Pierced to the Heart

A Separation (Farhadi, 2011)
By the third time out or so, you realize that a filmmaker you’ve only been vaguely or even just accidentally keeping up with clearly deserves more particular notice –  and so you sit up and pay attention, remember the name, start looking for it on festival schedules, indeed, choose that name over others, becoming attuned [...]…

Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002)
(Ed.: Today we have a welcome guest post from Nicholas Olson, who pens The Moviegoer.) Audiences were largely unsure about what to make of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love when it was released almost a decade ago. Part of the quizzical reaction was that it was not a standard Adam Sandler film. Even critics found [...]…

The Artist (2011, Hazanavicius)
[An abridged version of this review was published previously at Image.] It happens every January — movie ads fill up with boasts about awards they’ve won. In a few days, those boasts will start to include Oscar nominations. And The Artist is currently the most boastful of all. Filmmaker Michael Hazanavicius’s tribute to Hollywood’s silent [...]…

Some Favorite Films of 2011
One problem I have always had with year-end list making is that it forces me to break up the little thematic and emotional connections that develop between films, directors, and genres over the course of a year of new cinema and rank films according to a different metric. Rather than a list, I would like to [...]…

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011)
There are a number of different directions one can go when reviewing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. We could protest (again) that Robert Downey, Junior is no Sherlock Holmes. He does not look like Holmes or act like Holmes. On the other hand, neither does any other portrayer of Sherlock Holmes, for in a [...]…

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (Bird, 2011)
It is a pleasure to announce that director Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is worth every penny of today’s high ticket price. In this moviegoer’s opinion, it’s easily the finest installment in an otherwise mediocre franchise. Moreover, it’s leaves X-Men: First Class, Captain America, and the rest of 2011′s glorified Saturday morning cartoons in…

Certified Copy: Kiarostami and the Real Thing
FLATLAND IS A 19TH CENTURY inter-dimensional head-trip, still popular with math and computer geeks, a fantasy of a two-dimensional being whose mind is blown by his encounters with other dimensions.  (Among other things, he discovers that the elite of his own world knew about the existence of a third-dimension, but hid that knowledge from the [...]…

Tyrannosaur (Considine, 2011)
If you flinch while you watch Tyrannosaur, that is the right response. For an angry person, a flinch is a form of communication. It is a sign that their grievance, nameless as it may be, has been heard and felt by someone else. There isn’t anything therapeutic about the chain of events that results in [...]…

The Muppets (Bobin, 2011)
Once upon a time — 1979, to be exact — along a freeway in the southwest, a car carrying the Muppets broke down. And their pursuit of a dream (“to make millions of people happy!”) came to a crashing halt. So they built a campfire beside their broken-down car. Kermit the Frog walked into the [...]…

Inni (Morisset, 2011)
You could call Sigur Rós’ Inni a “concert film” but that’s a bit of a misnomer. Yes, the 74 minute movie consists primarily of footage culled from the band’s performances at London’s Alexandra Palace in 2008, interspersed with snippets of the band’s early performances, awkward interviews, and various antics. However, unlike many concert movies, there’s…

Updated: 4 Feb 2012, 22:00 UTC

Looking Closer’s Favorite Films of 2011
[UPDATED.] When I post Favorite Films lists, they are always works in progress. Here is Part One of my two-part reflection on the films of 2011, posted at Good Letters, the blog at Image. And here is Part Two: my ten favorite films of 2011 (so far). These articles go into some detail. The list [...]…

1980-2011: Overstreet’s Favorite Film Lists
AN INTRODUCTION: This is a work in progress… a running list of my favorite films. Organizing any film list is a challenge. How do we determine the release date of a film? By the first festival screening? By the American commercial release date? What if it’s made available online before it reaches theatres? I recently [...]…

Lucky Life (2010)
Lucky Life is now streaming at Hulu, and my review is up at Good Letters, the blog at ImageJournal.org. Share this:…

