Director Fredi M. Murer’s moving film VITUS was Switzerland’s official 2006 Academy Awards entry for Best Foreign Language Film and was one of the most successful Swiss films of 2006. VITUS introduces us to an incredibly talented young pianist and actor, Teo Gheorghiu. The film also stars the renowned Bruno Ganz, Julika Jenkins and Urs Jucker. By the age of 12, Vitus (played by real-life piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu) is a highly gifted musician whose parents have high hopes for him in a career as a classical pianist. The daily pressure of hours of musical practice, his overprotective but well-meaning mother (Julika Jenkins) and his father’s (Urs Jucker) precarious financial situation lead the boy to seek refuge at his eccentric grandfather’s (Bruno Ganz) house. One of the most renowned directors in his native Switzerland, writer/director Fredi M. Murer has an acclaimed forty-year body of work, which includes Locarno International Film Festival Golden Leopard winner “Hohenfeuer (Alpine Fire),” “Vollmond” and “Downtown Switzerland.” Veteran actor Bruno Ganz is one of Europe’s most prolific and internationally distinguished stars. Best known to American audiences for his portrayal of Hitler in “The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Reich,” Ganz starred in Jonathan Demme’s “The Manchurian Candidate” and Fernando Girasoli’s “Bread and Tulips.”
STARRING: Teo Gheorghiu, Julika Jenkins, Urs Jucker, Bruno Ganz
DIRECTOR: Fredi M. Murer
STUDIO: Sony Pictures Classics
RATING: PG (For mild language)
Evening” unites a stellar cast, and is based on the beloved novel by Susan Minot and adapted for the screen by Ms. Minot and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham (The Hours), under the direction of Lajos Koltai (Fateless), who was previously an Academy Award nominated cinematographer. “Evening” is a deeply emotional film that illuminates the timeless love which binds mother and daughter – seen through the prism of one mother’s life as it crests with optimism, navigates a turning point, and ebbs to its close. Two pairs of real-life mothers and daughters – Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer – portray, respectively, a mother and her daughter and the mother’s best friend at different stages in life. Overcome by the power of memory, Ann Lord (Ms. Redgrave) reveals a long-held secret to her concerned daughters; Constance (Ms. Richardson), a content wife and mother, and Nina (Toni Collette), a restless single woman. Both are bedside when Ann calls out for the man she loved more than any other. But who is this “Harris,” wonder her daughters, and what is he to our mother? While Constance and Nina try to take stock of Ann’s life and their own lives, their mother is tended to by a night nurse (Eileen Atkins) as she journeys in her mind back to a summer weekend some fifty years ago, when she was Ann Grant (Claire Danes)…
…a young woman who has come from New York City to be maid of honor at the high-society Newport wedding of her dearest friend from college, Lila Wittenborn (Ms. Gummer). The bride-to-be is jittery, and turns to her maid of honor rather than her own mother (Glenn Close) for support. Ann stays close to her friend, yet is even closer to Lila’s irrepressible brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy).
Unexpected feelings surge forth once Ann meets wedding guest Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), a lifelong friend and intimate of the Wittenborn family. Ann’s love for Harris will change her life, and those of her daughters, forever.
STARRING: Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Dame Eileen Atkins, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep
DIRECTOR: Lajos Koltai
STUDIO: Focus Features
RATING: PG-13 (For some thematic elements, sexual material, a brief accident scene and language)
An attack on the vulnerable United States computer infrastructure begins to shut down the entire nation. The mysterious figure behind the shattering scheme has figured out every digital angle - but he never figured an old-fashioned, “analog” fly-in-the-ointment: John McClane (Bruce Willis) - “Die Hard 4.”
STARRING: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
DIRECTOR: Len Wiseman
STUDIO: 20th Century Fox
RATING: PG-13 (For intense sequences of violence and action, language, and a brief sexual situation)
The words “health care” and “comedy” aren’t usually found in the same sentence, but in Academy Award winning filmmaker Michael Moore’s new movie SiCKO, they go together hand in (rubber) glove.
Opening with profiles of several ordinary Americans whose lives have been disrupted, shattered, and—in some cases—ended by health care catastrophe, the film makes clear that the crisis doesn’t only affect the 47 million uninsured citizens—millions of others who dutifully pay their premiums often get strangled by bureaucratic red tape as well.
After detailing just how the system got into such a mess (the short answer: profits and Nixon), we are whisked around the world, visiting countries including Canada, Great Britain and France, where all citizens receive free medical benefits. Finally, Moore gathers a group of 9/11 heroes – rescue workers now suffering from debilitating illnesses who have been denied medical attention in the US. He takes them to a most expected place, and in addition to finally receiving care, they also engage in some unexpected diplomacy.
While Moore’s SiCKO follows the trailblazing path of previous hit films, the Oscar-winning BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE and all-time box-office documentary champ FAHRENHEIT 9/11, it is also something very different for Michael Moore. SiCKO is a straight-from-the-heart portrait of the crazy and sometimes cruel U.S. health care system, told from the vantage of everyday people faced with extraordinary and bizarre challenges in their quest for basic health coverage.
In the tradition of Mark Twain or Will Rogers, SiCKO uses humor to tell these compelling stories, leading the audience conclude that an alternative system is the only possible answer.
