Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
Movie Times click here.
Santa Cruz area movie theaters >
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
New This Week
ANNABELLE Move over, Chucky. The creepiest onscreen doll since Talky Tina lurks at the center of this horror shock-fest. The trouble begins when a young husband buys an unfortunate gift for his pregnant wife. Ward Horton, Annabelle Wallis, and Alfre Woodard star. John R. Leonetti (The Conjuring) directs. (R) 99 minutes. Starts Friday.
GONE GIRL Gillian Flynn’s hot, hot, hot bestselling thriller comes to the screen with Ben Affleck as the suddenly abandoned spouse of a wife (Rosamund Pike) whose disappearance starts to provoke plenty of media speculation. Flynn adapts her own book for director David Fincher (Fight Club; The Social Network). Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry co-star. (R) 145 minutes. Starts Friday.
HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS Simon Pegg stars as a caring but ineffectual psychiatrist whose patients aren’t getting any less miserable who decides to go on a global search for the key to true happiness. Toni Collette, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgard, Jean Reno, and Christopher Plummer co-star for director Peter Chelsom. (R) 114 minutes. Starts Friday.
LEFT BEHIND Nicolas Cage stars in this modern apocalypse tale about chaos on earth after the rapture, based on the insanely popular Christian book series. Lea Thompson, Cassi Thomson, and Chad Michael Murray co-star for director Vic Armstrong. (PG-13) 110 minutes. Starts Friday.
PRIDE In 1984, an organization of hip, young gay activists from London relocates to a provincial Welsh mining town to support striking members of the National Union of Mineworkers and their families in this fact-based comedy of clashing cultures. Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, and Dominic West head the cast. Matthew Warchus directs. (R) 120 minutes. Starts Friday.
TRACKS Mia Wasikowska stars in this fact-based story of a lone woman who decides to trek across 2,000 miles of desert in the Australian outback with only her dog and four camels for company. Adam Driver co-stars as the National Geographic photographer who decides to document her journey. John Curran (The Painted Veil) directs. (PG-13) 120 minutes. Starts Friday.
Film Events
SPECIAL EVENT THIS WEEK: ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY: LIVE FROM STRATFORD-UPON-AVON The venerable RSC makes its current season available for live broadcast to movie theatres worldwide. This week: TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA Shakespeare’s romantic comedy of best friends who fall in love with the same woman gets a boisterous, physical stage treatment in this new production from director Simon Godwin, making his RSC debut. (Not rated) 180 minutes. In the Grand Auditorium at the Del Mar, Thursday only (Oct. 2), 7:30 p.m. Encore performance Sunday only (Oct. 5), 11 a.m. Admission: $15. Seniors, students, and Santa Cruz Shakespeare subscribers: $13.
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 pursue the elusive and ineffable meanings of cinema. Discussion begins at 7 p.m. and admission is free. Tonight (Oct. 1): THE SKELETON TWINS. For more information visit groups.google.com/group/LTATM.
Movie Times click here.
Now Playing
THE BOXTROLLS Alan Snow’s children’s book, Here Be Monsters, is the basis for this animated family film about quirky creatures who live beneath the streets of a quaint English town, and the human boy they’ve raised as their own (voice of Isaac Hempstead Wright, better known as Bran Stark on Game of Thrones), who comes to their aid when the town villain threatens their community. Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Tracy Morgan and Simon Pegg contribute additional voices. Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable direct. (PG) 96 minutes.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY In a film that purports to examine the anatomy of a marital breakup, and the couple’s halting, last-ditch attempts to put the pieces back together, writer-director Ned Benson thinks he’s telling the story from both the male perspective of husband James McAvoy, and the female perspective of wife Jessica Chastain. But whatever it is that drives the wife to behave as she does remains as elusive to Benson and the audience as it is to her perplexed husband. What the film has going for it is an excellent cast who all do their damnedest to put the story over. Too bad auteur Benson couldn’t hold up his share. (R) 122 minutes. (**1/2)—
Lisa Jensen.