Of Gods and Men (2010)
Xavier Beauvois’s beautiful drama Of Gods and Men tells the true story of nine French Trappist monks at the Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas in Algeria’s Atlas Mountains who risked their lives to serve the locals during a 1996 insurgence of violent extremists during the Algerian Civil War. The cast features Lambert Wilson of [...]…

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) – A Looking Closer Film Forum
A Looking Closer Film Forum is an evolving “conversation” among critics… a “round-table” review of perspectives from critics I regularly consult as I revise my list of viewing priorities. I haven’t seen the film yet, but these reviews have intrigued me. Check back from time to time, as I may add more reviews to the [...]…

The Artist (2011)
A review by Jeffrey Overstreet. This review was originally published at Filmwell. • Writer and director – Michel Hazanavicius; director of photography – Guillaume Schiffman; editor – Michel Hazanavicius and Anne-Sophie Bion; music – Ludovic Bource; production designer – Laurence Bennett; costumes – Mark Bridges; producer – Thomas Langmann. Starring –…

War Horse (2011)
My review of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is up at Image’s blog, Good Letters. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Want to respond? Visit Jeffrey on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Share this:…

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
A review by Jeffrey Overstreet. • Director – Steven Spielberg; writers – Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish; based on the books by Hergé; visual-effects supervisors – Joe Letteri and Scott E. Anderson; animation supervisor – Jamie Beard; editor – Michael Kahn; music – John Williams; art direction – Andrew Jones and Jeff Wisneiwski; [...]…

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, originally published at Filmwell. • Director – Brad Bird; writers – Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec; based on the television series created by Bruce Geller; director of photography – Robert Elswit; editor – Paul Hirsch; music – Michael Giacchino; “Mission: Impossible” theme – Lalo Schifrin; production design – Jim Bissell;…

Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
A review by Jeffrey Overstreet. • Director – Ron Howard; writers- Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman; based on the book by Dr. Seuss; director of photography – Don Peterman; editors – Dan Hanley and Mike Hill; music – James Horner; the song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” written by Albert Hague and Theodor [...]…

Updated: 4 Feb 2012, 22:00 UTC

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Like the boy that shares its name, the Harry Potter series stumbled from the gate, saddled not entirely unexpectedly with inexperience and immaturity. But then, as with the boy, something truly wonderful—even magical—happened. It grew into something to be immensely, colossally, button-poppingly proud of. Unlike nearly every adaptation Hollywood produces, the Harry Potter films, taken [...]…

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
It is no secret that I disliked the first two Transformers films. In fact, I employ no hyperbole whatsoever in admitting that I, for lack of a more expressive word, utterly loathed them. There are those who claim Transformers: Dark of the Moon is light years better than its predecessors. Do not believe their rancid [...]…

Larry Crowne
Several years ago, one of my dearest friends starred in a national CitiCard commercial in which a woman Feng shuis her house (the ancient Chinese system of aesthetics that teaches that greater spiritual energy can be derived from a proper orientation of your material belongings) but discovers that what she really needed to do was [...]…

Cars 2
It was bound to happen. No one can keep a winning streak like that going forever. A 25-year perfect game isn’t exactly shabby. In fact, it just might be unprecedented. There is no other creative entity in Hollywood with as unblemished and sterling a record as Pixar. This makes the stumble that is Cars 2 [...]…

The Green Lantern
When I was young, I accidentally punched a hole in the side of our garage wall with a wayward snow shovel. Terrified at the implications once my mother returned from work, I did the only thing I could think of: I taped a piece of notebook paper across the sizable gouge and painted over the [...]…

Super 8
Nostalgia is defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” One thing that is abundantly clear while watching Super 8 is that writer/director J.J. Abrams’ nostalgia for his early teenaged years—an era defined by the films of Steven Spielberg (also a producer [...]…

