Movies in Theaters This Friday, September 13, 2013: The Family, Insidious: Chapter 2, and More
Summer blockbuster season has definitely ended. I saw this happening with releases like Pacific Rim and The Wolverine, but others waited until we actually got to September to mark the transition. Still, we had a blockbuster-y film in Riddick last weekend.
Well, now we’re definitely done. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we haven’t had a hotly anticipated movie in awhile. Riddick had its fanbase, but it wasn’t anything like some of the other movies this year.
This week is even worse with just two releases. One of them, Insidious: Chapter 2 is a sequel, but I hardly expect the horror follow-up to be a box office hit. It does return director James Wan and stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne. We’ll see how the story picks up from the original, which was a pretty successful movie.
The other wide release belongs to The Family. Luc Besson’s (The Fifth Element) action film shows an organized crime family that relocates as part of the witness protection program. However, they eventually revert back to their criminal ways and are targeted by old foes. The Family stars Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dark Shadows).
In limited release, the critical darling appears to be Blue Caprice. Not to be confused with Blue Jasmine, Caprice fictionalizes the Beltway sniper spree that rocked the nation over a decade ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long!). I can’t wait for this movie to release in a theater near me, so I’d check it out if you get the chance.
Plush, Informant, Jayne Mansfield’s Car, and Mother of George are all movies that have dotted my radar, too. The rest of the limited crop (including a bunch of documentaries) involves And While We Were Here, GMO OMG, Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, Herb & Dorothy 50X50, Sample This, and Wadjda.
Enjoy your weekend folks!
The haunted Lambert family seeks to uncover the mysterious childhood secret that has left them dangerously connected to the spirit world.
In the dark action comedy The Family, a Mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the Witness Protection Program after snitching on the mob. Despite Agent Stansfield’s (Tommy Lee Jones) best efforts to keep them in line, Fred Manzoni (Robert De Niro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children, Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D’Leo), can’t help resorting to old habits by handling their problems the “family” way. Chaos ensues as their former Mafia cronies try to track them down and scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings, in this subversively funny film by Luc Besson.
Coming soon to theaters. Directed by Kat Coiro and starring Kate Bosworth, a delicately-constructed tale of broken love, forbidden passion, and self-discovery, set in the lush foothills and cobbled streets of modern Italy.
The striking feature film debut of writer-director Alexandre Moors, BLUE CAPRICE is a harrowing yet restrained psychological thriller about an abandoned boy lured to America into the shadows of a dangerous father figure. Inspired by true events, BLUE CAPRICE investigates the notorious and horrific Beltway sniper attacks from the point of view of the two killers, whose distorted father-son relationship facilitated their long and bloody journey across America.
Marked by captivating performances by Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond, lyrical camerawork, and a unique and bold structure, BLUE CAPRICE documents the mechanisms that lead its subjects to embrace physical violence. BLUE CAPRICE paints a riveting portrait of 21st-century America and a haunting depiction of two cold-blooded killers that will endure long after the lights come up.
GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, which Seifert tests himself: is it even possible to reject the food system currently in place, or have we lost something we can’t gain back? These and other questions take Seifert on a journey from his family’s table to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and the lobby of agra-giant Monsanto, from which he is unceremoniously ejected. Along the way we gain insight into a question that is of growing concern to citizens the world over: what’s on your plate?
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
Documentary tribute to the iconic actor and the extraordinary singer and musician. With Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Sam Shepard, Kris Kristofferson and Debbie Harry.
