Synopsis: SOUL SURFER is the inspiring true story of teen surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack and courageously overcame all odds to become a champion again, through the love of her family, her sheer determination and unwavering faith. The film features an all-star cast, including AnnaSophia Robb and Helen Hunt, with Carrie Underwood in her film debut, and Dennis Quaid.
Synopsis: X-MEN FIRST CLASS charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-Men.
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Genere: Drama, Action, Adventure
In theaters: June 3rd, 2011
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writers: Bryan Singer, Josh Schwartz
Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence
Synopsis: A suburban family is torn apart when 14-year-old Annie (Liana Liberato) meets her first boyfriend online. After months of communicating via online chat and phone, Annie discovers her friend is not who he originally claimed to be. Shocked into disbelief, her parents (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener) are shattered by their daughter's actions and struggle to support her as she comes to terms with what has happened to her once innocent life.
Synopsis: A beautifully realized portrait of a close-knit community on the outskirts of Baltimore, PUTTY HILL is the second feature from celebrated young filmmaker Matt Porterfield (HAMILTON). At a neighborhood karaoke bar, friends and family gather to remember a young man who passed away. Knowing little about his final days, they attempt to reconstruct his life. In the process, they offer a window onto their own lives, an evocative picture of working-class America, dislocated from the progress and mobility around them, but united in pursuit of a shared dream. Exquisitely shot and employing surprising documentary techniques, PUTTY HILL is one of the most exciting American indie films in years.
Synopsis: Skateland explores the rupture of charismatic Ritchie Wheeler, brother and sister Brent and Michelle Burkham, and wise-cracking lady-killer Kenny Crawford's seemingly complacent existence as they struggle with the collapse of their tumultuous home lives, the alcohol-induced idling of reckless adolescence, and the wane of their hometown hangout, the local roller rink. A story syncopated with moments of violent turbulence, of heartbreak and of new beginnings, Skateland immerses the audience in the brutal, but beautiful vastness of East Texas blue skies and the emotional claustrophobia of the Bible belt. Enveloped by the brooding melodies and incendiary rock riffs of the early 80's, Skateland is a place where aging values wrestle with contemporary pop culture to create a paradoxical balance between old and new.
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Genere: DramaIn theaters: March 25th, 2011
Director: Anthony Burns
Writers: Anthony Burns, Heath Freeman
Stars: Ashley Greene, Shiloh Fernandez, Taylor Handley
Synopsis 1: The Music Never Stopped, based on the case study "The Last Hippie" by Dr. Oliver Sacks, M.D. (Awakenings), chronicles the journey of a father and son adjusting to cerebral trauma and a lifetime of missed opportunities. Through the music that embodied the generation gap of the 1960s, and working with music therapist Dianne Daly (Ormond), the film weaves the heartwarming progress of Henry (Simmons) and Gabriel (Pucci).
Synopsis 2: Tale of a father who struggles to bond with his estranged son Gabriel, after Gabriel suffers from a brain tumor that prevents him from forming new memories. With Gabriel unable to shed the beliefs and interests that caused their physical and emotional distance, Henry must learn to embrace his son's choices and try to connect with him through music.
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Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Language: English
Budget: $4,000,000 (estimated)
Director: Jim Kohlberg
Writers: Gwyn Lurie, Gary Marks,
Stars: Julia Ormond, J.K. Simmons, Lou Taylor Pucci
Production Co: Mr. Tamborine Man
User Reviews: The Music Never Stopped is a beautiful film based on a true story about the relationship between father and son, and between music and the brain. J.K. Simmons and Lou Taylor Pucci deliver incredible performances as estranged father and son, Henry and Gabriel. (Slight spoilers follow, but all information can be found within the first 20 minutes or so of the film.) The two both have a great love for music, but their relationship falls apart as Gabriel gets wrapped up in the hippie culture of the 60's and the Grateful Dead. When Gabriel gets a brain tumor as an adult, music therapy is used to improve his memory, which has been destroyed in the removal of the tumor.
This movie has a great soundtrack, full of the classic rock music of the late 60's. This is certainly a music-lovers film! If your favorite song takes you back to the moment you heard it, this is a film for you! If music touches your soul, this is a must see!
If you don't love the music of the late 60's, you will still find this film a moving piece of art. The relationships between each character are authentic and personal. It is an absolute must see! *Reviewed from Sundance screening*
Synopsis: Tom McCarthy, acclaimed writer/ director of THE VISITOR and THE STATION AGENT, once again explores the depths and nuances of human relationships in his new film about the allegiances and bonds between unlikely characters. Disheartened attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach, stumbles across a star athlete through some questionable business dealings while trying to support his family. Just as it looks like he will get a double payday, the boy's mother shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything. McCarthy's deft touch with balancing drama and comedy, broken hearts and poignant humanity is at play in WIN WIN.