X-Men: First Class
In a summer unfortunately glutted with superhero movies, every one an origins story, X-Men: First Class not only eclipses its competition, but also each of its franchise predecessors. Psychologically complex, thematically rich and emotionally layered, this is the best, smartest and classiest of the X-Men series by leagues. This is a comic book movie that [...]…

The Tree of Life
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Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu Panda 2 is disappointing only because it is not the original Kung Fu Panda, a rare animated action-packed adventure that managed to delight adult filmgoers as well as kids not by injecting sophisticated humor but by making a story of a fat Panda bear incontestably exciting. The second entry in the trilogy (this [...]…

The Hangover: Part II
To dispense with a lengthy plot synopsis for The Hangover: Part II would be a profound waste of the time it would take me to write it and you to read it. The Hangover: Part II is the exact same movie as its predecessor down to nearly every single narrative beat. While there’s certainly something [...]…

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Fan fiction is an awkward literary subset written not by the original creator of a given work, but rather by fans. Nearly always disavowed by the originating artist, fan fiction is both defined by and exists outside the canon of whatever universe is being depicted, especially due to the fact that the quality of work [...]…

Bridesmaids
It is both artistically dishonest and embarrassingly naive to grant the status of “classic” to something only newly born. For a film to be called a classic, it must first stand the tests of longevity, critical reception and…oh what the hell, who am I kidding? Bridesmaids is an instant classic. Annie (Kristen Wiig) has a J.D. [...]…

Priest
Priest is the sort of movie you walk into knowing full well its IQ is significantly less than the bucket of popcorn balanced in your lap. About all you can hope for in this situation is that it will also be fun. And when it turns out to not be any fun at all, you [...]…

Thor
The problem with the current crop of superhero movies is that once you’ve exhausted the A-list (Superman, Spider-Man, Batman), you begin reaching for the second string personalities who may be every bit as worthy, but do not have the same sort of populist street cred. Thor is one such superhero. (The Green Lantern is another.) [...]…

Fast Five
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states roughly that there is a universal tendency for all things to progress from order to disorder. The longer a particular system goes, the greater its tendency toward entropy and decline. If only that principle could explain Fast Five, the fifth entry in the wearying, middling Fast and Furious franchise—clear [...]…

A personal note from Brandon Fibbs:
Recently, while wandering in Frost’s proverbial yellow woods, I came to a fork in the road and decided to take the one less traveled. After a half dozen years as a professional film critic writing about other people’s movies, I have decided it is time to start letting them write about mine. To that end, I [...]…

Hanna
In the Brandon Fibbs Book of Movieisms it is stated: “A bad film is not the worst kind of film. A bad film is simply bad. It does not aspire to be anything better. But a film with potential to be great that squanders its promise by either action or inaction is a far more [...]…

Happythankyoumoreplease
Observant and heartfelt, the gentle comedy Happythankyoumoreplease is certainly not the most polished film you will see this year, but it is a breath of fresh cinematic air all the same. When was the last time you saw a film populated with young people on the cusp of adulthood who traded reflexive cynicism for vulnerable [...]…

Source Code
A version of this review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here. Proving definitively that his remarkable freshman effort, Moon, was anything but luck or chance, director Duncan Jones returns with Source Code, a less meditative and ambitious film than his last outing, but one which [...]…

Sucker Punch
A version of this review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here. An ambitious, epic, operatic action delirium, the dark and intensely violent Sucker Punch is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on acid. The film is a glorious disaster, a mind-bogglingly messy, perversely gorgeous piece [...]…

Updated: 4 Feb 2012, 22:00 UTC

Hallmark hits a home run with ‘A Smile as Big as the Moon’
My review in the National Catholic Reporter: Hallmark hits a home run with ‘A Smile as Big as the Moon’.…

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen opens March 9
I’ve seen this and will be reviewing it soon. I must say, I really liked it. It’s a dream that imagines faith and possibility.  …