Developed as the follow-up film to Megumi Sasaki’s award-winning documentary HERB & DOROTHY (2008) that moved millions of art-lovers worldwide, HERB & DOROTHY 50X50captures the last chapter of the Vogel’s extraordinary life and their gift to the nation, raising various questions on art, and what it takes to support art in today’s society. In 2008, legendary art collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel made an announcement that stunned the art world. Known and loved as a retired postal worker (Herb) and librarian (Dorothy) who built a world-class art collection on their humble salaries, the Vogels launched a national gift project with the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC that would constitute one of the largest gifts in the history of American art: to give a total of 2,500 artworks to museums in all fifty states. This came sixteen years after the Vogels had transferred their entire collection to NGA, the majority as a gift, making headlines in 1992. During those years at the NGA, the collection had grown to nearly 5,000 pieces, too large for any one museum to contain. As a solution, a national gift project titled The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States was conceived. Though their collection was now worth millions of dollars, the couple did not sell a single piece, instead giving fifty works to one museum in every state. Having worked their whole lives as civil servants, their wish was to give back to the people of the United States. One year ago, on July 22, 2012, Dorothy declared their collection closed after the passing of her husband Herb. Dorothy works to create a living tribute to their partnership, the collection they created together, and the overwhelmingly positive legacy they have left on the American art world for generations to come.
Informant examines Brandon Darby, a radical activist turned FBI informant who has been both vilified and deified, but never entirely understood.
In 2005, Darby became an overnight activist hero when he traveled to Katrina-devastated New Orleans and braved toxic floodwaters to rescue a friend stranded in the Ninth Ward. Soon after, he became a founding member of Common Ground, a successful grassroots relief organization. After two young activists were arrested at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Darby shocked close friends and activists nationwide by revealing he had been instrumental in the indictment as an FBI informant.
As the only film with access to Darby since his public confession, Informant meticulously constructs a portrait of his life — before and after the death threats — through interviews with Darby and tense reenactments starring the man himself. Darby’s version of events are accompanied and often contradicted by commentary from acquaintances and expert commentators on various points along the political spectrum.
A young man in the 1940s raises a family in Alabama after his wife leaves him for an Englishman and moves to England. When the wife dies, she leaves a request to be brought back to Alabama to be buried, and at that point the man hasn’t seen her in nearly 30 years. The two families – her original family she abandoned and her English family – meet and make an attempt to adjust to each other, with uneven results.
Adenike and Ayodele (The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira and veteran actor Isaach De Bankolé) are a Nigerian couple living in Brooklyn. Following the joyous celebration of the their wedding, complications arise out of their inability to conceive a child – a problem that devastates their family and defies cultural expectations, leading Adenike to make a shocking decision that could either save her family or destroy it. Acclaimed director Andrew Dosumnu (Restless City) captures the nuances of this unique and fascinating culture by creating a beautiful, vibrant, and moving portrait of a couple whose joys and struggles are at once intimate and universal.
Mourning the loss of her brother/collaborator, a young rocker struggles to write music while juggling a jealous husband, two kids, and a mysterious new guitarist who will stop at nothing to become the most important person in her life.
On the streets of the Bronx in the summer of 1973, DJ Herc took the percussion breaks from an obscure album and extended them by playing them back to back. The song he used: “Apache” is considered the national anthem of hip hop and is one of the most sampled tracks in the history of the genre used by artists from Will Smith to Missy Elliott to Amy Winehouse to Nas, Kanye West and Jay-Z.
Where did this come music from? If not for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy it might never have happened, the gunshots that rang out in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen in June of 1968 started a musical revolution— “Sample This” is the true story of how an unknown music producer and the greatest studio musicians of the 70’s entwined to create of one of the most influential albums in history. It’s the story of a band that never was, a cult movie and revolutionary music from the streets of New York. A pop culture odyssey that includes Charles Manson, a former Beatle and an infamous mobster.
“Sample This” tells contemporary rap fans where their music comes from and how seemingly unrelated people and apparently random events set the stage for greatness. It is powerful, tantalizing, informative and above all, emotionally riveting.
The film is narrated by music icon Gene Simmons and directed by Dan Forrer.
Wadjda is a landmark Saudi Arabian film, written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. It was shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and is the first feature-length movie made by a female Saudi director. It has already won numerous awards at film festivals around.
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