Much in the vein of Black Hawk Down, a film from which Peter Berg unmistakably took encouragement, a roster of young white A-listers are

given starring roles in the cadre, with the implicit knowledge (see: title) that they won't make it to the movie's end. Yet despite the foreknowledge of a bloodbath, the heavy emphasis on sacrifice, there can be no mistaking it for an antiwar film.

The team leader is the rogueish Marcus Luttrell (Wahlberg), who finds himself stranded with his squad (Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster) on an arid Afghan cliff. Sent from Bagram Air Force Base-under the command of Lieutenant Commander Erik Kristensen (an especially humorless Eric Bana)-to either kill or capture Taliban commander Ahmad Shah (Yousuf Azami), who Berg introduces decapitating a hapless villager, the guys hit a snag when their hiding place is stumbled upon by a couple of goatherds with a walkie-talkie. Some of the men want to kill the two civilians, one of whom is a teenage boy, but eventually decide, with much vexation, to instead adhere to the Geneva Conventions and set them free. This decision inevitably kicks off a Taliban attack up the mountain, with scores of combatants imprisoning the SEALs among scraggly patches of tree and rock.

Strictly as a piece of action cinema, Berg's staging of the firefight exudes a strikingly palpable tension: Each of the SEALs is pinned to his own slim area of cover, with bullets ricocheting from every possible direction just off screen. The more cinematographer Tobias A. Schliesser tightens the frame around each man, the more chaotic the editing becomes; the shootout feels fast, seemingly endless, and as such without relief. Eventually the four (all injured) decide to roll down the cliff to eke out a new position; the camera follows each man as he tumbles downward, picking up every last bone-crunching thud, the blood-covered bodies already resembling corpses free falling in suspended motion.

This is one of a good many moments where Lone Survivor comes off unintentionally hilarious for the way it bathes in its characters' almost grotesque superhuman strength. Just as Berg's SEALs dust themselves off ("That sucked!" says Foster's soldier), the film seems confident that we're ready to watch them suffer some more, and so they roll down the hill again. Berg clearly prefers his heroes in combat, making no equivocations about their hardness-after all, in the U.S. military, SEALs are considered the best of the best. Neither does he pretend to be interested in whether or not they should be dropping into Afghanistan in the first place; Bana's commander does the screenplay a helpful bit of shorthand by pointing to a photo of Shah and commenting "Bad Guy" in an early planning session.

Lone Survivor proofs itself against criticism by hiding behind its protagonists; the physicality of its filmmaking is but a pretext for yet another gargantuan, subliminal recruitment ad. When pogo-sticking from the intense shallow focus of the aforementioned gundown to a lens-flared landscape shot of Kitsch being ripped apart by bullets while practically dangling off a cliff, Schliesser's vistas are steroidal, operatic, uncannily digital. In moments like these, the goal-to honor the memory of 19 soldiers while detailing their sacrifice as explicitly as possible-reeks of bad faith. The actual Operations Red Wings 1 and 2 were

Mark Wahlberg (PAIN AND GAIN, SNIPER, TED, BOOGIE NIGHTS, CONTRABAND) Taylor Kitsch (TV'S FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS-FILM-X MEN-WOLVERINE, SNAKES ON A PLANE, JOHN CARTER, SAVAGES) Ben Foster (CONTRABAND, RAMPART, 3:10 TO YUMA, ALPHA DOG, 360)

$127 MILL BO 3247 SCREENS R 121 MINUTES LONE SURVIVOR ACTION 6/3 1

In its perturbed opening sequence, TV pundit Pat Novak ( Jackson), seething with both great vengeance and furious anger) tosses his

program over to a live shot of robotics-engineering corporation OmniCorp rolling out their latest line of mechanized soldier drones in Iran. Hoping to demonstrate the robots' infallible ability to detect civilians from terrorists, the report goes haywire when a group of bomb-strapped insurgents effectively force the 'bot force to waste them on live TV. Though the camera catches one of them annihilating a knife-wielding kid who was only trying to protect his father, Jackson's Novak instantly characterizes the carnage as proof positive that the force works, and that Congress's namby- pamby law against allowing the drones to police domestic streets is, you guessed it, un- American.