Tree of Life screening in 35mm + panel Jan. 14, 2012, UCLA
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War Horse review
Among the many themes that emerge or converge in the films of director, producer, writer Steven Spielberg are lonely children and war, specifically World War II. From the kids in “E.T”: the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) to the Oscar-winning “Schindler’s List” (1993),  a black and white film but viewers may remember the little Jewish girl in a [...]…

On Faith and Media Film Reviews
    For my recent reviews on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Young Adult My Week with Marilyn The Descendants and more …   visit http://OnFaithandMedia.org  …

New movie review site at RCL Benziger for Catechesis & Religious Education
  Click here to access site http://sisterrosemovies.com…

Have a Little Faith to air Sunday, November 27 (Hallmark Hall of Fame)
Have a Little Faith (Sunday, November 27, ABC, 9/8) is Mitch Albom‘s fourth book into a made-for-TV movie and the Hallmark Hall of Fame latest holiday offering. The movie will seem familiar territory for Albom fans at first, then it moves beyond the interview with a beloved mentor, to living the lessons learned. Based on a [...]…

The Way with Martin Sheen – don’t miss it!
The panel for the special screening of THE WAY last Saturday night in Los Angeles; photo by Frederic Charpentier On Nov. 5, Catholics in Media Associates (CIMA) of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in collaboration with Mt. St. Mary’s College Chalon Campus, hosted a screening and panel discussion of Emilio Estevez’s new film “The Way.”  The main attraction, besides [...]…

The Mighty Macs
The St. Anthony Messenger November 2011 issue has a feature about the story that inspired the film. Check it out!  Here’s my review: THE MIGHTY MACS (not yet rated): It is the early 1970s, at the dawn of the women’s movement and just before Title IX programs for athletics were extended to women. The president and mother superior [...]…

The Cinema of Adoption
  To go along with National Adoption Month in the US, here is a link to my column On Faith and Media in St. Anthony Messenger magazine. Some of the movies I talk about are Secrets and Lies, Juno, Heaven on Earth, Daughter of Danang, Superman, etc.      …

Updated: 4 Feb 2012, 22:00 UTC

The Adventures of Tintin
I have 11 grandchildren. I see plenty of children’s movies. I have acquired a jaundiced eye. As autumn leaves drift into piles, as souvenir teacups proliferate around a royal wedding, thus do crass, crude, cynical children’s movies pile up around the family DVD player. Until now. The Adventures of Tintin is superb. Grandparents everywhere will babble tearful thanks: it’s so much better…

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
This might be an excellent movie; it certainly looks impressive. But I’m only a little less baffled now, after reading up on the storyline, than I was when I walked out of the theater. Suffice it to say that reviews by people who had already read the novel, or viewed the 7-part BBC series, regard the movie with great appreciation. Those who didn’t already know the storyline range from appreciative-but-puzzled…

Main Street
Playwright Horton Foote (1916-2009) made the comment a few years back, “The people hardest on [my work] always say that not a lot is happening.” Oh, but what delectable nothing it is. Foote won Oscars for Tender Mercies (1983) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and was nominated for The Trip to Bountiful (1985)—all works of great tenderness and insight. (Let me recommend too the little-known…

There Be Dragons
First the bad news, for adolescent viewers, anyway: there don’t be any dragons. Not the leathery-winged kind, at least. The title refers to a medieval map-making custom of inscribing the warning “Hic Sunt Dracones” on unexplored regions. In this case the warning refers to the unexplored regions of the psyche, where destructive emotions may lurk. …

In Time
And that’s the happy ending.   It’s this unintentional resonance that threatens to turn In Time from a nifty thriller into an unintentionally obtuse message-movie, one that seems to say that an international financial disaster would be the best thing that ever happened to the poor. There may have been eras in the last few decades when a saucy statement along those lines might have…

PBS Interview: Higher Ground
[October 8, 2011] Here’s a link to my interview on the PBS show, “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly,” about the movie Higher Ground: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/october-7-2011/higher-ground/9668/   …

