Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
With: Reviews ~ WANDERLUST,
Movie Times click here.
Santa Cruz area movie theaters >
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New This Week
BULLHEAD
Belgian filmmaker Michael R. Roskam scored a surprise Foreign Language Oscar nomination for this tough-minded drama about crime, consequences and retribution within the shady underworld of bovine hormone trafficking. Matthias Schoenaerts delivers a standout performance as a loner pumped up on steroids working for his uncle’s meat manufacturing business who starts to go over the edge when a dangerous new client involves them in a smuggling operation, bringing him into contact with an old flame and a sinister ghost from his own past. Less a crime melodrama than an exercise in emotional upheaval. (R) 124 minutes. In Dutch and French, with Englis
h subtitles. Starts Friday. Watch film trailer >>>
DR. SEUSS’ THE LORAX
Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, and Danny DeVito lend their voices to this updated animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ fanciful, ecological-themed story about a tree-loving creature trying to stop destructive humans from destroying the environment. Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda direct. (PG) 94 minutes. Starts Friday. Watch film trailer >>>
PROJECT X
Sex, dreams, and stimulants collide in this comedy about a trio of high school seniors planning to throw the monster party of all time. Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, and Jonathan Daniel Brown star for director Nima Nourizadeh. (R) 88 minutes. Starts Friday. Watch film trailer >>> 
W./E.
Madonna directs her version of the true story of American divorcee Wallis Simpson, who caused upheaval in Old Blighty when Edward VIII, King of England, gave up his crown to marry her in 1936. Andrea Riseborough and James D’Arcy star. Abbie Cornish and Oscar Isaac co-star in a modern-day bracketing story as a married woman in a scandalous romance with a Russian security guard. Santa Cruz native Arianne Phillips scored an Oscar nomination for her luscious period costumes. (R) 119 minutes. Starts Friday. Watch film trailer >>>
Film Events.
SPECIAL EVENT THIS WEEK: WINTER ITALIAN FILM SERIES The Dante Alighieri Society of Santa Cruz continues its monthly series of Italian films (one Sunday a month) to promote Italian culture and language. The theme for the Winter/Spring season is “Set in Sicily” This Week: L’UOMO DELLE STELLE (THE STAR MAKER) In depressed, post-World War II Sicily, a con man with a camera fleeces the populace of money, sex, and dreams while pretending to be a talent scout for a Roman film studio in this 1995 romantic drama. Sergio Castellito and Tizinia Lodato star for director Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso). (R) 113 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. At Cabrillo College, VAPA Art History Forum Room 1001, Sunday only (March 4), 7 pm. Free.
SPECIAL EVENT THIS WEEK: NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE Britain’s acclaimed National Theatre of London presents in 2012 Winter Season digitally, in HD, to movie theaters worldwide. Live performances will be broadcast one Thursday evening a month, in the Grand Auditorium of the Del Mar, with encore performances the following Sunday morning. This week: A COMEDY OF ERRORS Shakespeare’s uproarious comedy of mistaken identities involving two sets of twins is given a modern spin by director Dominic Cooke. Reimagined to touch on such topical themes as immigration, xenophobia, and employer-employee relations, it stars popular longtime British TV comedian Lenny Henry. At the Del Mar, Thursday only (March 1), 7:30 p.m. Encore performance Sunday only (March 4), 11 a.m. Admission: $15. Seniors, students, and Shakespeare Santa Cruz subscribers: $13.
CONTINUING SERIES: MIDNIGHTS @ THE DEL MAR Eclectic movies for wild & crazy tastes plus great prizes and buckets of fun for only $6.50. This week: THE SANDLOT Kids, baseball, and a gigantic dog take centerstage in this 1993 cult family comedy set in the early 1960s. Denis Leary, Karen Allen, and James Earl Jones play the principal grown-ups; David Mickey Evans directs. (PG) 101 minutes. Fri-Sat midnight only. At the Del Mar.
CONTINUING SERIES: FLASHBACK FEATURES Oldies and goodies on Thursday nights at the Cinema 9, presented by your genial host, Joe Ferrara. $5 gets you in. This week: THE BREAKFAST CLUB Excellent acting from Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall and Ally Sheedy salvages most of this routine 1985 John Hughes drama about teens from various social backgrounds stripping away each other’s protective psychic coverings during an all-day Saturday detention. (R) (★★1/2) Tonight (Thursday, March 1) only, 8 p.m., at the Cinema 9.
