Who’s Your Monkey” - In “Who’s Your Monkey” Bobby Stork, a beer guzzling widower, runs into his old friend Mark Van Houten, an out of work doctor who has resorted to making crystal meth to pay the bills. Bobby discusses Mark’s problem with their mutual friends Laith Rukkab, an uptight guy who’s packed on a few pounds but somehow lucked into landing a pretty girl friend and Hutto, a soon-to-be father and the most together out of the four. The friends decide to give Mark the throwing stars they played with as kids to bring him back to reality.
STARRING: Jason London, Scott Michael Campbell, David DeLuise, Scott Grimes
DIRECTOR: Todd Breau
STUDIO: Screen Media Films
RATING: R (Language, drug use, sexual situations)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): TBD
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
Stop Loss” - Kimberly Peirce’s follow up to Oscar winning “Boy’s Don’t Cry” - is based on a true story adapted for the screen by Kimberly Peirce.
“Stop Loss” centers on Brandon (Ryan Phillippe), a soldier who returns home to Texas and is called to duty again in Iraq through the military’s “stop-loss” procedure. Channing Tatum costars.
STARRING: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ciarán Hinds, Timothy Olyphant, Victor Rasuk, Rob Brown
DIRECTOR: Kimberly Peirces
STUDIO: Paramount Pictures
RATING: R (For language, nudity, violence, sexual situations)
Run Fat Boy Run” - Five years ago Dennis (Simon Pegg - “Hot Fuzz”) was at the altar about to marry Libby (Thandie Newton), his pregnant fiancée. He got cold feet and ran for the hills and he’s been going in circles ever since. When Dennis discovers Libby’s hooked up with high-flying-go-getter Whit (Hank Azaria), he realizes it’s now or never. He enters a marathon to show he’s more than a quitter but then finds out just how much sweat, strain and tears it takes to run for 26 miles. Nobody gives him a chance but Dennis knows this is his only hope to more than a running joke.
Directed by TV star, (remember “Friends”), David Schwimmer.
STARRING: Simon Pegg, Thandie Newton, Hank Azaria, Harish Patel
DIRECTOR: David Schwimmer
STUDIO: Picturehouse
RATING: PG-13 (For some rude and sexual humor, nudity, language and smoking)
Priceless” - Through a set of wacky circumstances, a young gold digger (Audrey Tautou) mistakenly woos a mild-mannered bartender (Gad Elmaleh) thinking he’s a wealthy suitor - only to find out that he is a jewel thief who is running from vicious mobsters.
STARRING: Gad Elmaleh, Audrey Tautou, Marie-Christine Adam, Vernon Dobtcheff, Jacques Spiesser, Annelise Hesme
DIRECTOR: Pierre Salvadori
STUDIO: Samuel Goldwyn Films
RATING: PG-13 (For sexual situations, language)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): TBD
RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
LANGUAGE: (French with English subtitles)
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
My Brother Is An Only Child” - Already a smash in its native Italy, “My Brother is an Only Child,” which was presented at this year’s Cannes and Toronto film festivals, reunites director Luchetti with longtime collaborators Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, best known as screenwriters of the highly acclaimed “The Best of Youth.”
Set in a small Italian town in the ’60s and ’70s, the film tells the story of two brothers who want to change the world - but in completely different ways. The elder, Manrico (Riccardo Scarmaccio), is a handsome, charismatic firebrand who becomes the prime mover in the local Communist party. Accio, (Elio Germano) the younger, more rebellious brother, finds his own contrarian voice by joining the reactionary Fascists. What starts as a typical tale of sibling rivalry becomes the story of the polarizing and paralyzing politics of those turbulent times and, the rift between the brothers is further intensified when Accio realizes that he loves his brother’s girlfriend, Francesca (Diane Fleri) who, like everyone else, is blind to Manrico’s increasingly dangerous ideas.
An intensely cinematic and incredibly incisive film about the dreams and disillusionments of the ’60s and ’70s, “My Brother is an Only Child” is set in the exact era of the groundbreaking early classics of Bernardo Bertolucci and Marco Bellochio. Not only does Luchetti pay explicit homage to those films - “Before the Revolution,” “Fist in the Pocket,” and “China is Near” - he comes very close to matching their beauty, intelligence, and youthful exuberance.
STARRING: Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio, Angela Finocchiaro, Luca Zingaretti, Anna Bonaiuto, Massimo Popolizio
DIRECTOR: Daniele Luchetti
STUDIO: THINKFilm
RATING: R (For language, adult situations)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): TBD
RUNNING TIME: TBD
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
LANGUAGE: Italian (With English subtitles)
Flawless” - “Flawless” is a crime - drama set in 1960 London, where a soon to retire janitor (Michael Caine) convinces a glass-ceiling constrained American executive (Demi Moore) to help him steal a handful of diamonds from their employer, the London Diamond Corporation. “Flawless,” written for the screen by Edward Anderson, is loosely based on an actual jewelry heist.