Interview with Vera Farmiga, "Higher Ground" Director
Here’s what happens. You prepare for a phone interview with an actor or director by thinking up a list of questions. Really, you only need one or two good ones, and the conversation takes care of itself.   But the person being interviewed has a different perspective. There are certain points they want to get across, regardless of which questions you ask. They may have been reiterating these…

Higher Ground
When evangelicals hear that there’s a new movie about their brand of Christianity, they get nervous. All too often they are presented as idiots or villains. Stereotypes about narrow-mindedness, intolerance, cultish mind-control, and harsh subjugation of women abound.   Carolyn Briggs’ 2002 memoir, This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost hit a number of those notes. When…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the eighth and final film in the Harry Potter series, opens today in a blaze of special effects: castles burning, bridges collapsing, dragon-fire blasting, stone knights clunking stiffly to life, giants whacking smaller figures off the earth like tiny golf balls. This is not the first fantasy-action film to suffer under a Disproportionatus Curse, in which…

Larry Crowne
Picture Tom Hanks. Got it? OK, now picture a guy whom Julia Roberts would find so overwhelmingly yummy that she would not only kiss him with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever, but even try to jump up and wrap her legs around his waist. Now, very slowly, try to merge those two images.   If you can’t do it, don’t feel bad. Almost no one can come up with a result they find plausible.…

The Illusionist
[National Review Online; Feb 10, 2011] The Illusionist has been nominated for Best Animated Feature (I mean the new animated film, of course, not the 2006 live-action movie by the same title), and no one who has seen it was surprised. It is simply a beautiful motion picture. Our protagonist, slipping past middle age, watches mountains and rivers flow past his train window; rain is drizzling, summer…

Life As We Know It
How bad can a blind date be? When Eric Messer (“Call me Messer”) shows up an hour late at Holly Berenson’s apartment, invites her to climb onto his motorcycle in a sheath dress and high heels, then answers his phone and makes a date for later (“11:00”—a glance at Holly—“no, 10:30”), it could hardly be worse.  Who thought these two would mesh?…

Expecting Mary
Fans of Bella and Juno will be glad to welcome Expecting Mary, another film showing how an unexpected pregnancy can lead to a happy ending. This time around the mom-to-be is Mary, a 16-year-old runaway; she is headed for California and her dad who, she thinks, will be more understanding and “cool” than her uptight mom. “I’m only having it because they [her mom and stepdad] don’t…

Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 is as good as any movie Pixar Studios has made, and better than a few of them. But when you consistently achieve excellence, there’s this problem: people start expecting more. A merely excellent movie is not enough. Each one must be more suspenseful, surprising, original, hilarious, and emotionally satisfying than the last. Each success becomes a rack on which the next attempt is…

Letters to Juliet
This is the dilemma of movie reviewing: a critic who has honed professional discernment by studying the cinematic arts will not be as generous toward a film as a happy audience that is just looking for a good time. When I picked up my daughter for the screening, I said, “I don’t know why I wanted to review this; it looks awful.”   That opinion did not change—but while Meg…

Updated: 4 Feb 2012, 22:00 UTC

Film Break: “The Descendants”
My take on Alexander Payne’s quite good new movie, The Descendants, is now up. Between this one, The Muppets, and, I expect, this weekend’s screening of Hugo, I’ve been catching up with a lot of superb films lately. Might be time for another movie round-up at some point next week.…

Film Break: This Year’s Favorites
I have seen fewer movies this year than in any previous year that I can remember. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in film, just that life and work have gotten in the way—plus, in my ever-evolving perception of what this blog is, I’ve tried to put even greater effort into writing thoughtfully and thoroughly [...]…

Film Break: “Tower Heist”
Silly, but not at all unpleasant.…

Film Break: “The Three Musketeers”
File this one under Morbid Curiosities, I suppose, but my review of the new Three Musketeers movie is posted at CT. You can pretty much determine how silly (and loosely adapted) this one is just from the trailer, but I will say that it has its moments of fun, despite an overall poor execution.…

