“Eye Of The Dolphin” tells the story of fourteen year old Alyssa (Carly Schroeder: “The Lizzie McGuire Movie”, “Firewall”) who has been living with her Grandmother (Academy Award nominee Katharine Ross) since the death of her mother a year ago. Troubled and lost, it is decided she should go to the Bahamas to live with the father she never knew she had. Caught in the difficult realization of having a father, coupled with the adjustment to island culture, she seeks refuge in the discovery of the astonishing gift she has for communicating with dolphins. But when the powers-that-be threaten to close down her father’s dolphin research facility, it is Alyssa and her wild cetacean friend who hold the key.
STARRING: Carly Schroeder, Adrian Dunbar, George Harris, Jane Lynch, Christine Adams, Katharine Ross
DIRECTOR: Michael D. Sellers
STUDIO: Monterey Media
RATING: Not Rated
In the movie “Dedication,” Henry Roth is messed up. A New York children’s book author who tells kids that Santa doesn’t exist, he hates sleeping with - and next to - anyone, including his girlfriend and must lay on the floor, usually with heavy objects on top of him just to feel safe. His motto is “Life is nothing but the occasional burst of laughter rising above the interminable wail of grief.”
“Dedication,” a modern love story in which a misanthropic, emotionally complex author of a hit children’s book series (Billy Crudup) is forced to team with a beautiful illustrator (Mandy Moore) after his best friend and creative collaborator (Tom Wilkinson) passes away marks the directorial debut of Justin Theroux. As Henry struggles with letting go of the ghosts of love and life, he discovers that sometimes you have to take a gamble at life to find love.
STARRING: Billy Crudup, Mandy Moore, Harvey Keitel, Mia Farrow, Bob Balaban, Bobby Cannavale, Martin Freeman, Amy Sedaris, Christine Taylor, Tom Wilkinson
DIRECTOR: Justin Theroux
STUDIO: The Weinstein Co.
RATING: R (For language, sexual situations, adult situations, drug use)
In the movie “Rocket Science,” Hal Hefner is an average sophomore at Plainsboro High School in New Jersey. He stutters and suffers the daily indignities of a typical teenager. With only a little encouragement, Hal falls in love with the star of the debate team, Ginny Ryerson and finds himself suddenly immersed in her ultra competitive world of high school debating, with its players, its politics and its own set of rules.
STARRING: Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Vincent Piazza, Nicholas D’Agosto, Aaron Yoo
DIRECTOR: Jeffrey Blitz
STUDIO: Picturehouse
RATING: R (For language and sexual situations)
“2 Days in Paris” follows two days in the relationship of a New York based couple; a French photographer Marion (Julie Delpy) and American interior designer Jack (Adam Goldberg), as they attempt to re-infuse their relationship with romance by taking a vacation in Europe. Their trip to Venice didn’t really work out–they both came down with gastroenteritis. They have higher hopes for Paris. But the combination of Marion’s overbearing non-English speaking parents’, flirtatious ex-boyfriends’, and Jack’s obsession with photographing every famous Parisian tombstone and conviction that French condoms are too small, only adds fuel to the fire. Will they be able to salvage their relationship? Will they ever have sex again? Or will they merely manage to perfect the art of arguing?
STARRING: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg
DIRECTOR: Julie Delpy
STUDIO: Samuel Goldwyn
RATING: R (For sexual content, some nudity and language)
Paul, depressed from his recent break-up with Anna, returns home to Paris and moves back in with his divorced father and amorous younger brother, Jonathan. While his carefree sibling and doting father try in vain to cheer him up, a visit from his mother seems to be the only thing that brings him joy. When Paul is then left in the house to brood and talk to one of his brother’s girlfriends, he begins to realize that while things haven’t gone according to plan, one can always find something to live for - “Dans Paris”
STARRING: Romain Duris, Louis Garrel, Joana Preiss, Guy Marchand, Marie-France Pisier, Alice Butaud, Héléna Noguerra, Judith El Zein, Annabelle Hettmann, Mathieu Funck-Brentano, Lou Rambert-Preiss
DIRECTOR: Christophe Honoré
STUDIO: IFC Films
RATING: R (For language, sexual situations)
“El Cantante” - A biopic on Hector Lavoe, who was one of the biggest Spanish-language singers in the 1970s, but personal tragedy and a heroin addiction left him penniless and dying from complications from AIDS. Known as salsa’s bad boy, he had a crystal-clear voice and an incomparable talent for improvisation.