So far so good, but then the film quickly switches gears to officer Alex Murphy (I Kinnaman), a clean cop struggling to figure out why his investigations into potentially shady practices among the thin blue line aren't getting anywhere. As soon as you can say snitch, one man's near-death explosion is another corporation's opportunity to redirect the conversation about robotics and the human element. Murphy wakes up encased in an attractive mass of alloy, his brain, jaw, and lungs merged with the most cutting-edge robotics that Dr. Dennett Norton (Oldman) has to offer, the intended poster boy for reversing the national resistance to drone patrols in the homeland. No sooner does Murphy come to than we learn that he's also still retained full use of his tear ducts. (Somewhere Kurtwood Smith can be heard to say, "Bitch, leave!" )Maybe the presence of Michael

Samuel L. Jackson (PULP FICTION, THE NEGOTIATOR, SNAKES ON A PLANE, UNTHINKABLE, THE A VEN GERS, CHANGING LANES) Joel Kinnaman (TV'S THE KILLING---FILM-SAFE HOUSE, THE DARKEST HOUR, THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN TATTOO) Gary Oldman (THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, PARANOIA, TRAINSPOTTING, THE BOOK OF ELI)

613 1 ROBOCOP ACTION $59 MILL BO 3193 SCREENS PG-13 117 MINUTES

This is an exciting, edge of your couch war movie. The action scenes are very intense and the story and everything else so appealing that all fans of ARGO, ZERO DARK THIRTY, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, ANCHOR MAN 2, DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB, BLUE JASMINE and WHITE HOUSE DOWN will all love it.

both strategic setbacks for the military, and the body count on the Afghan side (combatant or bystander)

is never remotely considered by Berg's script. But a slideshow epilogue of the real guys at the end (set to

a shimmering Peter Gabriel cover of David Bowie's "Heroes") maybe speaks the loudest. These men died

in the real world so that Luttrell could live and, thus, so that you could pay to watch Mark Wahlberg play

him in a movie.

With all due respect to the Bible, which I respect in abundance, it's films like this one that perpetuate the common notions of Christianity as something tired, boring, and insular. The film does pull itself together in time for its crucifixion sequence.

In its better moments, there are signs that Son of God wants to break free from being yet another Bible study guide brought to life. But inevitably, an apparent fear and unwillingness to loosen the sacred sandals keeps it a largely lifeless endeavor. If only these filmmakers, in all their binding reverence, would, for example, let the characters speak dialogue that's still in keeping with the Good Book, if not verbatim, this world they've gone to such pains to depict would feel so much more authentic. The

Gospels need not be boring, yet here they are again playing out as some kind of tired, recycled Sunday school lesson.

The second half of the film picks up both in terms of aesthetic visualization and emotional power as it offers a bloody effective rendering of the crucifixion. Being a lifelong Bible-believing, church-going Christian, I'll concede a certain personal vulnerability when it comes to my processing of even the most inept depictions of this most historic of events. It's alwa s a struggle for one to discern the flaws in adapted material when the source material is deeply • personal (heck, I get mad when they mess up Spider­ Man!), but I think I can safely say that this prolonged sequence works as intended, even if filmgoers have seen umpteen crucifixion scenes before, and this one ultimately does blend right in.

Fans of TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, MANDELA: THE LONG WALK HOME, WHAT MAIZIE KNEW, THE INTOUCHABLES, THE RAVEN, and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

Diogo Morgado (TV'S THE BIBLE, REVENGE, THE MESSENGERS)

6/3 2 SON OF GOD BIBLICAL DRAMA

$59 MILL BO 3256 SCREENS PG-13 138 MINUTES

This film will still be huge with those that liked 3 DAYS TO KILL, RIDE ALONG, ANCHOR MAN 2, THE HUNGER GAMES, ENDER'S GAME, HOMEFRONT, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, THE WOLVERINE, R.l.P.D., WORLD WAR Zand IRON MAN 3.

