the charge to gather up the Muppets, now in different locations around the country, and get them together for this Muppet-saving telethon. And who can turn down Kermit the Frog?
The Muppets is rated PG for some mild rude humor. The film is directed by James Bobin and is now showing in theatres nationwide.