Movies in Theaters This Friday, February 28, 2014: Non-Stop, Son of God, and More
This weekend means a lot for film…but in a way unlike every other week. Although there are three new wide releases and seven limited releases, this weekend is noteworthy because of the 86th Academy Awards. This will finally be the conclusion we need for the 2013 movie year. Check out my predictions here.
However, if you are interested in actually seeing a 2014 movie, your best shots are Non-Stop, Son of God, and Stalingrad.
Non-Stop is the latest Taken-like thriller that stars Liam Neeson. It also stars Julianne Moore (Don Jon) and will tell the story of an air marshal that must stop a potential terrorist attack all while on an international flight to London. Of course, there is some behind-the-scenes corruption to make things even more difficult.
Son of God, on the other hand, is the movie based on a 10-part miniseries. It’ll star Diogo Morgado (Red Butterfly) as Jesus Christ himself. Be sure to see this before the next biblically-themed movie, Noah.
Quickly, Stalingrad is the U.S. release of the war drama about The Battle of Stalingrad. It is directed by Fedor Bondarchuk (The Inhabited Island).
On to limited releases, Odd Thomas and Repentance are two films I’ve at least heard of.
Odd Thomas is based on Dean Koontz’s novel of the same name. The mystery thriller is directed by Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing) and stars Anton Yelchin (Star Trek Into Darkness) and Willem Dafoe. Repentance, on the other hand, is a psychological thriller that features Forest Whitaker (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) and Anthony Mackie (Pain & Gain).
The rest of the list includes The Bag Man, Chlorine, Hairbrained, The Lunchbox, and Silent But Deadly (which came out on the 25th).
On a transatlantic flight from New York City to London, U.S. Air Marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) receives a series of cryptic text messages demanding that he instruct the airline to transfer $150 million into an off-shore account. Until he secures the money, a passenger on his flight will be killed every 20 minutes.
The Non-Stop film reunites Neeson with Unknown director Jaume Collet-Serra and producer Joel Silver, and co-stars Golden Globe Award winner Julianne Moore.
Now, the larger-than-life story of The New Testament gets a larger-than life treatment in the stand-alone feature SON OF GOD. Told with the scope and scale of an action epic, the film features powerful performances, exotic locales, dazzling visual effects and a rich orchestral score from Oscar®-winner Hans Zimmer. Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado portrays Jesus as the film spans from his humble birth through his teachings, crucifixion and ultimate resurrection. It marks the first motion picture about Jesus’ life since Passion of the Christ, released ten years ago.
An epic look at the battle that turned the tide of World War II. A band of determined Russian soldiers fight to hold a strategic building in their devastated city against a ruthless German army, and in the process become deeply connected to a Russian woman who has been living there.
The scale of the battle contrasts dramatically with the human drama of the Russian soldiers, the few remaining civilians and their invaders into Stalingrad.
chronic bad luck but human touches. Hired by DRAGNA (Robert De Niro), a legendary crime boss to complete a simple but unusual task, the plot centers around the anticipated arrival of Dragna who has summoned JACK and a host of shady characters to a remote location for unknown reasons. Over the course of a long and violently eventful night awaiting Dragna’s arrival, Jack’s path crosses that of RIVKA (Rebecca Da Costa), a stunningly beautiful woman whose life becomes physically and emotionally entangled with Jack’s. When Dragna finally arrives on the scene there are sudden and extreme consequences for all.
Revolves around a family struggling to maintain their well-to-do lifestyle in their overly materialistic New England community. Sedgwick plays the matriarch, who is more interested in appearances than for caring or showing affection toward her husband (D’Onofrio) and pushes him into a bad real estate deal.
When 14-year old genius/outcast Eli Pettifog is rejected from Harvard, he ends up at Ivy League wannabe Whittman College. It’s hate at first sight. At Whittman, Eli meets 41- year-old freshman Leo Searly. Leo, a gambler whose world has imploded, has dropped out of life to enroll in college. This odd duo becomes unlikely friends.
Mumbai, a city of miracles.
One of Mumbai’s miracles is Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs – a community of 5000 dabba (lunchbox) deliverymen. It is a hereditary profession. Every morning the Dabbawallahs deliver hot meals from the kitchens of housewives to the offices of their husbands, and then return the empty lunchboxes back to the homes in the afternoon. For 120 years they have provided Mumbaikars with a taste of home in the office. They navigate through the overcrowded local trains and chaotic streets – that often have a namesake or more than one name. The Dabbahwallahs are illiterate, and instead rely on a complex coding system of colors and symbols to deliver dabbas in the labyrinth that is Mumbai. Harvard University analyzed their delivery system, concluding that just 1 in 8 million lunchboxes is ever delivered to the wrong address. DABBA is the story of that one lunchbox.
A mistakenly delivered lunchbox connects a housewife, Ila Singh, to Saajan Thomas, a lonely man in the dusk of his life. Ila lives in Dadar, the conservative middle class Hindu enclave. And Saajan lives in Ranwar village, Bandra, an old Christian neighborhood that is threatened by the new high rises in Mumbai. Very soon Saajan will retire and bid goodbye to a Mumbai that has crushed his dreams, took away his loved ones one by one, and turned his hair white. Just then Ila comes into his life. In the big city, that crushes dreams and recycles them every day, both find a dream to hold on to. Ila begins a fantastical affair with a mystery suitor, pouring her heart into cooking meals for him. And Saajan looks forward to lunch box deliveries from a mystery woman every day. They exchange notes via the lunchbox and create a fantasy life. As the lunchbox goes back and forth, this fantasy becomes so elaborate that it threatens to overwhelm their reality. The characters of THE LUNCHBOX exist on the line between the Mumbai of reality and the Mumbai of fantasy.
THE LUNCHBOX is the story of the life we dream of versus the life we live in, and of the courage it takes to turn out fantasies into reality.
Small-town fry cook Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin) is an ordinary guy with a paranormal secret: he sees dead people, everywhere. When a creepy stranger shows-up with an entourage of ghostly bodachs – predators who feed on pain and portend mass destruction – Odd knows that his town is in serious trouble. Teaming up with his sweetheart Stormy (Addison Timlin) and the local sheriff (Willem Dafoe), Odd plunges into an epic battle of good vs evil to try to stop a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. Based on the best-selling thriller by Dean Koontz.
An earnest life-coach/author, Thomas Carter, is mysteriously abducted by a deranged client, Angel Sanchez, who delves into Thomas’ teachings and uses his spiritual messages of Karma – action and reaction (Vipaka), against him to terrorize him and his family for their past sins.
Senior citizens are being offed by a masked killer who stalks the halls of the small retirement community in which they live. The story opens with a terrifying murder, creating space on the waiting list for Rose to move in. Upon Rose’s arrival, she is taken on a tour of the grounds by the quirky, offbeat manager of the joint: Dale. The odd and brightly colored characters continue to pop up as Fanny, her Jewish gossiping neighbor, introduces Rose to “The gang.” The routine of daily life is all stirred up at the moment. People are disappearing, there’s talk of a ghost, and to top things off, there’s an STD outbreak. As terror rises throughout the building, the fear of who’s next and who the killer may be, continues to grow. We find ourselves in a game of “Who-done-it?” Is it Desperella, the ground’s custodial manager? Is it Kitty, the sexy activities director? Or Zeke, her punk rock boyfriend? Maybe it’s one of the elder folks suffering from dementia or seeking some sort of revenge. Full of laughs and full of scares, you’ll be on the edge of your seats from the moment you enter the world of the Lake View Retirement Home: The place where people come to live… until they die!
Follow me on Twitter @jmacle
