Happy Day After SnowDay~!
As promised...here is the new schedule of films. We are starting to see the easing up on print availability of the "prestige pictures" that were released late last year. This means we can bring them to you...Hurrah! Where we have all three pictures in a week booked, I have included the times. Hope to see you soon.
-Lisa
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Jan 21 - 27 (Fri - Thurs)
THE FIGHTER (R) 114min
6:00 and 8:30
Based on a true story from 1990's Lowell Mass., David O. Russell's gripping film with excellent performances all around explores family and commitment through an underdog boxing story. Mark Wahlberg plays Mickey, a young boxer who hopes to repeat the success in the ring of his idol, trainer and older half-brother Dickey (Christian Bale), who once showed promise, but now is a criminal and crack addict who milks his past glory. But he isn't winning fights. When Dickey lands in jail, Mickey and his girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) think his career might be better served with a paid trainer, but this doesn't go over well with the men's formidable, manipulative mom (Melissa Leo), who manages Mickey's career yet clearly prefers Dickey. When do poisonous family dynamics become so toxic that they must be abandoned?
Jan 21 - 24 (Fri - Mon)
CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER (PG) 115min [in 2D]
5:30 and 8:00
Lucy and Edmund Pevensie (Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes both reprising), along with annoying young cousin Eustace (Will Poulter, Son of Rambow) enter Narnia through a seafaring painting that lands them in the water near the galleon Dawn Treader, helmed by Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) with help from Reepicheep the mouse (Simon Pegg). An evil force has descended on the kingdom with seven Narnian lords gone missing. The crew must find them and reunite the seven missing swords to break the spell while confronting their own inner demons. Directed with aplomb by Michael Apted (Amazing Grace, 7-Up series), this enchanting, family-friendly adventure has fantastic special effects featuring encounters with sea serpents, dwarves, mer-people, and a nasty green mist.
Jan 25 - 27 (Tues - Thurs)
ANIMAL KINGDOM (R) 112min
5:30 and 8:00
This confident debut film from Australian writer-director David Michôd is a sharp, gritty noir thriller about a dysfunctional crime family in suburban Melbourne. Teenaged Jay has just discovered his mother dead from a heroin overdose; he watches TV while he waits for the ambulance to arrive. With no other options, he goes to live with his estranged grandmother from whom his mother always kept him. He discovers the family matriarch supervises his three grown, lawless uncles; a drug dealer, an armed robber, and one in hiding, the police having promised to kill him on sight. As he moves in with and is getting to know his new family, so are the equally lawless police moving in; Jay finds himself caught in the middle. This taut, cunning film won the competitive world cinema jury prize at Sundance last year.
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Jan 28 - Feb 3 (Fri - Thurs)
TRUE GRIT (PG-13) 110min
5:30 and 8:00
The Coen brothers' entertaining new western is an adaptation of the Charles Portis novel that also served as a basis for the 1969 film that earned John Wayne an Oscar. Young Hailee Steinfeld is Mattie, a strong-willed, pig-tailed girl who seeks revenge on the man who, in cold blood, killed her father. As he has escaped into the Indian Territory, she needs a Federal Marshal to arrest, which she finds in drunk and ornery Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Also seeking this killer for other crimes is a goofy Texas Ranger (Matt Damon), but she insists on catching him first. Magnificent western vistas filmed by longtime cinematographer Roger Deakins, are combined with an atmospheric score by Carter Burwell and the Coen brothers' trademark dark humor, making a striking film.
Jan 28 - 31 (Fri - Mon)
THE TOURIST (PG-13) 103min
6:00 and 8:15
Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie team up with Oscar-winning German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) for this fun romantic spy caper. Full of eye-candy and set in picturesque Paris and Venice, he is an American tourist on an impromptu trip to Europe to mend a broken heart. She deliberately crosses his path and he finds himself in a flirtatious encounter with this elegant, mysterious woman. Their whirlwind romance quickly evolves as they find themselves thrust into a deadly game of mistaken identities and revenge. This picture was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture.