STARRING: Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony
DIRECTOR: Leon Ichaso
STUDIO: Picturehouse
RATING: R (For nudity, language, sexual sitations and drugs)
“Becoming Jane” centers on a love affair British novelist Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) began as a 20-year-old — with brilliant, roguish Irishman Tom Lefroy — that inspired her career as one of the world’s great romantic writers. The movie also looks at how the writer’s relationship with Lefroy helped create the male characters in “Pride & Prejudice.”
STARRING: Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters
DIRECTOR: Julian Jarrold
STUDIO: Miramax
RATING: PG-13 (For brief nudity and mild language)
22-year-old Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, also known as Molière, is not yet the writer that history recognizes as the father & true master of comic satire, author of “the Misanthrope and Tartuffe, and a dramatist to rank alongside Shakespeare & Sophocles. Far from it. He is in fact, a failed actor.
His Illustrious Theatre Troupe, founded the previous year, is bankrupt. Hounded by creditors, Molière is thrown into jail, released, then swiftly imprisoned again. When the jailors finally let him go, he disappears. The combined efforts of historians have unearthed no trace of him before his reappearance, several months later, when his troupe begins touring the provinces - a tour that will last for thirteen years, and culminate in Molière’s triumphant return to Paris in 1658. But what happened to Molière during these mysterious lost months?
Molière, we discover, has been released from prison by a wealthy bourgeois, Monsieur Jourdain, who settled the young actor’s debts on the understanding that he will teach him the craft of the stage. Hungry for recognition, Jourdain is infatuated with the lovely but poisonous Célimene, whose salon gathers together suitors & great wits.
But the affair must remain secret, kept at all costs from Jourdain’s wife, Elmire, a wonderful woman with whom Molière himself will fall headlong in love. Unfortunately for him, Jourdain has presented Molière as Monsieur Tartuffe, an austere private tutor, to justify his presence. Elmire has nothing but the harshest words for this holier-than-thou figure who has invaded her home. Trapped in this untenable situation, Molière will experience all manner of events that will open his eyes and his mind, both to life itself and to his work as an artist. It is from the heart of this tale, and from his passion for Elmire, that Molière the great dramatist is born.
Boasting an extraordinary cast (Romain Duris The Beat My Heart Skipped; Ludivine Sagnier Swimming Pool, 8 Women; Laura Morante The Son’s Room; Edouard Baer L’Appartement) sumptuous production values and a witty and sophisticated script in the tradition of Shakespeare In Love, director Laurent Tirard’s romantic period drama reveals the tantalizing mystery behind the birth of France’s greatest dramatist.
STARRING: Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Laura Morante, Edouard Baer, Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Valette
DIRECTOR: Laurent Tirard
STUDIO: Sony Classics
RATING: PG-13 (For some sexual content)
It’s 1983 and school is out. Twelve-year-old Shaun is a lonely boy growing up in a grim coastal town in northern England, whose father died fighting in the Falklands War. Over the course of the summer holiday he befriends a group of local skinheads. With his pent-up rage and frustration, Shaun finds exactly what he needs in the gang — mischief, mayhem and brotherhood. He also meets the volatile and boorish Combo, an older skinhead who sees himself in Shaun. Adopting Shaun as his protégé, Combo leads the gang down a hate spewing path that culminates in an explosion never seen before.
“This Is England” is set in early eighties England; a world of popular TV character Roland Rat, aerobics, the TV show Blockbusters, Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands crisis, racial unease, and skinheads. Drawing heavily from his own experiences growing up, Shane Meadows has created a portrait of an often-overlooked moment in cultural history. Against the backdrop of the skinhead scene in a deadbeat coastal town, we witness this traumatic rite of passage, both on a cultural and personal level, through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy.
STARRING: Joseph Gilgun, Stephen Graham, Kieran Hardcastle, Frank Harper, Jo Hartley, Vicky McClure, George Newton, Jack O’Connell, Andrew Shim, Thomas Turgoose
DIRECTOR: Shane Meadows
STUDIO: IFC Films
RATING: Unrated
An extraordinarily powerful and original film, “The Devil Came on Horseback” exposes the tragedy taking place in Darfur as seen through the eyes of an American witness and who has since returned to the U.S. to take action to stop it.
Using the exclusive photographs and first hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, “The Devil Came on Horseback” takes the viewer on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of its black African citizens. As an official military observer, Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate. Ultimately frustrated by the inaction of the international community, Steidle resigned and returned to the US to expose the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed. Sundberg and Stern’s film allows us to witness Steidle’s transformation from soldier to observer to witness and, finally, to passionate activist and moral hero.
