Movies In Theaters This Friday, February 10, 2012: Safe House, The Vow, and more
Because I just can’t resist a good romance, I’m most excited for The Vow this weekend. However if that’s not your cup of tea, you can get your fix of action with Safe House and for the kids, how about Journey 2: The Mysterious Island?
But that’s not all, there are also three interesting limited releases this weekend. I saw and really loved In Darkness, so that would be my pick, but take a look at the list below and make your picks. Have a great weekend!
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
In this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the new 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” begins when 17-year-old Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist. It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret. Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), joins the quest. Together with a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzmán) and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.
Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds star in the action-thriller Safe House. Washington plays the most dangerous renegade from the CIA, who comes back onto the grid after a decade on the run. When the South African safe house he’s remanded to is attacked by mercenaries, a rookie operative (Reynolds) escapes with him. Now, the unlikely allies must stay alive long enough to uncover who wants them dead. For the past year, Matt Weston has been frustrated by his inactive, backwater post in Cape Town. A “housekeeper” who aspires to be a full-fledged agent, the loyal company man has been waiting for an opportunity to prove himself. When the first and only occupant he’s had proves to be the most dangerous man he’s ever met, Weston readies for duty. Tobin Frost has eluded capture for almost a decade. One of the best ops men that the CIA’s known, the ex-intelligence officer has given up assets and sold military intel to anyone with cash since he turned. From trading secrets to North Korea to aiding splinter cells, the damage he’s done to the U.S. is immeasurable. And he’s now back on the reservation with a secret. As soon as Frost is brought in for debriefing, mercenaries come and tear apart Weston’s safe house. Barely escaping, the unlikely partners must discover if their attackers have been sent by terrorists or someone on the inside who will kill anyone standing in the way. Now it’s up to Weston to figure out who he can trust before they’re both eliminated from the game.
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
Two Jedi Knights uncover a wider conflict when they are sent as emissaries to the blockaded planet Naboo.
Paige and Leo (Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum) are a happy newlywed couple whose lives are changed by a car accident that puts Paige in a coma. Waking up with severe memory loss, Paige has no memory of Leo, a confusing relationship with her parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange), and an ex-fiancé (Scott Speedman) she may still have feelings for. Despite these complications, Leo endeavors to win her heart again and rebuild their marriage.
IN DARKNESS is the story of Leopold Socha (Robert Więckiewicz,) a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a German occupied city in Poland, who encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto, and hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town’s sewers beneath the bustling activity of the city above. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something very unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews, as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha’s conscience. The film is also an extraordinary story of survival as the men, women and children in hiding all try to outwit certain death during 14 months of ever increasing and intense danger. IN DARKNESS was filmed on location in Poland and Germany as well as Berlin’s Studio Babelsberg where the crew and cast worked in recreated water-filled sewers.
Los Angeles, 1999. Officer Dave Brown (two-time Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson) is a Vietnam vet and a Rampart Precinct cop, dedicated to doing “the people’s dirty work” and asserting his own code of justice, often blurring the lines between right and wrong to maintain his action-hero state of mind. When he gets caught on tape beating a suspect, he finds himself in a personal and emotional downward spiral as the consequences of his past sins and his refusal to change his ways in light of a department-wide corruption scandal seal his fate. Brown internalizes his fear, anguish and paranoia as his world, complete with two ex-wives who are sisters, two daughters, an aging mentor dispensing bad advice, investigators galore, and a series of seemingly random women, starts making less and less sense. In the end, what is left is a human being stripped of all his pretense, machismo, chauvinism, arrogance, sexism, homophobia, racism, aggression, misanthropy; but is it enough to redeem him as a man?
Return
When Kelli (Linda Cardellini, Freaks & Geeks, Brokeback Mountain) returns home from war, she expected to slowly but surely settle back into her life with her husband (Michael Shannon, Boardwalk Empire) and kids in the small town she grew up in. But she gradually realizes that the life she left behind is no longer there waiting for her. Depicting Kelli’s struggle to find her place in a life she no longer recognizes, Linda Cardellini delivers a tour de force performance, leading an all-star cast that also includes John Slattery (Mad Men).
