March 2009 Movies

One juror on a murder trial manages to convince his fellow colleagues that the case is not as clear cut as it might have seemed in the courtroom.

Nikita Mikhalkov, Vladimir Moiseyenko, Aleksandr Novototsky

PG-13 Drama Thriller 2 hrs, 39 mins

52% WILL SEE

Released Friday, March 6th

Phoebe in Wonderland

The movie will have Fanning portraying a rebellious young girl who battles with the authority figures in her life. She searches out assistance from an unusual drama teacher (Clarkson).

Elle Fanning, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Barnz, Felicity Huffman, Bill Pullman

PG-13 Comedy

83% WILL SEE

A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock" - which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union - is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion—a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers—Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity…but who is watching the Watchmen?

Thomas Tull, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Jessica Goodman, Sarah Schechter, Tyler Bates

R Drama Fantasy 2 hrs, 35 mins

93% WILL SEE

The Horsemen

A detective, going through a tough time after the death of his wife, investigates suspects in a serial killing spree that have a connection with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Michael Bay, Dennis Quaid, Ziyi Zhang, Dave Callaham, Peter Stormare, Jonas Åkerlund, Andrew Form, Bradley Fuller

R Thriller Horror 1 hr, 50 mins

74% WILL SEE

Tokyo!

A cinematic anthology of three Tokyo-based stories.

Anne Pernod-Sawada, Joon-Ho Bong, Leos Carax, Michel Gondry, Masa Sawada, Michiko Yoshitake

Drama 1 hr, 52 mins

69% WILL SEE

Shuttle

A late night airport shuttle ride home descends into darkness.

Edward Anderson, Todd Lemley, Michael A. Pierce, Mark Donadio, Allan Jones, Mark Williams, Peyton List

R Thriller

48% WILL SEE

Released Friday, March 13th

Miss March

A young man who awakens from a four-year coma to hear that his once virginal high-school sweetheart has since become a centerfold in one of the world's most famous men's magazines. He and his sex-crazed best friend decide to take a cross- country road trip in order to crash a party at the magazine's legendary mansion headquarters and win back the girl.

Trevor Moore, Zach Cregger, Molly Stanton, Holly Hindman, Raquel Alessi

R Comedy

73% WILL SEE

The Perfect Sleep

A tortured man returns to the city he swore he would never return to, in order to save the woman he has always loved yet can never have.

Roselyn Sanchez, Anton Pardoe, Jeremy Alter

R Drama Thriller

33% WILL SEE

The Edge of Love

New York / Los Angeles

Two feisty, free-spirited women are connected by a brilliant, charismatic poet who loves them both.

The passion and pathos of legendary poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) is told through the lives of two extraordinary women. Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and Dylan were each other's first loves who feel the thunderbolt once more when they unexpectedly meet in London ten years later. Caitlin (Sienna Miller) is his adventurous wife, wily at using her beauty and always up for a bit of fun.

Despite their love-rival status, the women form a surprising friendship - and though bombs rain down on London, the trio indulge in the glory of being young, and alive. When Vera meets and marries handsome Officer William Killick (Cillian Murphy), Dylan resents his trio becoming a foursome - and Caitlin notes it.

The collapse of their group is avoided when William gets sent away to war - and the others move back to rural Wales. With Vera now heavily pregnant and missing a husband who never writes back, the battle between her heart and head becomes more intense. William’s return instigates a confrontation that has long been brewing - but the savagery of his attack on Dylan finally forces Vera to choose between the men in her life and the friend that she loves.

Desire and guilt are complicated by love and friendship in this real-life tale set in beautiful London and the majestic Welsh countryside.

Keira Knightley, Cillian Murphy, Sienna Miller, John Maybury, Matthew Rhys, Sharman Macdonald

NR Drama War

62% WILL SEE

Severed Ways

Two Norsemen are stranded and left for dead when their expedition is attacked in the New World.

Tony Stone

NR Drama Adventure 1 hr, 47 mins

75% WILL SEE

Race to Witch Mountain

Scope N/A

"Race to Witch Mountain" is a thrilling action-adventure about a hard luck Las Vegas cab driver Jack Bruno, whose life is thrown into chaos when apparent "runaway" teenagers Sara and Seth jump into his taxi. He soon realizes his two fares are children with exceptional paranormal powers whom he must protect as they elude a collection of ruthless enemies.

Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Andy Fickman, Matt Lopez, Carla Gugino, Andrew Gunn, Mark Bomback, Lloyd Taylor

PG Adventure Fantasy

90% WILL SEE

The Last House on the Left

Scope N/A

Two adventurous teen girls are kidnapped, raped and murdered by a gang of thugs. The killers unwittingly hole up in the home of one victim's parents, who, upon realizing what their guests did, devise gruesome revenge.

