Movies in Theaters This Wednesday, December 19-21, 2012: The Guilt Trip, Jack Reacher, This is 40, Zero Dark Thirty, and More
If last week’s release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey wasn’t enough, there is a full-slate of movies coming at you this week and weekend. Then, Christmas Day has a whole new crop coming in…but that’s for another time.
Coming out on Wednesday, there is the wide release of The Guilt Trip, as well as the limited releases of Amour and Zero Dark Thirty, both of which will be huge factors in the Academy Awards. Amour picked up the coveted Palme d’Or this year at Cannes (check out Kristen’s review here), and Zero Dark Thirty – Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to the Best Picture winning The Hurt Locker – has been winning various Best Picture awards in early award circuits. Unfortunately, the re-telling of Osama Bin Laden’s death will only be opening in a few locations, and it will expand in mid-January.
Also, the 3D re-release of Monsters, Inc. will open for those wanting to revisit the Pixar classic.
On Friday, the more traditional movie release date, we get treated to a few more releases. Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise, This is 40, presented by Judd Apatow, and Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, produced by James Cameron, all show nationwide.
There are a few limited releases to choose from for the weekend, too, including The Impossible, Not Fade Away, and On the Road, which you can read about below.
Have fun making your decision on which to attend!
From the big top to the big screen, visionary filmmaker James Cameron and director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Narnia) invite you and your family on an all new 3D adventure: Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away. A young couple who is separated must journey through the astonishing and dreamlike worlds of Cirque du Soleil to find each other, as audiences experience the immersive 3D technology that will allow them to leap, soar, swim, and dance with the performers. This holiday season, Cirque du Soleil brings their world to your city!
Andy Brewster is about to embark on the road trip of a lifetime, and who better to accompany him than his overbearing mother Joyce. After deciding to start his adventure with a quick visit at mom’s, Andy is guilted into bringing her along for the ride. Across 3,000 miles of ever-changing landscape, he is constantly aggravated by her antics, but over time he comes to realize that their lives have more in common than he originally thought. His mother’s advice might end up being exactly what he needs.
When a gunman takes five lives with six shots, all evidence points to the suspect in custody. On interrogation, the suspect offers up a single note: “Get Jack Reacher!” So begins an extraordinary chase for the truth, pitting Jack Reacher against an unexpected enemy, with a skill for violence and a secret to keep.
“Monsters, Inc.,” one of Disney•Pixar’s most beloved and visually imaginative feature films ever, returns to the big screen to delight a whole new generation of audiences and fans alike, this time in stunning 3D. The now-classic Academy Award®-winning animated comedy adventure “Monsters, Inc.” is set in Monstropolis, a thriving company town where monsters of all shapes and sizes reside. Lovable Sulley (voiced by John Goodman) and his wisecracking best friend Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) are the top scare team at Monsters, Inc., the largest scream-processing factory. The main power source in the monster world is the collected screams of human children—and at Monsters, Inc., an elite team of scarers is responsible for gathering those precious natural resources. Believed by monsters to be toxic, children are strictly forbidden from entering Monstropolis. But when a little girl named Boo (voiced by Mary Gibbs) accidentally follows Sulley back into his world, he finds his career in jeopardy and his life in utter chaos. So pals Mike and Sulley plot to rectify the mistake and return Boo to her home. But when the trio encounters an unexpected series of complications, they become embroiled in a cover-up catapulting them into a mystery beyond their wildest dreams.
Five years after writer/director Judd Apatow introduced us to Pete and Debbie in Knocked Up, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprise their roles as a husband and wife both approaching a milestone meltdown in This Is 40, an unfiltered, comedic look inside the life of an American family. After years of marriage, Pete lives in a house of all females: wife Debbie and their two daughters, eight-year-old Charlotte (Iris Apatow) and 13-year-old Sadie (Maude Apatow). As he struggles to keep his record label afloat, he and Debbie must figure out how to forgive, forget and enjoy the rest of their lives…before they kill each other. In his fourth directorial outing, Apatow’s new comedy captures what it takes for one family to flourish in the middle of a lifetime together. What emerges is a deeply honest portrait of the challenges and rewards of marriage and parenthood in the modern age. Through the filmmaker’s unblinking lens, we follow one couple’s three-week navigation of sex and romance, career triumphs and financial hardships, aging parents and maturing children. The all-star cast portraying the family and friends, colleagues and neighbors represents an ensemble of actors from many of Apatow’s previous projects, as well as new comedy players who have been welcomed into the fold.
Georges and Anne are in their eighties.
They are cultivated, retired music teachers.
Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family.
One day, Anne has an attack.
The couple’s bond of love is severely tested.
A powerful story based on one family’s survival of the 2004 tsunami, The Impossible stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor and is directed by J.A. Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE).
Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons begin their winter vacation in Thailand, looking forward to a few days in tropical paradise. But on the morning of December 26th, as the family relaxes around the pool after their Christmas festivities the night before, a terrifying roar rises up from the center of the earth. As Maria freezes in fear, a huge wall of black water races across the hotel grounds toward her.
Based on a true story, The Impossible is the unforgettable account of a family caught, with tens of thousands of strangers, in the mayhem of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time. But the true-life terror is tempered by the unexpected displays of compassion, courage and simple kindness that Maria and her family encounter during the darkest hours of their lives. Both epic and intimate, devastating and uplifting, The Impossible is a journey to the core of the human heart.
Not Fade Away, David Chase’s deeply felt love letter to the music of the Sixties, is a film about dreams that come true — and the ones that never do. For Chase, “It’s about anybody who has ever had a dream and about what it takes to actually realize that dream. Rock & roll is at the heart of the movie because for some of the characters, rock music is the gateway to transcendence, but it doesn’t end there.”
Traditionally, most rock & roll movies have focused on the agony and ecstasy of “making it” on a grand scale, usually with thousands of fans screaming in the background. As a rule, we witness some band of brothers’ rise and fall, then their crash and burn, and perhaps the eventual resurrection. As one might expect from a man best known as the creator of the groundbreaking television series The Sopranos, Not Fade Away is not your average rock & roll movie. Instead, this is an intimate, powerful, alternately painful and funny drama about coming of age and the sort of indelible memories — musical and otherwise — that end up making us who we are.
Just after his father’s death, Sal Paradise, an aspiring New York writer, meets Dean Moriarty, a devastatingly charming ex-con, married to the very liberated and seductive Marylou. Sal and Dean bond instantly. Determined not to get locked in to a constricted life, the two friends cut their ties and take to the road with Marylou. Thirsting for freedom, the three young people head off in search of the world, of other encounters, and of themselves.
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden
Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar (R) winning team of the director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man
Follow me on Twitter @jmacle
