Amour

 

Amour is one of those movies that will leave a lasting impression on its audience, in the same way that love never fades from those who have truly felt it. Amour is directed by acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke, most well known for directing disturbing material (like Funny Games or The White Ribbon) that borders on horrific and possibly psychologically damaging. In Amour, Heineke goes a completely, more subtle route.

Les Misérables

Les Misérables is, among other things, the story of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) and his road to redemption in nineteenth-century France. The film opens with Valjean a prisoner, because nineteen years ago he stole bread to try and save the life of his sister’s son. In prison, he is known as Prisoner 24601 to the menancing Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). Eventually, Valjean is released from bondage and decides to reinvent himself as a businessman, establishing a factory that employs indigent women. One of these women, Fantine, is thrown out on the street for concealing an illegitimate child. She turns to prostitution to support her daughter, and eventually dies of consumption, leaving the little girl behind. Valjean, learning of Fantine’s destitution, promises to find and support the child, all the while pursued by the dogged Javert, who believes Valjean is “once a criminal, always a criminal.”

The Sessions

The Sessions is one of those movies that just stays in your head for weeks. John Hawkes portrays Mark O’Brien, a man who lives inside an iron lung. Mark caught polio as a child and cannot function properly outside the iron lung for long periods of time. A poet and working journalist, Mark’s goal at the start of the film is to explore the topic of sex and the disabled. Upon realizing that the subjects he has been interviewing aren’t giving him the information he’s looking for, Mark decides to get in touch with a sex surrogate to experience sex himself — at age 38 — for the first time.

Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-It Ralph, the latest CGI film from Disney, shares a name with its protagonist, who happens to be the antagonist of a retro arcade game called Fix-It Felix Jr. In the game, a twist on Donkey Kong, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) climbs to the top of an apartment building, smashing windows and walls, until Fix-It Felix Jr. (Jack McBrayer) arrives and makes repairs, ultimately defeating Ralph. After 30 years of playing out this same scenario, Ralph is tired of being the bad guy and yearns for the acceptance and glory of being a hero. The townspeople in the Fix-It Felix Jr. video game do not respect Ralph’s ambitions, so he breaks a cardinal rule of the gaming universe and begins “game jumping” in hopes of finding of a game that will allow him to become the hero he wants to be.

The Man with the Iron Fists

The Man with the Iron Fists is a film written and directed by Wu Tang Clan musician RZA. This film, now playing locally, essentially pays homage to the old martial arts films of the early 1970s. In it, RZA plays an African-American blacksmith who was freed from slavery decades earlier by his mother and slave master. The blacksmith runs afoul of the Red Lion gang because he fails to produce the weapons they need in time for them to steal a large chest of gold that belongs to the Emperor. As punishment, they kill his prostitute girlfriend and also cut off his arms. These heinous acts set the blacksmith on a path of revenge, aided in his quest by warriors named Jack Knife (Russell Crowe) and Zen Yi (Rick Yune).

Skyfall

Skyfall, the 23rd outing in the fifty-year-old James Bond franchise, is directed by Sam Mendes and stars Daniel Craig as the venerable Agent 007. Bond’s mission in this particular film is to discover who is behind a cyber terrorism attack on MI-6. The attack is directed at Bond’s boss, M (Dame Judi Dench), because she lost a hard drive containing the names of MI-6 agents who are undercover in terrorist cells around the world. Naturally, because the loss of the hard drive is an issue of national security, M’s position in MI-6 is threatened.

Silent Hill: Revelation

Silent Hill: Revelation is a horror film sequel that really shouldn’t have been made. In it, a woman named Heather (Adelaide Clemens) visits a place called Silent Hill to save her father (Sean Bean) from an evil child named Alessa who wants Heather’s soul. I’m not pulling your leg, people; that’s the entire plot of the film. Horrific creatures and jump scares abound throughout its somehow too-long hour and thirty–five minute running time.

Alex Cross

Alex Cross, the film, is a reinvention of Alex Cross, the forensic psychologist character made popular by James Patterson in his series of print thrillers. In Alex Cross we are introduced to the eponymous detective (Tyler Perry) who works with a team in the South Carolina police department. In the course of human events, Cross runs afoul of a man called Picasso (Matthew Fox), who is apparently an assassin of some sort, and who gets pleasure from the pain of his victims. This killer starts knocking off the rich and the wealthy by finding them, paralyzing them with a drug, and then torturing them to death. Things turn personal when the assassin targets someone Alex Cross loves.

Arbitrage

Arbitrage, the new film from director Nicholas Jarecki (The Outsider) stars Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Brit Marling. In this timely thriller, Robert Miller (Gere), the CEO of a hedge fund, commits fraud in order to make it appear the company is continuing to do well in troubled financial times. This smoke screen is necessary because the fund is up for sale, and neither Miller’s investors nor his daughter (Marling), the company’s CFO, can know about the $400 million in debt that would sink the company, the merger, and his life’s work. Oh, and if that’s not enough plot for you, Miller’s life is complicated further when he accidentally causes the death of his mistress after a particularly difficult workweek.

Argo

Argo, the latest film from director Ben Affleck, tells the true story of the rescue of six American citizens working in the Iranian embassy in 1979. When Iranian civilians, upset that the United States is granting asylum to the recently deposed Shah, storm and capture the embassy, the six embassy workers manage to escape to the house of the Canadian ambassador. A rescue mission must and does follow, in this tense thriller written by Chris Terrio and Joshuah Bearman.