New Movies in Theaters November 6, 2009
November 6, 2009
Disney’s A Christmas Carol
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
MPAA Rating: PG
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenwriter: Robert Zemeckis
Movie Website: Disney.com
Actors/Actresses: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes
Plot Summary: “Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” a multi-sensory thrill ride re-envisioned by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, captures the fantastical essence of the classic Dickens tale in a groundbreaking 3-D motion picture event. Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) begins the Christmas holiday with his usual miserly contempt, barking at his faithful clerk (Gary Oldman) and his cheery nephew (Colin Firth). But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it’s too late.
The Box
Genre: Thriller
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Richard Kelly
Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Movie Website: TheBox-movie.com
Actors/Actresses: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella
Plot Summary: What if someone gave you a box containing a button that, if pushed, would bring you a million dollars…but simultaneously take the life of someone you don’t know? Would you do it? And what would be the consequences? The year is 1976. Norma Lewis is a teacher at a private high school and her husband, Arthur, is an engineer working at NASA. They are, by all accounts, an average couple living a normal life in the suburbs with their young son…until a mysterious man with a horribly disfigured face appears on their doorstep and presents Norma with a life-altering proposition: the box. With only 24 hours to make their choice, Norma and Arthur face an impossible moral dilemma. What they don’t realize is that no matter what they decide, terrifying consequences will have already been set in motion. They soon discover that the ramifications of this decision are beyond their control and extend far beyond their own fortune and fate.
The Fourth Kind
Genre: Thriller
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Screenwriter: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Movie Website: TheFourthKind.net
Actors/Actresses: Milla Jovovich
Plot Summary: In 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, it is called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, it is the third kind. The next level, abduction, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document…until now.
Structured unlike any film before it, “The Fourth Kind” is a provocative thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where—mysteriously since the 1960s—a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered.
Here in this remote region, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) began videotaping sessions with traumatized patients and unwittingly discovered some of the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented.
Using never-before-seen archival footage that is integrated into the film, “The Fourth Kind” exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses. Their accounts of being visited by alien figures all share disturbingly identical details, the validity of which is investigated throughout the film.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Genre: Comedy
MPAA Rating: R
Movie Website: TheMenWhoStareatGoatsmovie.com
Studio: Overture Films
Director: Grant Heslov
Screenwriter: Peter Straughan
Actors/Actresses: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Rebecca Mader, Terry Serpico
Plot Summary: In this quirky dark comedy inspired by a real life story you will hardly believe is actually true, astonishing revelations about a top-secret wing of the U.S. military come to light when a reporter encounters an enigmatic Special Forces operator on a mind-boggling mission.
Reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is in search of his next big story when he encounters Lyn Cassady (Academy Award® winner George Clooney), a shadowy figure who claims to be part of an experimental U.S. military unit. According to Cassady, the New Earth Army is changing the way wars are fought. A legion of “Warrior Monks” with unparalleled psychic powers can read the enemy’s thoughts, pass through solid walls, and even kill a goat simply by staring at it. Now, the program’s founder, Bill Django (Oscar® nominee Jeff Bridges), has gone missing and Cassady’s mission is to find him.
Intrigued by his new acquaintance’s far-fetched stories, Bob impulsively decides to accompany him on the search. When the pair tracks Django to a clandestine training camp run by renegade psychic Larry Hooper (two-time Oscar® winner Kevin Spacey), the reporter is trapped in the middle of a grudge match between the forces of Django’s New Earth Army and Hooper’s personal militia of super soldiers. In order to survive this wild adventure, Bob will have to outwit an enemy he never thought possible.
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” was inspired by Jon Ronson’s non-fiction bestseller of the same name, an eye-opening and often hilarious exploration of the government’s attempts to harness paranormal abilities to combat its enemies.
Precious
Release Date: November 6, 2009 (limited; expands: Nov. 13; expands: Nov. 20)
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: R
Studio: Lionsgate
Director: Lee Daniels
Screenwriter: Damien Paul
Movie Website: WeAreAllPrecious.com
Actors/Actresses: Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, Paula Patton, Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz
Plot Summary: Lee Daniels’s “Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire” is a vibrant, honest and resoundingly hopeful film about the human capacity to grow and overcome.
Set in Harlem in 1987, it is the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a sixteen-year-old African-American girl born into a life no one would want. She’s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother (Mo’Nique), a poisonously angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and an awful secret: she can neither read nor write.
Precious may sometimes be down, but she is never out. Beneath her impassive expression is a watchful, curious young woman with an inchoate but unshakeable sense that other possibilities exist for her. Threatened with expulsion, Precious is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, Each One/Teach One. Precious doesn’t know the meaning of “alternative,” but her instincts tell her this is the chance she has been waiting for. In the literacy workshop taught by the patient yet firm Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), Precious begins a journey that will lead her from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self-determination.
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