Synopsis: Increasingly anxious about his impending marriage to Nat (Jones) and thoroughly bored with his day job as a wedding photographer, Theo (Messina) establishes a hobby: he's hired by clients to clandestinely snap voyeuristic photos of them as they go about their days. Things go smoothly until a sexy new customer's exhibitionism leads to an all-consuming obsession. As Theo shoots her day and night, the woman's mysterious public trysts send him reeling, forcing him to confront uncomfortable truths about his sex life at home.
Synopsis: When notary Lebel (Remy Girard) sits down with Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Melissa Desormeaux Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) to read them their mother Nawal's will (Lubna Azabal), the twins are stunned to receive a pair of envelopes - one for the father they thought was dead and another for a brother they didn't know existed. In this enigmatic inheritance, Jeanne sees the key to Nawal's retreat into unexplained silence during the final weeks of her life. She immediately decides to go to the Middle East to dig into a family history of which she knows next to nothing. Simon is unmoved by their mother's posthumous mind games. However, the love he has for his sister is strong, and he soon joins her in combing their ancestral homeland in search of a Nawal who is very different from the mother they knew. With Lebel's help, the twins piece together the story of the woman who brought them into the world, discovering a tragic fate as well as the courage of an exceptional woman. An adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad's hit play, INCENDIES is a deeply moving story that brings the extremism and violence of today's world to a starkly personal level, delivering a powerful and poetic testament to the uncanny power of the will to survive.
Synopsis: Nazi-occupied Holland, 1945. In a snow-covered village, thirteen-year-old MICHIEL (Martijn Lakemeier) is drawn into the Resistance when he aids a wounded British paratrooper. Michiels boyish sense of defiance and adventure soon turns to danger and desperation, as Michiel is forced to act without knowing whom to trust among the adults and townspeople around him. The wartime harsh reality encroaches on childhood innocence as Michiel confronts good and evil, courage and duplicity, and his own burden of responsibility.
Synopsis: TAMBIEN LA LLUVIA sets up an intriguing dialogue about Spanish imperialism through incidents taking place some 500 years apart, while examining the personal belief systems of the members of a film crew headed by director Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his producer Costa (Luis Tosar) who arrive in Bolivia to make a revisionist film about the conquest of Latin America. Set in February and March of 2000 when real-life protests against the privatization of water rocked the nation, the film reflexively blurs the line between fiction and reality in what Variety calls "a powerful, richly layered indictment of the plight of Latin America's dispossessed." Carlos Aduviri is dynamic as a local who is cast as a 15th century native in the film, but when the make-up and loin cloth come off, he sails into action protesting his community's deprivation of water at the hands of the government. Meanwhile, Gael Garcia Bernal's Idealist film director is as relentless as Werner Herzog infamously was in making FITZCARALDO, pushing ahead against all odds, ignoring the prevailing danger about to disrupt at any moment. Despite the devastation emerging around him, Sebastian seems unable to engage with any emotion over than a dogmatic desire to get his film done. And of course, the film also recalls themes in Herzog's AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and the film-within-a-film scenes are as brutal as any in APOCALYPTO.
Synopsis: From writer/director Mike Mills comes a comedy/drama about how deeply funny and transformative life can be, even at its most serious moments. -Beginners- imaginatively explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love through the evolving consciousness of Oliver (Golden Globe Award nominee Ewan McGregor). Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna (Melanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds) only months after his father Hal (Academy Award nominee Christopher Plummer) has passed away. This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father who - following 44 years of marriage - came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life. The upheavals of Hal's new honesty, by turns funny and moving, brought father and son closer than they'd ever been able to be. Now Oliver endeavors to love Anna with all the bravery, humor, and hope that his father taught him. Movie Trailer:
Genre: Drama
Director: Mike Mills
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic
Synopsis: Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realize that they have no choice but to stay... come what may. This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996.
Synopsis: Set during the time of the first outbreak of bubonic plague in England, a young monk is tasked with learning the truth about reports of people being brought back to life, a mission that pulls him toward a village ruler who has made a dark pact with evil forces. Movie Trailer:
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Horror
Director: Christopher Smith
Writer: Dario Poloni
Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean, Carice van Houten
Synopsis: A subversive tale that interlaces five stories set in Los Angeles, where no taboo is left unexplored as each character careens toward a dark and often comic fate. Movie Trailer:
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Director: Christopher B. Landon
Writer: Christopher B. Landon
Stars: Zoe Saldana, Jamie Chung, Lake Bell
Synopsis: Valerie (Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie's older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Oldman), to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon's arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the death toll rises with each moon.
