Film Clips: This weekend’s movie openings and more October 01 2010
National films, plus Atlanta’s 23rd festival of LGBT film features.
- Photo Credit: Oscilloscope Laboratores
- James Franco is Allen Ginsberg in “Howl,” premiering locally at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema by “Out on Film,” Atlanta’s 23rd LGBT film festival.
OPENING FRIDAY
CASE 49 (R) This horror thriller stars Renee Zellweger as a social worker trying to save a 10 year-old girl from abusive parents, only to discover that the situation is more dangerous than she realizes. With Ian McShane and Bradley Cooper.
FREAKONOMICS (PG-13) In this nonfiction anthology film, six documentary filmmakers (including Alex Gibney and Morgan Spurlock) present different segments based on the bestseller Freakonomics and its fascinating, counterintuitive approach to sociological issues.
JACK GOES BOATING (R) Oscar-winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman directs and stars in this adaptation of a stage play about a limo driver who reassesses his life and relationships following a blind date (with Amy Ryan of Gone Baby Gone).
LET ME IN 3 stars (R) In wintry, 1983 Los Alamos, a lonely 12 year-old boy (The Road’s Kodi Smit-McPhee) befriends the new girl next door (Kick-Ass’s Chloë Grace Moretz)), unaware that she lives on human blood and doesn’t get old. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves offers a faithful adaptation of 2008’s excellent Swedish film, although the American version feels marginally more like a straight-up horror film than a blood-soaked character study. Smit-McPhee and Moretz’s performances make Let Me In one of the most unexpectedly affecting love stories of 2010. — Holman
THE SOCIAL NETWORK 4 stars (R) A handful of computer savvy Harvard students (notably Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield) launch a social networking website that annoys the schools privileged snobs — and eventually becomes a global sensation. Fight Club and Zodiac director David Fincher and “The West Wing” scripter/creator Aaron Sorkin combine their flair for conveying dense amounts of information with this highly entertaining study of how Facebook’s founders fell out after the site took off. The ending feels arbitrary and inconclusive, but The Social Network captures the seedy underbelly of past decade’s on-line bubble, while providing an amusing riff on the Revenge of the Nerds genre. — Holman