Film Break: “The Ides of March”
A rare interlude for film this morning– and a mighty good one, at that. George Clooney’s The Ides of March is riveting, and surprisingly cynical. A very strong recommendation here, but perhaps not for those who who prefer to cling to some sort of political idealism.…

Film Break: “Cars 2″
I reviewed the latest from Team Pixar for CT; you can read my take here. Wish I could say that Cars 2 was yet another addition to Pixar’s rather incredible winning streak, but I’m afraid this is squarely a bottom-tier Pixar offering, down with A Bug’s Life and the first Cars. I did like it [...]…

Film Break: “Rejoice and Shout”
Rejoice and Shout is a terrific new documentary– out in limited release today– that functions as a sort of whirlwind tour of the 200-year history of black gospel music. The film’s historical perspective is fascinating, and the vintage performances are outright inspiring. You can read my full review of the film here– but of course, [...]…

Film Break: “Hanna”
My review of Joe Wright’s new movie Hanna is posted at CT Movies. I’m afraid the visual stylishness of this one wasn’t enough to compensate for the rather hollow storytelling, at least in my experience.…

Film Break: “Limitless”
I don’t have time to write about film nearly as much as I’d like to, and, truthfully, I don’t make it to the theater quite as much as I used to. I have seen a couple of films recently that really impressed me, however; the animated Rango is as delightful and inventive a movie as [...]…

Film Break: “Just Go With It”
Just Go With It, from Adam Sandler and the director of Grown Ups and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, debuts today, along with my CT review. Word of advice: Don’t just go with it. To date, Adam Sandler has been in exactly one truly excellent romantic comedy. It’s called Punchdrunk Love.…

Updated: 4 Feb 2012, 22:00 UTC

Answers to Nothing opens December 2nd, 2011 (limited)
Against the backdrop of a missing girl case, lost souls throughout Los Angeles search for meaning and redemption and affect each other in ways they don't always see.<br><br> Ryan and Kate are in a strained marriage. They are trying to have a baby, but instead of bringing them closer together the difficulties are tearing them apart. Two strangers, sharing a home, they each lead private lives…

Sleeping Beauty opens December 2nd, 2011 (limited)
Lucy is a young university student possessed by a kind of radical passivity. She lets a flip of a coin decide the outcome of a random sexual encounter and she displays an uncomplaining patience when facing the repetitions of her various menial jobs that fund her studies. One day she answers an ad in the student newspaper and interviews for a job to be a lingerie waitress. But she is secretly being…

Shame opens December 2nd, 2011 (limited)
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Coriolanus opens December 2nd, 2011 (limited)
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Pastorela opens December 2nd, 2011 (limited)
For as long as he can remember, Agent Jesus Juarez, known in his neighborhood as Chucho, has played "the Devil" in his town's traditional Nativity Play... but this Christmas, things have changed. When Chucho arrives late to auditions, the new pastor of the church, Edmundo Posadas, has already cast all the roles. Now, Chucho must enter into an epic battle between good and evil- a battle between himself…

Outrage opens October 28th, 2011 (VOD); December 2nd (limited)
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Updated: 30 Nov 2011, 06:00 UTC

New Year's Eve opens December 9th, 2011 (wide)
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W.E. opens December 9th, 2011 (limited)
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I Melt With You opens November 4th, 2011 (on demand); December 9th (limited)
Richard, Ron, Jonathan and Tim are old college friends that gather annually for a week in Big Sur to celebrate their friendship and catch-up on each other's lives. They seem like typical men in their forties -- all with careers, families, and enormous responsibilities -- but like most people there is a lot more beneath the surface. <br><br>As the week progresses, they go down the rabbit…

Knuckle opens December 9th 2011 (limited)
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy opens December 9th, 2011
The time is 1973. The Cold War of the mid-20th Century continues to damage international relations. Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a.k.a. MI6 and code-named the Circus, is striving to keep pace with other countries' espionage efforts and to keep the U.K. secure. The head of the Circus, known as Control, personally sends dedicated operative Jim Prideaux into Hungary. But Jim's mission…

