Everyone has experienced the unsettling mystery of déjà vu – that flash of memory when you meet someone new you feel you’ve known all your life or recognize a place even though you’ve never been there before. But what if the feelings were actually warnings sent from the past or clues to the future? In the captivating new action-thriller from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott, written by Terry Rossio & Bill Marsilii, it is déjà vu that unexpectedly guides ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) through an investigation into a shattering crime. Called in to recover evidence after a bomb sets off a cataclysmic explosion on a New Orleans Ferry, Carlin is about to discover that what most people believe is only in their heads is actually something far more powerful – and will lead him on a mind-bending race to save hundreds of innocent people.
Déjà Vu
Deck the Halls
A family comedy about one-upsmanship, jealousy, clashing neighbors, home decoration…and the true spirit of the holidays. Steve (Matthew Broderick), a suburban dad and Christmas enthusiast, leads a well-ordered, well-planned, and well-organized life. His new neighbor, Danny (Danny DeVito), is Steve’s polar opposite: a big personality with big dreams, which have yet to materialize. But Danny’s latest dream - to create the biggest holiday light display in the world, visible from outer space - is turning Steve’s disciplined world into a chaotic nightmare. As Danny’s home explodes with festive lights of incredible design, increasing complexity, and exponentially-growing wattage, Steve becomes a man on a mission. At any cost, he will thwart Danny - or top him.
Backstage
Teenager Lucie is an overly zealous fan of a famous pop diva, Lauren Waks. In order to cope with her bleak small-town life with her mother and little brother, Lucie obsesses over the singer, covering her bedroom walls with images and posters of her mysterious, inaccessible idol. One day, a chance situation allows Lucie to meet Lauren and gain access to the star’s vastly unstable life. Gradually their lives intertwine as, with near-operatic intensity, the film delves into the emotional dependency on both sides of celebrity culture.
Bobby
“Bobby,” written and directed by Emilio Estevez, revisits the night Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. With an incredible ensemble cast portraying fictionalized characters from a cross-section of America, the film follows 22 individuals who are all at the hotel for different purposes but share the common thread of anticipating Kennedy’s arrival at the primary election night party, which would change their lives forever. This historic night is set against the backdrop of the cultural issues gripping the country at the time, including racism, sexual inequality and class differences.
The Aura
Espinoza is a shy taxidermist who secretly dreams of executing the perfect robbery. On his first ever hunting trip, in the calm of the Patagonian forest, his dreams are made reality with one squeeze of the trigger. Espinoza accidentally kills a man who turns out to be a real criminal and inherits his scheme: the heist of an armored van carrying casino profits. Caught up in a world of complex new rules and frightening violence, Espinoza’s lack of experience puts him in real danger. And he has another, more dangerous liability: he is an epileptic. Before each seizure he is visited by the “aura”: a paradoxical moment of confusion and enlightenment where the past and future seem to blend. These attacks appear without notice when he least expects them, just when he needs all his wits about him…
Who the $#%& is Jackson Pollock?
When Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul truck driver with an eighth grade education, bought a painting in a thrift shop for five dollars, she didn’t know that it would pit her against the highest and mightiest people in the art world and perhaps change forever the way art is authenticated.
Working with a forensic scientist, Teri learned that a fingerprint on the back of her canvas matched up with a fingerprint found on a can of paint in the studio of Jackson Pollock. More research showed that the paint on the floor of Pollock’s studio matched the paint on Teri’s canvas. Because Teri knew that a Jackson Pollock painting the size of hers was worth upwards of $50 million, she thought she had won the lottery. “Not so fast,” said the art establishment, which looked down its collective nose at Teri and proclaimed her painting worthless.
“Who the $#%& is Jackson Pollock?” is a rollicking adventure story that documents Teri’s 15-year war with the art world, lifts the veil on how art is bought and sold in America, and introduces audiences to the funny, profane, and thoroughly unforgettable Teri Horton.
Copying Beethoven
Classical music aficionado or no, it’s tough not to be moved by the soaring notes of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The work stands as both a defining highpoint in the composer’s career and a dynamic and beguiling legacy of its era. An imaginative exploration of Beethoven’s life in his final days working on the Ninth, “Copying Beethoven” draws inspiration from the music itself. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, the film is both thrilling and romantic.
It is 1824. The composer, played brilliantly by Ed Harris, is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer finish in time for the scheduled first performance - otherwise the orchestra will have no music to play. Insightful young conservatory student and aspiring composer Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) is recommended for the position. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna’s assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her.
By the time the piece is performed - a moment in history captured in an exquisitely moving shot from Anna’s perspective, as she sits on the orchestra floor helping the deaf Beethoven to keep time - her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his proud, private world.
Harris is no stranger to bringing iconic, larger-than-life figures to the screen; his lead performance in “Pollock” was a masterful exploration of a tormented but talented artist. He channels a similar esprit here: his Beethoven is ribald and volatile, vulnerable and, ultimately, endearing. He is matched in intensity and skill by Kruger, who makes the young Anna both an enraptured apprentice and a paragon of willful female independence and ambition. These two characters break down barrier after barrier, and the result is a harmonious wonder.
Come Early Morning
“Come Early Morning” is a beautifully rendered film about a southern woman in a small-town, rural community, a subject director Joey Lauren Adams obviously knows intimately. Delicately told, and rather efficiently related, it is the story of Lucy, a 30-something woman who keeps waking up with a stiff hangover and a guy she doesn’t even want to look at. If coming to grips with why she keeps repeating this pattern isn’t enough, Lucy also begins to realize that she needs to get in touch with her familial past and, more importantly, with the person she has become. Fueled by a perfectly nuanced performance from the gifted Ashley Judd, “Come Early Morning” is about life transitions, the search for love, and the burdens we carry with us. A portrait of simple truths that isn’t archetypal melodrama, it steadfastly avoids wallowing in the depths of sentimentality of self-destruction.
The Cave of the Yellow Dog
Director Byambasuren Davaa once again enchants us with a story set in her native Mongolia. This time, she brings us into the rapidly disappearing world of a modern day nomadic family struggling to continue their traditional way of life (living off the land). Mongolian folklore and the eternal cycle of reincarnation figure into this tale about a 6-year-old girl - just back from attending school in the city, who finds a dog and takes it home to her family. But her father worries it may have been running with wolves (as many abandoned dogs do when their owners move to the city) and will attack their herd of sheep. The family is divided over whether or not to keep the dog. Davaa’s attention to detail - depictions of the family at work - taking down their yurt (tent-like house) to move on, making cheese, collecting dung to cure their meat (and to play with) and even sewing clothing (deel) for the children - will fascinate. At first, Western audiences may gasp when 6-year-old Nansal is sent off alone on a horse to graze the herd, but then it becomes evident that these children are taught survival skills from the time they can walk, so that they can help sustain the family. Davaa uses a real nomadic Mongolian family, consisting of a mother, a father and three lively children to tell her story of what may well be, the last generation to grow up in this rural environment. Davaa says that with this film she wanted to “show a life beyond linear and material values.” The film is subtitled in English.
Cruel World
Reeling from his dismissal from a reality show, a deranged runner-up holds a group of co-eds hostage on the set of his own fictitious show, where losers suffer a deadly fate.