CONTINUING EVENT: LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MOVIES This informal movie discussion group meets at the Del Mar mezzanine in downtown Santa Cruz. Movie junkies are invited to join in on Wednesday nights to discuss current flicks with a rotating series of guest moderators. Discussion begins at 7 pm and admission is free. For more information visit www.ltatm.org.
Movie Times click here.
Now Playing
ACT OF VALOR Actors star alongside a platoon of real-life, active duty Navy SEALS in this action drama. In a fictionalized account of realistic Navy SEALS operations, the plot revolves around a mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent which leads to the discovery of (what else?) a heinous terrorist plot. Roselyn Sanchez, Alex Veadov, Jason Cottle, and Nestor Serrano star, alongside the real deal SEALS. Mike “Mouse” McCoy and Scott Waugh direct. (R) 105 minutes.
ALBERT NOBBS An odd mix of quaint and edgy, this is a modern-seeming tale of gender confusion and sexual identity dressed up like a Victorian melodrama. It’s a labor of love for producer, co-scripter and star Glenn Close, who brings heartbreaking rigor to the role of Albert, a middle-aged woman who’s been passing for male her entire adult life, now employed as a waiter at a swanky hotel in turn-of-the-century Dublin. Rodrigo Garcia’s film, based on a 1918 novella by George Moore, also features a knockout performance by Janet McTeer as a cheeky, cross-dressing lesbian. The conclusion of the story feels like a failure of the author’s imagination, but Close and company add a satisfying, ironic coda; the biting social commentary in this upstairs/downstairs milieu is well done, and a delicious cast of seasoned pros (Brendan Gleeson, Pauline Collins) keep this nuanced fable of gender, class, and identity percolating along. (R) 113 minutes. (★★★)—Lisa Jensen.
THE ARTIST To pay homage to Hollywood’s silent film era, not only did filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius shoot this backstage love story in vintage black-and-white, he dared to film the entire movie without audible dialogue, relying on only the occasional title card, music, and the actors’ expressiveness to tell the story. The results are utterly splendid, as Hazanavicius wields the classic storytelling tools of the silent era with fresh new exuberance. The wonderful Jean Dujardin and vivacious Berenice Bejo bring heart, humor and verve to their fame-crossed movie star lovers, in a shimmering production that captures every detail of Art Deco-era Hollywood. It may look and feel vintage, but this is one of the most original movies of the year. (PG-13) 100 minutes. (★★★★)—Lisa Jensen.
CHRONICLE It’s every fanboy’s dream in Josh Trank’s horror thriller in which three high school buddies are granted superpowers after stumbling over a dark secret, then find themselves struggling to resist the pull of the dark side. Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Michael B. Jordan star. (PG-13)
THE DESCENDANTS George Clooney once again proves himself one of the most watchable and subtle of actors in Alexander Payne’s incisive, entertaining, tender and life-sized family drama. He plays a Hawaiian-born lawyer trying to reconnect with his wayward daughters after an accident puts their mom in a coma, while also trying to decide whether to sell off pristine, generations-old family property to developers. Shot on location in the luscious Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai (with haunting, slack-key guitar music playing under every scene), it’s a resonant tale of a family in crisis, a culture in flux, and the issue of legacy between the generations, told with wry humor and honest emotion. (R) 115 minutes. (★★★)—Lisa Jensen.
GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE Nicolas Cage returns as stunt motorcyclist-turned-supernatural vigilante Johnny Blaze. (PG-13) 95 minutes.
GONE Amanda Seyfried stars in this thriller about a woman who was abducted by, but escaped from a serial killer two years earlier, who sets off for a final showdown when the same man kidnaps her sister. Jennifer Carpenter and Wes Bentley co-star for director Heitor Dhalia. (PG-13) 94 minutes.
GOOD DEEDS Tyler Perry ditches the Madea housedress and plays it, er, straight in this romantic comedy-drama about a button-down businessman who falls for a scrappy single mom who cleans his office. Gabrielle Union and Thandie Newton co-star with Perry, who also directs. (PG-13) 111 minutes.