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Genere: Drama, Thriller Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Writer: David Johnson
Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Lukas Haas, Gary Oldman Release Date: 11 March 2011
Synopsis: When the GTX Corporation must cut jobs to improve the company's balance sheet during the 2010 recession, thousands of employees will take the hit, like Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck). Bobby learns the real life consequences of not having a job. Not only does he see a change to his family lifestyle, and the loss of his home, but also his feelings of self-worth.
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Director: John Wells
Writer: John Wells
Stars: Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones Release Date: 21 January 2011
Genere: Drama
Synopsis:RUBBER is the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life. As Robert roams the bleak landscape, he discovers that he possesses terrifying telepathic powers that give him the ability to destroy anything he wishes without having to move. At first content to prey on small desert creatures and various discarded objects, his attention soon turns to humans, especially a beautiful and mysterious woman who crosses his path. Leaving a swath of destruction across the desert landscape, Robert becomes a chaotic force to be reckoned with, and truly a movie villain for the ages. Directed by legendary electro musician Quentin Dupieux (Steak, Nonfilm), aka Mr. Oizo, RUBBER is a smart, funny and wholly original tribute to the cinematic concept of no reason.
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Director: Quentin Dupieux
Writer: Quentin Dupieux
Stars: Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Wings HauserOfficial Sites: Official site
Country: France
Language: English Release Date: 10 November 2010 (France) Budget: $500,000 (estimated)
Runtime: USA: 85 min
Genre:Comedy, Drama, Horror User Reviews: Sat through a screening at Fantasy Film Fest in Berlin last night. It was horrible. No script, no ideas, thus only very little good scenes and nearly no space for acting, flat humor, very thin movie score, pointless cameo of french electronica legend Gaspard Augé, lots of meaningless material filled in to kill time.
Why 3 Points? The fair warning in the beginning is superb. The gore. The two songs that were actually good and placed well. The filming was consistent and of good quality for a not so good musician. To see the theatre filled with people who would give standing ovation to the movie 'Ass' from "Idiocracy". That Pedro Winter was doing what he's best at. And that i was allowed 2 times to laugh and about 5 times to giggle.
Still want to watch it? Better get high before.
Synopsis: In Argentina over 8,000 people die in traffic accidents every year. Behind each of these tragedies is a flourishing industry founded on insurance payouts and legal loopholes. Sosa is a lawyer who tours the A&E Departments of the public hospitals and the police stations in search of potential clients. Luján is a young doctor recently arrived from the provinces. Their love story kicks off one night when Luján and Sosa meet in the street. She's trying to save a man's life; he wants him on his client portfolio.
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Director: Pablo Trapero
Writers: Alejandro Fadel, Martín Mauregui Stars: Ricardo Darín, Martina Gusman, Carlos Weber
Official Sites: Official site
Country: Argentina | Chile | France | South Korea
Language: Spanish In Theaters: February 11th, 2011
Runtime: Argentina: 107 min
Synopsis: When the critically acclaimed, tough and coming of age actress Thea Barfoed ends her rehab, she confronts a hard choice. During her heavy drinking period she divorced and lost custody of her two boys. Now she wants them to be a part of her life again. Christian, her ex husband is quickly softened by her tough manipulative but charming figure and agrees. She has to prove to her self and to him, that she is worth the try. But the hard life on stage, and the ghosts of the past slowly comes knocking on her door. Thea is forced to face her inner voices. She is bound to give in to her faith, and make the choice.
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Director: Martin Zandvliet
Writers: Anders Frithiof August, Martin Zandvliet Stars: Paprika Steen, Michael Falch, Sara-Marie Maltha
Official Sites: Official site | Official site - Denmark
Country: Denmark
Language: Danish
Budget: DKK 3,600,000 (estimated)
Runtime: 85 min IMDB rate: 6.7/10 In theaters: December 3rd, 2010 User Reviews: This is a memorable and moving Danish movie. It tells a story that in the world which we live, different people have different lives. In this film, Paprika Steen (playing Thea Barfoed) is a stage performer, used to be an alcoholic after she had suffered divorce and lost her children. When people face to the different circumstances of life, some people are the strong and optimistic, and others are weak and negative.
She had some psychological barriers, she didn't know how to love her family, her sons and husband the right way because she didn't even know how to love herself. So her husband divorced her and got the two boys. After a period of psychological treatment, her life is on to the right track. But she needs to face her faults and mistakes she made before. She loves her sons and she wants to spend time and live with them sometimes, but her ex-husband doesn't trust her and he is afraid the boys will be hurt again. She is very desperate and sad. I think Paprika's performance is superb, and she expresses her emotions very well. Her performance is very natural.
The film tells people how to face the mistakes of the past, and how to change her life for the better. Everybody needs salvation; While Thea looks for forgiveness from others, she must also forgive herself.