THE EQUALIZER Denzel Washington stars as a mysterious vigilante for justice, and Chloe Grace Moretz is the oppressed young woman who needs his help in this action thriller from director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day). (R) 128 minutes.
THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY Engaging performances—especially from the sublime Helen Mirren and Indian national treasure Om Puri—spice up this unsurprising, yet enjoyably romantic foodie film. The location is irresistible, a sun-drenched corner of the South of France where an upstart family-run Indian eatery sets up shop across the street from a venerable French restaurant. Dreamy-eyed Manish Dayal and frisky Charlotte Le Bon make a charming romantic couple. And there’s plenty of good-looking food, from haute cuisine to vivid massala-spiced Indian dishes to simple French country cooking, presented with enough relish to make it all go down smoothly. Lasse Hallstrm directs. (PG) 122 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
THE MAZE RUNNER The dystopian-future YA novel by James Dashner comes to the screen with Dylan O’Brien as a youth who finds himself one of 60 teenage boys imprisoned behind a gigantic maze. But their situation alters when a mysterious girl lands in their midst. Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster co-star for director Wes Ball. (PG-13) 113 minutes.
DOLPHIN TALE 2 The young dolphin rescued in the first movie and given a prosthetic tail becomes the object of more human concern when her handlers have to find her a new aquatic companion or lose her to another aquarium. Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Nathan Gamble, and Harry Connick Jr. return for director Charles Martin Smith. (PG)
THE DROP Tom Hardy stars in this crime drama as a Brooklyn bartender trying to make some easy money funneling cash to neighborhood mobsters when everything goes badly awry. Dennis Lehane adapted the script from his own short story. Noomi Rapace and the late James Gandolfini co-star for director Michaël R. Roskam. (R) 106 minutes.
LOVE IS STRANGE John Lithgow and Alfred Molina star as a recently married couple who lose the Manhattan apartment they’ve lived in together for decades and suddenly have to live apart—with friends and relatives—until they can find an affordable new home. Marisa Tomei co-stars. Ira Sachs directs. (R) 94 minutes.
NO GOOD DEED Taraji P. Henson and Idris Elba star in this thriller about a suburban Atlanta mom who’s in for trouble when the stranger she lets into her house to use the phone turns out to be an escaped convict on the run. Sam Miller directs. (PG-13)
THE NOTEBOOK Twin boys abandoned to their uninterested grandmother on the Hungarian border as World War II begins learn to survive by studying the evil around them. János Szász directs this award-winning drama, based on the novel by Agota Kristof. (R) 119 minutes. In Hungarian with English subtitles.
MY OLD LADY Reviewed this issue. (PG-13) 107 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
THE SKELETON TWINS Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig play estranged twins who are forced to reunite due to unusual circumstances and grudgingly begin to take stock of their failed lives and broken relationship. Luke Wilson and Ty Burrell co-star for director Craig Johnson. (R) 93 minutes.
THE TRIP TO ITALY In this follow-up to The Trip (2011), Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon return as lightly fictionalized versions of themselves, comedian buddies this time on a luscious-looking culinary road trip to Italy. Orchestrated by director Michael Winterbottom, with a funny script largely improvised by its stars, the laughs are consistent, and the wistfulness of the framing story—touching as it does on such issues as age, talent, friendship, and mortality—is effectively done. Not to mention the gorgeous scenery and great-looking food, more than enough to inspire viewers to tag along. (Not rated) 108 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU A typically dysfunctional family of grown siblings, spouses and in-laws gather for an uneasy shiva after the family patriarch passes on in this star-studded “dramadey” directed by Shawn Levy. Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, and Rose Byrne star. (R) 103 minutes.
THE ZERO THEOREM Expect Terry Gilliam back in Brazil mode in this existential, satirical sci-fi epic about a nutball tech genius (Christoph Waltz) holed up in a burnt-out church with a bank of computer equipment obsessively trying to discover the meaning of life. Melanie Thierry and David Thewlis co-star, with guest cameos by Matt Damon and Tilda Swinton. (R) 101 minutes.