STARRING: Michael Moore
DIRECTOR: Michael Moore
STUDIO: The Weinstein Co./Lionsgate
RATING: PG-13 (For strong language)
After taking audiences on incredible journeys to the worlds of cars, superheroes, fish and toys, only the amazing storytellers at Pixar Animation Studios (”Cars,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles”) could create an entirely new and original world where the unthinkable combination of 5-star restaurants and rats come together for the ultimate fish-out-of-water tale.
In the new animated-adventure, “Ratatouille,” a rat named Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef despite his family’s wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When fate places Remy in the sewers of Paris, he finds himself ideally situated beneath a restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. Despite the apparent dangers of being an unlikely - and certainly unwanted - visitor in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant, Remy’s passion for cooking soon sets into motion a hilarious and exciting rat race that turns the culinary world of Paris upside down.
Remy finds himself torn between his calling and passion in life or returning forever to his previous existence as a rat. He learns the truth about friendship, family and having no choice but to be who he really is, a rat who wants to be a chef - “Ratatouille.”
STARRING The Voices of: Patton Oswalt, Brian Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm
DIRECTOR: Brad Bird
STUDIO: Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios
RATING: G
Evan Almighty” - Steve Carell (”The 40-Year-Old Virgin”), reprising his role as the polished, preening newscaster Evan Baxter of “Bruce Almighty,” is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission in the hilarious new comedy “Evan Almighty.” Blockbuster comedy director Tom Shadyac (”The Nutty Professor,” “Liar Liar,” “Bruce Almighty”) returns behind the camera for this next episode of divine intervention. This time, however, his cast grows two-by-two. Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia. Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark. But his befuddled family just can’t decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions…
STARRING: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman, Wanda Sykes
DIRECTOR: Tom Shadyac
STUDIO: Universal Pictures
Yellow Movie” - Shot in New York and in Sanchez’s home country of Puerto Rico, this film brings to light a side of Sanchez’ acting and dancing talent that has never been seen on screen before. Sanchez, who can be seen on CBS’ hit show “Without a Trace”, and also in “Rush Hour 2 and 3”, had been developing this film as a labor of love for the last 8 years. Roselyn Sanchez plays Amaryllis Campos, a young, classically trained Latina ballerina, who dreams of leaving her impoverished home in Puerto Rico to pursue fame and fortune as a dancer. She heads for New York City, where she is forced to work in a seedy strip club to make ends meet. Setting audiences afire with her erotic moves, Amaryllis quickly becomes the strip club’s hottest attraction and falls in love with her best customer (D.B.Sweeney), who wants to take Amaryllis to live with him abroad. Finally winning an audition for a Broadway production, Amaryllis must now decide between true love and realizing her dream of becoming a star.
Broken English” - In a startling mature and nuanced performance, Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a thirty-something Manhattanite who is cynical about love and relationships, in this astute collaboration with first-time writer/director Zoe Cassavetes. Nora plugs away at her job in a posh downtown hotel and can’t help but wonder what it is she has to do to find a relationship as ideal as her friend Audrey’s (Drea De Matteo) “perfect marriage.” It doesn’t help that her overbearing mother (Gena Rowlands) takes every opportunity to remind Nora that she’s still unattached. After a series of disastrous first dates, she meets Julien (Melvil Poupaud), a seemingly devil-may-care Frenchman with a passion for living. Expecting another disastrous ending, Nora tries to avoid making the same mistakes. She finds herself in Paris looking to break old patterns. Inevitably, Nora has to look inward before she can find a new outlook on life and most importantly, love.
STARRING: Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud, Drea de Matteo, Justin Theroux, Peter Bogdanovich, Gena Rowlands
DIRECTOR: Zoe Cassavetes
STUDIO: Magnolia Films
RATING: PG-13 (For some sexual content, brief drug use and language)
Frank Falenczyk (Ben Kingsley) loves his job. He just happens to be the hit-man for his Polish mob family in Buffalo, New York. But Frank’s got a drinking problem and when he messes up a critical assignment that puts the family business in peril, his uncle (Philip Baker Hall) sends him to San Francisco to clean up his act. Played with gruff charm by Kingsley, Frank is not a touchy-feely kind of guy. But he starts going to AA meetings, gets a sponsor (played by Luke Wilson) and a job at a mortuary where he falls for the tart-tongued Laurel (Téa Leoni), a woman who is dangerously devoid of boundaries. Meanwhile, things aren’t going well in Buffalo where an upstart Irish gang is threatening the family business. When violence erupts, Frank is forced to return home and with an unlikely assist from Laurel, faces old rivals on new terms.
Black Sheep” - No, Chris Farley has not been raised from the dead. And, no, Paramount is not rerelasing their “Black Sheep,” this summer. But, alas, your eyes are not deceiving you either. IFC/First Take are willing to bet their house on the fact that there will be quite a few kids out for summer vacation, black sheep of their own families, who will be able to relate to their film or, at the very least, spend $10 on it. In this “Black Sheep” movie, we find out that there are 40 million sheep in New Zealand and only 4 million inhabitants. After a genetic experiment goes wrong, New Zealand’s sheep start turning nasty, and it’s the humans who begin bleating. Uh-huh - bah, blah, “Black Sheep.”
STARRING: Matthew Chamberlain, Tammy Davis, Oliver Driver, Peter Feeney, Glenis Levestam, Danielle Mason
DIRECTOR: Jonathan King
STUDIO: IFC/First Take
RATING: R