THE GREY It’s man vs. wolf in the Alaskan wilderness when a crew of oil drillers survive a plane crash only to be hunted by a territorial pack of grey wolves. Liam Neeson and Dermot Mulroney star, but I’m still rooting for the wolves. Joe Carnahan (The A-Team; Smokin’ Aces) directs. (R)
HUGO If you love silent movies as much as I do, you’ll love Martin Scorsese’s new family-friendly film, Hugo. And if you’re a fan of the delightfully nutty, hand-made fantasy movies of early French film pioneer Georges Melies, you’re in for a special treat: Scorsese’s film concludes with a fabulous montage of vintage, hand-tinted Melies footage. The story of an orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) living in a Paris railway station, ca. 1930, who finds he has something in common with a grumpy toy seller who turns out to be Melies (Ben Kingsley) is intriguing and visually splendid. It takes too long to get going; there’s too much slapstick comedy and too many 3-D objects lunging out of the screen. But the charm and exuberance of the scenes of Melies and company at work in their studio makes this celebration of early movie-making irresistible. (PG) 127 minutes. (★★★1/2)—Lisa Jensen.
JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND in 3D Josh Hutcherson returns as the teen protagonist from the recent Jules Verne update, Journey To the Center of the Earth; this time he sets out on a new adventure with a new father-figure (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) on a mission to answer a distress signal from an unchartered island that time forgot.
PINA Dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch is the subject of this utterly thrilling cinematic tribute by Wim Wenders. “You always felt more than just human, working with Pina,” recalls one of her dancers, and this is more than just a documentary, or a dance film, or a memorial. Shooting in 3D, and often staging dances outdoors, in the “real” world, Wenders crafts an extraordinary plunge into the mystery of the creative process, a visionary concept film that reinvents the way dance is viewed onscreen, and a wildly invigorating expedition into the soul of an artist. (PG) 103 minutes. (★★★1/2)—Lisa Jensen.
SAFE HOUSE Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds star as a fugitive being held captive in a safe house and the CIA op guarding him who are forced to flee together when gunmen come after them both.. (R) 115 minutes.
THE SECRET WORLD OF ARIETTY Japanese powerhouse animation outfit, Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away; Ponyo) does an anime-type version of Mary Norton’s popular “The Borrowers” series of children’s books about a family of tiny people who live under the floorboards in a country house who are befriended by an inquisitive little boy. Hiromasa Yonebayashi directs. Gary Rydstrom directs the English-language voice actors, who include Carol Burnett, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett. (G) 94 minutes.
STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 — THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D This new 3D conversion of George Lucas’ first, 1999 prequel to his original Star Wars trilogy will surely enhance the film’s alien landscapes, spaceships, robots, hardware, extravagant sets, battles galore and armies of computer-generated creatures. But it probably won’t restore the swashbuckling exuberance that made the original Star Wars so much more fun. Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman bring stature and presence to their roles, but they are figures in a landscape, deployed like props for visual effect, and we have little stake in their story. Even in 2D, this was a movie only a droid could love. (PG) 136 minutes. (★★1/2)—Lisa Jensen.
A SEPARATION If you had to decide between keeping your family together under impossible circumstances, or emigrating alone to a new place with more opportunities to make a better life for your child, which would you choose? Such is the dilemma that fuels this absorbing, and powerful Iranian domestic drama. Filmmaker Asghar Farhadi constructs a nuanced, yet vivid mosaic of brewing conflict—between genders, classes, generations, and ideologies—in a way that makes all viewpoints comprehensible, and all choices freighted with consequence. There are no saints or villains here, only life-sized people trying to navigate a culture in 
transition, which makes this film the front runner for this year’s Foreign Language Academy Award. (PG-13) 123 minutes. In Persian with English subtitles. (★★★)—Lisa Jensen.
THIS MEANS WAR Rival CIA agents Chris Pine and Tom Hardy go ballistic when they find out they’re both dating the same woman (Reese Witherspoon) in this action comedy from director McG. Til Schweiger and Chelsea Handler co-star. (R) 98minutes.
THE VOW When a car crash wipes out the memory of a newlywed bride (Rachel McAdams), her husband (Channing Tatum) determines to woo and win her all over again. (PG-13)
WANDERLUST Reviewed this issue. (R) 98 minutes.
