Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
With: Reviews,
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New This Week
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1 Jennifer Lawrence returns again as Katniss Everdeen—along with most of the original cast—in this first installment of the third and last book in Suzanne Collins’ dystopian futurist sci-fi series. (Part 2 comes out next year.) Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, and Julianne Moore head the cast. Francis Lawrence directs. (PG-13) 123 minutes. Starts Friday.
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING Expect Oscar buzz for Eddie Redmayne in the role of renowned astrophysicist and thinker Stephen Hawking in this biographical drama adapted from the memoir by his first wife, Jane. When brilliant young student Stephen meets Jane (Felicity Jones) at Cambridge in the 1960s, they face the triumph of his groundbreaking research on time and the terror of his crippling motor neuron disease together. James Marsh (Man on Wire) directs. (PG-13) 123 minutes. Starts Friday.
Film Events
CONTINUING SERIES: MIDNIGHTS @ THE DEL MAR Eclectic movies for wild and crazy tastes plus great prizes and buckets of fun for only $6.50. This week: DR. STRANGELOVE or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB Stanley Kubrick’s hilarious and disturbing 1963 farce about politics and politicians in the nuclear age couldn’t be more timely. George C. Scott, Keenan Wynn, and Peter Sellers contribute scathing comic performances that make this a classic. (PG) 93 minutes. (****)—Lisa Jensen. Fri-Sat midnight only. At the Del Mar.
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. This week (Nov. 19): NIGHTCRAWLER Discussion begins at 7 p.m. and admission is free. For more information visit groups.google.com/group/LTATM.
Movie Times click here.
Now Playing
BEYOND THE LIGHTS Gugu Mbatha-Raw (last seen in the costume drama Belle) stars in this musical drama as a young singer whose road to superstardom is complicated when she falls for a young cop assigned to her security crew. Nate Parker and Minnie Driver co-star for director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball). (PG-13) 116 minutes.
BIRDMAN or THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE Michael Keaton is inspired casting for this black comedy about a movie actor, once famed for playing an onscreen superhero called Birdman, trying to reinvent his career and himself by mounting a serious Broadway play. Filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu delivers dark, often scathingly funny observations on pop culture, celebrity, and priorities, with plenty of nifty style. The soundtrack is mostly edgy percussion, and the hyperreality of the way the camera follows characters around in their personal dramas is balanced by a touch of magic realism as Keaton’s character tries to suppress his cynical alter ego—in full Birdman regalia—who urges him to forget acting and become a movie star again. Too many false endings dull the story’s impact, but Iñárritu makes cogent points, and elicits fine performances from Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Amy Ryan, and Keaton himself. (R) 119 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
DUMB AND DUMBER TO You didn’t ask for it, but here it comes anyway, a 20-years-later sequel to the comedy starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as champion dim bulbs. Now one of them is trying to find his long-lost daughter. Laurie Holden and Kathleen Turner co-star for returning directors Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly. (PG-13)
THE GOOD LIE Reese Witherspoon has a featured role in this fact-based drama about hundreds of children orphaned by the civil war in Sudan, and the international humanitarian effort to rescue them and find a safe place for them to start a new life. Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) directs. (PG-13) 110 minutes.
INTERSTELLAR Christopher Nolan’s epic of cautionary speculative fiction begins in a too-near future where climate change is eroding Earth’s resources. Matthew McConaughey plays an engineer/ex-astronaut who joins a team of explorers flying through a wormhole on a quest to find another habitable planet for the human race. Lengthy sequences of hardware lumbering through space while orchestral music swells on the soundtrack slow things down, but the prickly human element keeps us involved. The relationship between McConaughey’s character and his daughter (Mackenzie Foy and Jessica Chastain, as the narrative time-loops around) is especially nicely wrought. The science of space/time travel may be more trouble than its worth to keep up with as the film hurtles toward its payoff, but it’s still a voyage worth taking. Rated R. 169 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
OCCUPY THE FARM When a Berkeley field was fenced off for a new shopping mall, a troop of concerned citizens took action; they snipped the padlock, erected tents inside, and planted 15,000 seedlings. Todd Darling’s documentary takes a look at this new breed of activism and the fight to reclaim public land for urban farming. (Not rated) 90 minutes. At Cinema 9, through Thursday (Nov. 20).
PELICAN DREAMS Reviewed this issue. Not rated. 80 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
ROSEWATER Jon Stewart makes his screenwriting/directing debut with this real-life thriller based on the bestselling memoir by BBC journalist Maziar Bahari, about his lengthy imprisonment in Iran and the family who refused to let his story die. Gael García Bernal and Shohreh Aghdashloo star. (R) 103 minutes.
WHIPLASH Miles Teller stars as a young drumming phenom who wants to make it in the world of jazz, and J. K. Simmons is the bullying music conservatory instructor who puts him through hell. Paul Reiser co-stars; Damien Chazelle directs. (R) 107 minutes.