K. Williams as Murphy's police partner clinches it, but the remake's satirical potential short-circuits under

the looming influence of The Wire. Instead of depicting a world where traditional models of good and evil aren't so much interchangeable as they are fiscally irrelevant, the film accepts as a given that everyone's got their reasons-a valid point, but one hardly served justice against the cartoonish antics of both Novak and Michael Keaton's master-spinner CEO. The whole reason OmniCorp spends $2 billion building RoboCop in the first place is to prove that you can't engineer empathy.

Rise of an Empire curiously manages to be both prequel and sequel. The flinty, grunting Greek general Themistokles (Stapleton) rallies a band of blue-caped warriors to ward off the Achaemenid (read: Persian) offensive mounted on Athens, in parallel to 300's depiction of the infamously lopsided northern attack on Thermopylae. When

Themistokles receives word of the fallen Spartans, he consolidates his attack on the Persian boats in the Aegean Sea in retaliation-for honor, for Greece. The politics of Snyder's film-an idyll of militarization, threatened unfairly by an invading Brown Menace-make even less sense applied to the Athenian predicament: As if Xeroxing the fallen Spartans, Themistokles insists that a smaller number of Greeks fighting more desperately against their Persian invaders can only be a good thing, a bloody litmus test of nationalism.

While the eight-foot-tall, gold-festooned Persian emperor Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) returns in a largely bookending capacity as villain, the real power behind the throne is revealed to be his adopted sister, Artemisia I (Eva Green). Green's sardonic elocution and overabundant black eyeliner occasionally topple Murro's film into a kind of transcendent post-camp, the severity of the character's grudge against Athens underlined in an early scene where she makes out with a severed Greek head to prove her ferocity. Stacked against Stapleton's dutifully irony-free performance {all lunging and bellowing), it's not hard to see where the film could have been saved, or at least made more unique, by its own salaciousness. When Themistokles boards Artemisia's ship to negotiate a ceasefire, she seduces him, and a scene that alternates between sex and fighting ensues that's more thrilling for its promise of seeing two actors share the same tangible, if stagey, set. It's the first time the film risks its visual palette to rely on script and performance.

The encounter lays bare that Rise of an Empire has heretofore been a humorless, visually and psychologically pallid trudge, mostly made up of assaultive exposition. There are subplots, side­ characters, flashbacks, tableaux, vast battle sequences and montages, but actual person-to-person scenes are practically nil. Green's effort to leave a lasting imprint of personality on the proceedings is admirable, but Stapleton's Themistokles proves a deadeningly eme!y hero. Post-coitus, Artemisia invites Themistokles to betray Greece and join her, but he refuses and so she kicks him out. The next day she wages her cruelest campaign yet, and neither Themistokles nor the film seem aware that the Greek general's men have been led to slaughter in exchange for a few sweaty minutes with Artemisia.

It's all OK as the appeal will be strong for those that liked POMPEII, 3 DAYS TO KILL, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES, RIDE ALONG, GRAVITY, RIDDICK, MACHETE KILLS, YOU'RE NEXT, and THE WOLVERINE.

Sullivan Stapleton (GANGSTER SQUAD, THE HUNTER,

THE CONDEMNED, DECEMBER BOYS)

Eva Green (CASINO ROYALE, CLONE, PERFECT

SENSE, DARK SHADOWS)

102 MINUTES $106 MILL BO 3679 SCREENS R

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE ACTION 6/10 1

Steve Coogan brings his fictional U.K. radio and TV personality to our shores with Alan Partridge, a wannabe-zany comedy that's unlikely to win him many new ardent American admirers. The titular character's first big-screen outing revolves around his small-town Norfolk radio station being taken over by a giant media titan and rebranded for younger audiences with hip jingles and a wacky twentysomething "breakfast"-show host. That change of ownership spells doom for

archaic Pat Farrell (Meaney), a DJ who's too uncool to survive the transition and is thus promptly sacked-with, crucially, some help from Partridge himself, a fast-talking buffoon whose arrogance is matched only by his clownishness. Despite convincing his bosses to get rid of Farrell, Partridge soon finds himself as the liaison between Farrell and the police once the fired DJ takes his former co-workers hostage, leading to numerous bits punctuated by Partridge delivering cocky bon mots, goofily failing to snatch Farrell's there-for-the-taking shotgun, and falling out of a bathroom window and, while upside down, sliding out of his pants, where he's promptly photographed tucking his genitals between his legs by waiting paparazzi.

