Directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") from an original screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, this funny and heartfelt film follows the journey of an expectant couple (John Krasinski ["The Office"] and Maya Rudolph ["Saturday Night Live"]), as they travel the U.S. in search of the perfect place to put down roots and raise their family. Along the way, they have misadventures and find fresh connections with an assortment of relatives and old friends who just might help them discover "home" on their own terms for the first time. The ensemble cast features Jeff Daniels, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Allison Janney, Catherine O’Hara and Jim Gaffigan
Rated PG-13 for sexual content, brief partial nudity, and smoking throughout. | 1 Hr. 40 Min. | Comedy/Romance
Adapted from a Noel Coward play, EASY VIRTUE is essentially a tale of Old World manners vs. New World freedom. The year is 1929, and John Whitaker (Ben Barnes) has just married a feisty American racecar driver named Larita (Jessica Biel). John is the eldest of the Whitakers--a prim English family--and when he returns home with Larita on his arm, his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) is none too pleased. John's choice of a loud, brash American has raised everyone's eyebrows, including his sisters, Hilda (Kimberly Nixon) and Marion (Katherine Parkinson). The only person who seems to approve of Larita is Mr. Whitaker--John's weary, put-upon father (Colin Firth). Try as she might, Larita has a hard time impressing the icy, unforgiving Mrs. Whitaker, and indeed, the entire Whitaker clan proves to be a rather eccentric, unhappy bunch. John had promised Larita a short visit, but due to pressure from his mother, they stay longer than planned. Time drags on, and the friction between Mrs. Whitaker and Larita only gets worse. When Hilda digs up something scandalous from Larita's past, tensions bubble to a boiling point, and Larita is forced to face some rather hard truths about herself and her new husband. For fans of period films, EASY VIRTUE is a visual treat, set on a sprawling country estate and with gorgeous and impeccable costumes. Director Stephan Elliot (THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT) tries to inject a bit of modern zing by filling scenes with contemporary renditions of Cole Porter songs, while Biel and Scott Thomas breathe some life into their lightweight characters. Though the source play, with its airy plot, isn't one of Coward's most popular works, fans of Colin Firth's work in costume comedies and dramas will be delighted with the actor's performance here.
A mother dies. A family gathers to divide the estate and trade memories. Life and death, those persistent cliches, duke it out once more at a country house just outside Paris. From familiar material, writer-director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Boarding Gate) crafts a near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a lyrical masterwork that measures loss in terms practical and evanescent. The great Edith Scob is superb as the seventy-five-year-old widow who furnished the elegant mansion she inherited from her artist uncle with the artifacts of a lifetime. When she dies, the fate of the house passes to her three children. Adrienne, the subtle, sensational Juliette Binoche, has little use for France or her mother's past life. Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) has plans to move to China. Only Frédéric (Charles Berling), the eldest, would like the house to stay in the family. That's it. But out of that "it," Assayas creates that rare summer movie — one that matters.
THE HANGOVER Upstairs in The Screening Room ENDS THURSDAY
Mon.-Thurs. June 26-July 2
12:00 I 3:00 I 6:00 I 9:00
R | 1 Hr. 50 Min. | Comedy
Two days before his wedding, Doug and his three friends drive to Las Vegas for a blow-out bachelor party they'll never forget. But, in fact, when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning, they can't remember a thing. For some reason, they find a tiger in the bathroom and a six-month-old baby in the closet of their suite at Caesars Palace. The one thing they can't find is Doug. With no clue as to what transpired and little time to spare, the trio must retrace their hazy steps and all their bad decisions in order to figure out where things went wrong and hopefully get Doug back to L.A. in time to walk down the aisle.
