This week’s movie releases
An old-timer reviews his explosive life in ‘The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window...’
Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, once again, in Sabotage, Training Day writer David Ayer’s follow-up to cop drama End of Watch. Here he eschews that film’s surface realism in favor of more no-nonsense action as Arnie and his team of elite DEA agents raid a drug cartel warehouse and stash away $10 million with the idea of later sharing it out among themselves. Before they get that far, however, the cash disappears, an investigation against them begins and someone starts bumping them off, one by one. Think Agatha Christie with Uzis. Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Terrence Howard and Mireille Enos (of the US version of The Killing) also feature.
Based on Jonas Jonasson’s 2009 bestseller and a big hit in its native Sweden, absurdist comedy The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared follows the exploits of an old-timer (Robert Gustafsson) who runs away from his own 100th birthday party at his senior residence. Inadvertently picking up a suitcase of drug money, he finds himself pursued by its owners, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. At the same time, the film also features Forrest Gump-style flashbacks to his youthful adventures as a globe-trotting explosives expert, meeting such key 20th-century figures as Stalin, Churchill, Robert Oppenheimer and Franco.
A long time reaching Spain since its premiere in 2011, Friends with Kids is a romantic comedy written, directed and starring Jennifer Westfeldt about a tight group of friends and the changes that having kids brings to their relationships. The film’s starry ensemble cast also features Westfeldt’s real-life partner, Mad Men star Jon Hamm, alongside Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd, Edward Burns and Megan Fox.
Spanish horror film La cueva is the tale of five backpackers who stumble across a hidden coastal cave while vacationing on the island of Formentera. Exploring its labyrinthine passageways, they soon discover they are hopelessly lost without food, water or extra flashlight batteries and a horrific survival ordeal begins. An augmented version of an earlier effort premiered in Sitges in 2012, Alfredo Montero’s movie is definitely not one for claustrophobics.
‘Endless’ remakes
A retelling of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 romance, Endless Love is the tale of well-to-do Gabriella Wilde and the charming Alex Pettyfer who strike up a passionate affair against their parents’ wishes. Brit Joely Richardson plays the former’s disapproving mom.
Following on the heels of last week’s similarly themed The Fault in our Stars, Now is Good is a British teen cancer drama starring Dakota Fanning as a young leukemia sufferer who draws up a bucket list of teenage experiences to fulfill in the time she has left. Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) is the boy next door she falls for while Olivia Williams and Paddy Considine play her parents.
An L.A. hip hop promoter puts together a Dream Team to try to take US glory in an international dance crew tournament in Benson Lee’s Battle of the Year. The 3D spectacular is based on Lee’s own Planet B-Boy, a documentary about the real-life Battle of the Year breakdancing tournament.
German drama Two Lives examines a little-known chapter of the Nazi legacy – the children of Norwegian women and occupying German soldiers. Set in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it stars Juliane Köhler as a “war child” who uncovers a tangle of dark secrets after she is requested to testify in a case against Norway on behalf of those like her. With Liv Ullmann.
From Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam, Borgman is a disturbing arthouse thriller in the vein of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games about a kind of cult leader who inveigles himself into the lives of a family in an upscale suburb.