STARRING: Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Joss Ackland
DIRECTOR: Michael Radford
STUDIO: Magnolia Pictures
RATING: R (For language, violence, adult situations)
The Cool School” - Think the New York cognoscenti dismisses Los Angeles’ art scene today? The ’50s were worse. On the East Coast, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns were blasting creative boundaries while in Los Angeles, the anti-communist brigade was stifling art that refused to kowtow to their standards of decency. Enter curator Walter Hopps and artist Ed Kienholz, who in 1957 flipped over a hot dog wrapper and scribbled a pledge to open L.A.’s premiere modern art venue-the Ferus Gallery. Over the next decade, under the stewardship of Hopps and dealer Irving Blum, the Ferus nurtured L.A.’s first generation of significant post-war artists. The scrappy artists it launched-among them Keinholtz, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, and Ed Moses- shook up the dull tastemakers, got arrested for obscenity, and expanded their ranks to embrace fellow innovators from across the spectrum, including Marcel Duchamp, Dennis Hopper and Andy Warhol, whose first-ever gallery show of 32 soup cans debuted there. Taking its title from a 1962 Artforum article linking the rebellious spirit and attitudes of West Coast art to those of West Coast jazz, “The Cool School” uses a wealth of archival material of the artists at work and at play and current interviews with many of the Ferus fraternity to tell the story of how the gallery groomed the L.A. art scene from a loose band of idealistic beatniks into a coterie of competitive, often-brilliant artists. What was lost and gained before the Ferus’s demise in 1967 is tied up in a complex web of egos, passion, money, and art.
STARRING: Irving Blum, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry, Dennis Hopper, Ed Kienholz, Billy Al Bengston, John Baldessari, Dean Stockwell, Larry Bell, Ken Price
DIRECTOR: Morgan Neville
STUDIO: Arthouse Films
RATING: Not Rated (Strong language)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): 2
RUNNING TIME: 86 minutes
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
Chapter 27″ - On December 8, 1980 Mark David Chapman shocked the world by murdering the beloved purveyor of peace, 40-year old musician and activist, John Lennon, outside The Dakota, his New York apartment building. Chapman’s motives were fabricated from pure delusion, fueled by an obsession with the fictional character Holden Caulfield and his similar misadventures in J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye.” In one instant, an anonymous, mentally unstable 25-year old, socially awkward Beatles fan who had fluctuated between idealizing Lennon and being overcome with a desire to kill him - altered the course of history.
Jared Leto, 60 pounds heavier for the role, bears an uncanny physical resemblance to the real Chapman, who to this day, is incarcerated in Attica Prison, on a guilty plea. Aside from a Larry King interview in 1992, he has not spoken with the media. However, Chapman did reveal the mechanics of his unraveling during those three fateful days in New York City, to crime journalist Jack Jones. The interviews were published in 1992 as Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, a book of Chapman’s recollections of his unthinkable act of violence. From this text, the film “Chapter 27″ is based. The film takes its title from the idea that through his actions in New York, Chapman was attempting to “write” his own additional, 27th chapter to “Catcher in the Rye” (which ends with chapter 26).
Jared Leto’s embodiment of a man whose painfully restless mind thrashes about uncontrollably between paranoia, socio-pathic lying and delusion is summed up in such character revealing comments as “I’m too vulnerable for a world full of pain and lies” and “Everyone is cracked and broken. You have to find something to fix you. To give you what you need. To make you whole again.”
From his lies to cab drivers (identifying himself as the Beatles sound engineer) to his socially unacceptable behavior around Jude (Lindsay Lohan) a young fan he meets outside the Dakota — to his argument with paparazzi photographer Paul (Judah Friedlander), Leto’s Chapman keeps the psychoses bubbling below the surface as his grasp on reality deteriorates into a completely misguided rage.
STARRING: Lindsay Lohan, Jared Leto
DIRECTOR: Jarrett Schaefer
STUDIO: Peace Arch Entertainment
RATING: R (Language, sexual situations)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): 2
RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 24 minutes
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
Backseat” - In “Backseat,” a ‘coming of age late’ story about prolonged adolescence, two old friends flee New York City on a three-day road trip to Montreal to escape their problems and meet the great Donald Sutherland. Between running drugs and meeting a man who only communicates through instant messaging, they run head-on into the always lingering problem of real life.
STARRING: Bob Bogue, Josh Alexander, Will Janowitz, Aubrey Dollar, Mark Rosenthal
DIRECTOR: Bruce Van Dusen
STUDIO: Truly Indie
RATING: R (For language, drug use)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): TBD
RUNNING TIME: TBD
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
“American Zombie” - Filmmakers Grace Lee and John Solomon team up to shoot a “documentary” about high-functioning zombies living in Los Angeles and their struggles to gain acceptance in human society.
Despite their wildly different working styles, in “American Zombie”, Grace and John manage to chronicle the hopes and dreams of four fascinating subjects: IVAN, a convenience-store clerk who longs for a career in publishing; LISA, a florist trying to recover her lost memories; JUDY, a hopeless romantic who learns to accept her true nature; and JOEL (pronounced “Yo-El”), a committed political activist striving for zombie rights. As Grace strives to get to know the zombies “on their own terms,” John is eager to uncover their darker side and rallies to get the crew permission to shoot at a three-day, zombies-only retreat called Live Dead where the documentary takes an unexpected – and dangerous – turn. What transpires there is beyond anything the filmmakers could imagine, as they are forced to re-evaluate their ideas about tolerance, identity politics and the future of the human race.
STARRING: Grace Lee, Austin Basis, Suzy Nakamura, Jane Edith Wilson
DIRECTOR: Grace Lee
STUDIO: Cinema Libre
RATING: R (Sexual situations, violence, language, drug use)
THEATER COUNT (Opening Weekend): TBD
RUNNING TIME: TBD
TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE: TBD
U.S. DVD RELEASE DATE: TBD