Sitter opens December 9th, 2011 (wide)
When the world's most irresponsible babysitter takes three of the world's worst kids on an overnight adventure through the streets of New York City, it's anyone's guess who's going to make it home in one piece.…

Young Adult opens December 9th, 2011 (wide)
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Addiction Incorporated opens December 14th, 2011 (NY)
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Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel opens December 16th, 2011 (limited)
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows opens December 16th, 2011 (wide)
Sherlock Holmes has always been the smartest man in the room... until now. There is a new criminal mastermind at large - Professor Moriarty - and not only is he Holmes' intellectual equal, but his capacity for evil, coupled with a complete lack of conscience, may actually give him an advantage over the renowned detective.<BR> <BR> Holmes' investigation into Moriarty's plot becomes ever…

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (hidden) opens December 2011 (wide)
Tom Cruise returns to his Ethan Hunt character popularized by the previous three installments with this fourth entry produced by J.J. Abrams. Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec provide the script for the Paramount production.…

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked opens December 16th, 2011 (wide)
The vacationing Chipmunks and Chipettes are turning a luxury cruise liner into their personal playground, until they become 'chipwrecked' on a remote island. As the 'Munks and Chipettes try various schemes to find their way home, they accidentally discover their new turf is not as deserted as it seems.…

Carnage opens December 16th, 2011 (limited)
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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol opens December 21st, 2011 (wide)
Blamed for the terrorist bombing of the Kremlin, IMF operative Ethan Hunt is disavowed along with the rest of the agency when the President initiates "Ghost Protocol". Left without any resources or backup, Ethan must find a way to clear his agency's name and prevent another attack. To complicate matters further, Ethan is forced to embark on this mission with a team of fellow IMF fugitives whose personal…

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opens December 21st, 2011 (wide)
A discredited journalist (Daniel Craig) and a mysterious computer hacker discover that even the wealthiest families have skeletons in their closets while working to solve the mystery of a 40-year-old murder in this David Fincher-directed remake of the 2009 Swedish thriller of the same name. Inspired by late author Stieg Larsson's successful trilogy of books, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO gets under…

Adventures of Tintin opens December 23rd, 2011 (wide)
Tintin is the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure…

We Bought a Zoo opens December 23rd, 2011 (wide)
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In the Land of Blood and Honey opens December 23rd, 2011 (limited)
Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, and Ajla, a Bosnian held captive in the camp he oversees, knew each other before the war, and could have found love with each other. But as the armed conflict takes hold of their lives, their relationship grows darker, their motives and connection to one another ambiguous, their allegiances uncertain.…

Darkest Hour opens December 25th, 2011 (wide)
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War Horse opens December 25th, 2011 (wide)
A friendship begins between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the horse moves through the First World War, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets -- British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter.…

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close opens December 25th, 2011 (limited); January 20th, 2012 (wide)
Oskar is convinced that his father, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has left a final message for him hidden somewhere in the city. Feeling disconnected from his grieving mother and driven by a relentlessly active mind that refuses to believe in things that can't be observed, Oskar begins searching New York City for the lock that fits a mysterious key he found in his father's…

Pariah opens December 28th, 2011 (limited)
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Battle Angel opens Not announced yet
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Iron Lady opens December 30th, 2011 (limited)
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Poltergeist opens TBA 2011
The original Tobe Hooper spookfest gets an update with this remake from director Vadim Perelman, best known for HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG and THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES.…

Very Harold and Kumar Christmas opens TBA 2011
Directors John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are back for this third outing for the pot-prizing pair.…

Separation opens December 30th, 2011 (limited)
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Separation opens December 30th, 2011 (limited)
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Albatross opens January 2nd, 2012 (limited)
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Loosies opens January 4th, 2012 (limited)
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Updated: 30 Nov 2011, 06:00 UTC