Dennis Iliadis, Jonathan Craven, Adam Alleca, Sara Paxton, Wes Craven, Marianne Maddalena, Sean S. Cunningham, Cody Zwieg

R Suspense Horror

89% WILL SEE

Released Wednesday, March 18th

Laid to Rest

A terrifying story of a young girl who wakes up in a casket with a traumatic head injury and no memory of her identity.

Robert Hall

R Horror

53% WILL SEE

Valentino: The Last Emperor

New York

A documentary about the life of legendary fashion designer Valentino.

Matt Kapp, Matt Tyrnauer

NR Documentary

83% WILL SEE

Released Friday, March 20th

Duplicity

Oscar® winner Julia Roberts and Clive Owen reunite for "Duplicity," from writer/director Tony Gilroy (seven-time Oscar®-nominated "Michael Clayton"). In the film, they star as spies-turned-corporate operatives in the midst of a clandestine love affair. When they find themselves embroiled in a high-stakes espionage game, they discover the toughest part of the job is deciding how much to trust the one you love.

CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Owen) have left the world of government intelligence to cash in on the highly profitable cold war raging between two rival multinational corporations. Their mission? Secure the formula for a product that will bring a fortune to the company that patents it first.

For their employers—industry titan Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and buccaneer CEO Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti)— nothing is out of bounds. But as the stakes rise, the mystery deepens and the tactics get dirtier, the trickiest secret for Claire and Ray is their growing attraction. And as they each try to stay one double-cross ahead, two career loners find their schemes endangered by the only thing they can't cheat their way out of: love.

Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Laura Bickford, Tony Gilroy, Jennifer Fox, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson, Billy Bob Thornton

PG-13 Drama

65% WILL SEE

Knowing

In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one of the students, a mysterious girl who seems to hear whispered voices, fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead.

Fast forward 50 years to the present: A new generation of students examines the contents of the time capsule and the girl's cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb Myles. But it is Caleb's father, professor Ted Myles (Nicolas Cage), who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As Ted further unravels the document's secrets, he realizes it foretells three additional events-the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve Ted and his son.

When Ted's attempts to alert the authorities fall on deaf ears, he takes it upon himself to try to prevent more destruction from taking place.

This gripping supernatural thriller charts one man's faltering steps towards belief in the ultimate order of the universe even as he finds himself surrounded by mounting chaos. With the reluctant help of Diana Whelan (Rose Byrne) and Abby, the daughter and granddaughter of the now-deceased author of the cryptic prophecies, Ted's increasingly desperate efforts take him on a heart-pounding race against time until he finds himself facing the ultimate disaster-and the ultimate sacrifice.

Nicolas Cage, Ben Mendelsohn, Stuart Hazeldine, Jason Blumenthal, Adrienne Pickering, Todd Black, Steve Tisch, Stiles White

PG-13 Drama Fantasy 1 hr, 55 mins

96% WILL SEE

I Love You, Man

In “I Love You, Man,” a comedy from John Hamburg (“Along Came Polly,” co-writer of “Meet the Parents,” “Meet the Fockers,” “Zoolander”), Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd, “Knocked Up” “The 40 Year Old Virgin”) is a successful real estate agent who, upon getting engaged to the woman of his dreams, Zooey (“The Office’s” Rashida Jones), discovers, to his dismay and chagrin, that he has no male friend close enough to serve as his Best Man. Peter immediately sets out to rectify the situation, embarking on a series of bizarre and awkward “man-dates,” before meeting Sydney Fife (Jason Segel, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), a charming, opinionated man with whom he instantly bonds. But the closer the two men get, the more Peter’s relationship with Zooey suffers, ultimately forcing him to choose between his fiancée and his newfound “bro,” in a story that comically explores what it truly means to be a “friend.”

Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Jaime Pressly, Donald De Line, John Hamburg

R Comedy

83% WILL SEE

Sunshine Cleaning

The story focuses on a 30-year-old woman (Amy Adams) who has squandered her life's potential on dead-end relationships and her younger sister, who is trying to find her way in the world. The sisters find meaning and understanding through an unlikely enterprise, their own crime scene cleanup business.

Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Christine Jeffs, Karen Moncrieff, Peter Saraf, Glenn Williamson, Megan Holley

R Comedy

35% WILL SEE

Sin Nombre

World-premiering at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, an epic dramatic thriller written and directed by Student Academy Award winner Cary Joji Fukunaga in his feature debut. The filmmaker’s firsthand experiences with Central American immigrants seeking the promise of the U.S. form the basis of the Spanish-language movie. The film tells the story of Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a teenager living in Honduras, and hungering for a brighter future. A reunion with her long-estranged father gives Sayra her only real option – emigrating with her father and her uncle into Mexico and then the United States, where her father now has a new family. Meanwhile, Casper, a.k.a. Willy (Edgar Flores), is a teenager living in Tapachula, Mexico, and facing an uncertain future. A member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang brotherhood, he has just brought to the Mara a new recruit, 12-year-old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer), who undergoes a rough initiation. While Smiley quickly takes to gang life, Casper tries to protect his relationship with girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana García), keeping their love a secret from the Mara. But when Martha encounters Tapachula’s Mara leader Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), she is brutally taken from Casper forever. Sayra and her relatives manage to cross over into Mexico. There, they join other immigrants waiting at the Tapachula train yards. When a States-bound freight train arrives one night, they successfully rush to board – riding atop it, rather than in the cars – as does Lil’ Mago, who has commandeered Casper and Smiley along to rob immigrants. When day breaks, Lil’ Mago makes his move and Casper in turn makes a fateful decision. Casper must now navigate the psychological gauntlet of his violent existence and the physical one of the unforgiving Mara, but Sayra bravely allies herself with him as the train journeys through the Mexican countryside towards the hope of new lives.

Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Paulina Gaitan, Edgar Flores, Karl Braun, Diana García

R Drama Thriller

73% WILL SEE

Hunger

New York

A real life IRA volunteer who led a hunger strike in 1981 against British authorities.

Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender, Enda Walsh, Stuart Graham

NR Drama 1 hr, 36 mins

23% WILL SEE

Sex Positive

The true story of former S&M hustler turned AIDS activism pioneer.

Daryl Wein, David Oliver Cohen

R Documentary 1 hr, 15 mins

68% WILL SEE

Mancora

Following his father's suicide, Santiago decides to escape the crude Lima winter to take refuge in Mancora, a beach to the north of Peru where it is always summer.

Ricardo de Montreuil

R Drama

83% WILL SEE

The Great Buck Howard

The adventures of a down-on-his-luck magician/illusionist and his assistant as they re-invigorate his career.

John Malkovich, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, Sean McGinly, Colin Hanks, Emily Blunt, Marina Grasic, Sidney Kimmel

PG Drama Comedy 1 hr, 27 mins

67% WILL SEE

Super Capers

A good guy with no powers joins a superhero team with no clue against a bad guy with no shame.

Ray Griggs, Christine Lakin, Reuben Lim

PG Comedy

100% WILL SEE

Released Friday, March 27th

Monsters vs. Aliens

When a meteorite from outer space hits a young girl and turns her into a giant monster, she is taken to a secret government compound where she meets a ragtag group of monsters also rounded up over the years.

Stephen Colbert, Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Conrad Vernon, Rainn Wilson, John Stevenson, Lisa Stewart

PG Fantasy Sci-Fi 1 hr, 34 mins

93% WILL SEE

12 Rounds

WWE champion John Cena is New Orleans Police Detective Danny Baxter. When Baxter stops a brilliant thief from getting away with a multi-million-dollar heist, the thief’s girlfriend is accidentally killed. After escaping from prison, the criminal mastermind enacts his revenge, taunting the cop with a series of near-impossible puzzles and tasks …12 rounds…that Baxter must somehow complete to save the life of his fiancée.

John Cena, WWE Films' Michael Lake, Brian J. White, Aidan Gillen, Becki Trujillo, Renny Harlin, Mark Gordon, Daniel Kunka

PG-13 Action Adventure

92% WILL SEE

Spinning Into Butter

In the story, when clearly racist, but anonymous, letters start appearing on the door of one of the college's few African American students, Sarah, the liberal dean of students, is forced to question and explore modern feelings about, and approaches to, racism and political correctness.

Beau Bridges, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mark Brokaw, Norman Twain, Wayne Thompson, Ryan Howe, Mark Davis, Roger Howe

R Drama 1 hr, 26 mins

50% WILL SEE

The Haunting in Connecticut

A family is forced to relocate near a The astounding, well-documented story of a family forced to relocate near a clinic where their son was being treated for cancer. Strained financially and emotionally, the family discovers their recently renovated home was a former mortuary with a dark history. After experiencing violent supernatural events both inside and out of the house, the family seeks the help of ghost hunters and the Catholic Church, which performs an exorcism.

Virginia Madsen, Peter Cornwell, Elias Koteas, Wendy Rhoads, Paul Brooks, Andrew Trapani, Tim Metcalfe, Adam Simon

PG-13 Suspense Horror

88% WILL SEE

The Education of Charlie Banks

New York / Los Angeles

A Vassar College student gets an unannounced visit from the scariest kid from his old New York neighborhood.

Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Ritter, Fred Durst, Michael Corrente, Marisa Polvino, Peter Elkoff, Chris Marquette

Drama

67% WILL SEE

Guest of Cindy Sherman

Art-scene commentator Paul Hasegawa-Overacker's relationship with enigmatic photographer Cindy Sherman.

Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, Tom Donahue

NR Documentary 1 hr, 28 mins

The Accidental Husband

Scope N/A

A local radio talk show host with a show about relationships gives advice to one of her listeners to dump her boyfriend. He decides to seek revenge and wrecks havoc on the host's personal life.

Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jason Blum, Kristen Buckley, Colin Firth, Griffin Dunne, Bob Yari, Jennifer Todd

PG-13 Comedy Romance 1 hr, 30 mins

91% WILL SEE