Feb 1 - 3 (Tues - Thurs)
HOWL (NR) 90min
6:00 and 8:15
What began as a documentary becomes an inventive, impressionistic reenactment of a short period in the life of groundbreaking poet Alan Ginsberg's life. Using transcripts, directors Jeffrey Freidman and Rob Epstein (The Celluloid Closet) recreate the early years in the career of the young poet who would become an icon of the Beat Generation. Portrayed by James Franco (Milk, 127 Days) he recounts his travels and companions, including the first public reading of this seminal work and the 1957 public trial against the poem's publisher, bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for distributing obscenity, a trial that would begin the breakdown of societal barriers.
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Feb 4 - 7 (Fri - Mon)
I LOVE YOU, PHILLIP MORRIS (R) 98min
From the writer-director team of BAD SANTA, this improbable but true story is very funny and heartfelt, telling the spectacularly charismatic journey of a con man, a successful small town businessman turned white collar criminal, who escapes prison four times, all in the name of love (he is currently incarcerated at a Texas prison serving a 144 year sentence in solitary confinement.) Jim Carrey stars as Steve Russell, living an average life as a cop with a wife and two kids, who realizes after a severe car accident that he is gay and must live his life to the fullest, even if it means breaking the law. In jail he meets the man of his dreams (Ewan McGregor), and springs them both from prison so they can live together happily and luxuriously ever after, financed by one (often, but not always successful) con after another, even as his beloved believes in a trusting relationship.
Feb 8 - 10 (Tues - Thurs)
INSIDE JOB (PG-13) 108min
You might have noticed that recently the stock market has begun to recover, while the rest of the economy has not. Filmmaker Charles Fergueson (No End In Sight) knows why. He has made another alarmingly incisive expose that lays out plainly, fairly, and meticulously how the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us fall further and further behind, examining the history of the recent recession with a coherent synthesis of why the current solutions are inadequate. Beginning back in the Reagan era, he tracks the fallacy of financial deregulation from the 1980s, through the Clinton and both Bush administrations, to the meltdown and subsequent collapse of Wall Street and its star players beginning in late 2008, and finally into Barack Obama's term as president, as his administration features the same players complicit in the creation of this mess in charge of its cleanup (Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Larry Summers declined to be interviewed). Narrated by Matt Damon, this comprehensive analysis is an important and sobering look at our economic situation; it also should be required viewing.
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COMING SOON ON OUR SECOND SCREEN - stay tuned!
THE KING'S SPEECH (R)*for some language 111min
Prince Albert (Colin Firth) has suffered a serious speech impediment all his life. When his father King George V dies, and soon afterwards his older brother Edward abdicates the throne, Albert is suddenly thrust into the highest position of the monarchy, but he can't give a speech. With the country on the verge of war, his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) arranges for one more therapy, with eccentric Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). This masterful and rousing period drama follows his unorthodox and eccentric treatment and the growing friendship between these two different men as the world marches toward World War 2 and Albert prepares to inspire his people to go to battle. Directed by Tom Hooper (The Damned United, TV's John Adams) from a screenplay by veteran David Seidler (Tucker) is a shoe-in for a slew of Oscar nominations.
127 HOURS (R) 94min
The new film from last year's Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) is beautiful and life-affirming even as it tells a harrowing, true story. Aron Ralston (James Franco, Howl, Milk) is a care-free rock climber who enjoys the escape of being alone in the brilliant wilderness of Utah's Canyonland National Park. That is, until the one day when his cockiness and luck fails him and he finds himself stuck, having fallen down a crevasse with a boulder he is unable to move pinning his arm. Over the next five days he contemplates his current position, his life up to then, and his future, finally deciding he does have the courage to do whatever is necessary to choose life.
FAIR GAME (PG-13) 104min
When former Nigerian ambassador Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) contradicted in a NYTimes Op-Ed piece the US government's position about sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq (which was used as the reason for the US to go to war), the Bush White House responded by secretly outing his wife, Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) to the press as a CIA operative. This leak destroyed her career, endangered her life as well as the lives of many others, and nearly destroyed her marriage. Based on memoirs by both Wilson and Plame and directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), this riveting espionage drama, suspenseful even though the outcome is known, is also a realistic political and human drama about the price of truth-telling in a time of fear.
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COMING NEXT SCHEDULE?
THE GREEN HORNET
MADE IN DAGENHEIM
THE ILLUSIONIST
THE BLACK SWAN
ANOTHER YEAR
THE TEMPEST
OSCAR SHORTS
and more......
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