This week’s movie releases

For his debut feature, intelligent financial crisis drama Margin Call, director J. C. Chandor roped in an impressive lineup of stars, including Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. For his follow-up, All Is Lost, he called in just one: Robert Redford. The former Sundance Kid is the only actor in this startlingly austere, almost silent movie, playing an unnamed man who runs into trouble sailing his yacht alone in the Indian Ocean, 1,700 nautical miles from land. And, boy, does Chandor put the 77-year-old through it: drenching and pummeling him as he struggles for survival in the stormy ocean waters.

José Padilha, the talented Brazilian director of Bus 174 and the Elite Squad films, brings 1987 sci-fi drama RoboCop back to the big screen. After Total Recall, it’s the second Paul Verhoeven movie to be remade at a time when the Dutch director himself is struggling to get new projects off the ground — we await a Showgirls update with bated breath. Joel Kinnaman (of TV series The Killing) steps into the Peter Weller role as an injured cop and family man whose body is snapped up by conglomerate OmniCorp to build a prototype robot-human police officer. With Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish and Michael K. Williams.

An adaptation of Mark Helprin’s 1983 book, supernatural romance Winter’s Tale unravels in a magical realist Manhattan and stretches from 1916 until the present day. Colin Farrell stars as a thief who runs afoul of a vicious Irish gangster (Russell Crowe) and falls for a dying woman (Jessica Brown Findlay) he encounters in a house he’s burgling. The directorial debut of screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (The Da Vinci Code) also features Jennifer Connelly, Eva Marie Saint, Will Smith and William Hurt.

Musical ties

A nominee for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language, Film, Belgium’s The Broken Circle Breakdown (aka Alabama Monroe) has won plaudits for its emotional portrait of a couple who fall in love through their love of bluegrass music, before having a daughter who upturns their lives.

Also with a few accolades to its name, Kuma, directed by Michael Haneke protégé Umut Dag, is the story of a newly married young Turkish woman who arrives in Vienna to take up her place with her new family. But, unbeknownst to the folks back home, her real husband is not the handsome young Turk they saw her wed, but his already-married father.