Despite its nominal plot about the clash between local and corporate businesses, as well as between old- and new­ school media models, Alan Partridge only really cares about Coogan's absurd antics, and the actor is in predictably fine form. Whether hosting call-in segments in which listeners name the smells they'd most miss after a chemical attack, treating his on-air sidekick Simon (Tim Key) with a mentor's mixture of contempt and support, or seeking the help of devoted minder Lynn (Felicity Montagu), Partridge is a nitwit whose hunger for fame and cowardice in the face of danger are regularly mocked for laughs.

This will have appeal to all that liked PIRATE RADIO, THAT AWKWARD MOMENT, BLUE JASMINE, AMERICAN HUSTLE, THE DEBT, 42, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP and THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES.

Steve Coogan (RUBY SPARKS, PHILOMENA, WHAT MAIZE KNEW, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, THE TRIP) Colm Meany (THE CONSPIRATOR, THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY, LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, MYSTERY ALASKA)

$3 MILL BO 857 SCREENS R 90 MINUTES

ALAN PARTRIDGE COMEDY 6/10 3

Emma Roberts (VALENTINE'S DAY, SCREAM 4, THE WINNING SEASON) John Cusack (EIGHT MEN OUT, SAY ANYTHING, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, HIGH FIDELITY, GRIFTERS)

6/10 3 ADULT WORLD DRAMA

$3 MILL BO 859 SCREENS R 97 MINUTES

The title of Scott Coffey's new film is a pretty obvious double entendre, but it does efficiently convey the good intentions behind this scattershot production. Adult World is the name of a run-down sex shop in upstate New York where wannabe-poet Amy (Roberts) takes a job, and it also describes the greater stakes of the story: a self-centered young woman's inept transition into real life.

The film establishes several things about Amy very quickly, and bluntly: she wants to become a renowned poet, she's determined and confident to the point of mania, and she doesn't understand anything about the world around her. She spends most of the story tripping and falling, accidentally offending people, losing cars and ineptly navigating public transportation systems, and aggressively stalking her favorite poet. That poet's name is Rat Billings, and as played by John Cusack, he's Amy's vicious and miserly opposite: Retreating from the world just as Amy is bullishly entering it, he spends the majority of the film either evading her or degrading her. Though he eventually enters a half-hearted mentorship

position, he remains the de facto villain, if only because he makes Amy so much more likeable by comparison.

Though the relationship between Amy and Billings is the film's primary focus, the movie's strengths lie in its side characters and plot tangents, such as Rubia (Armando Riesco), an amiable but tough transgender woman who frequents the store and develops a tenuous friendship with Amy. Rubia is a calm, keenly observant woman simultaneously baffled, amused, and irritated by the obnoxious girl who's literally arrived at her doorstep, and as their relationship deepens, so does Riesco's characterization.

A small indie film here with decent acting and story will appeal to those that also liked THE ART OF THE STEAL, RUNNER RUNNER, OUT OF THE FURNACE, DON JON, SIGHTSEERS, and ADORE.

When Jack Ryan (Pine), an economics student turned injured marine, is first called on to join the CIA by stealth handler William Harper ( Costner), he's skeptical. "People don't like you guys these days," the would-be recruit says, going on to list frowned-upon

agency tactics like waterboarding. "That's not my unit," Harper tersely replies. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit takes place largely in the present, after showing the 9/11 tragedy during Jack's college days, and racing through the missile attack that nearly killed him in Afghanistan three years later. The film may glaze over certain topical suspicions of America's own government (there's no mention of the NSA; just a clear and present wink), but at least it attempts to address them, standing more as an exploratory, wide-eyed American thriller than yet another action film that simply flaunts American elitism.

The film continually balances poker-faced sarcasm and urgent intellect, getting away with casting Mikhail Baryshnikov as Viktor's formidable superior, and successfully unfurling boatloads of exposition via debriefings and detailed covert chats. Jack's assignment in Russia is prompted by his cover job at a major brokerage firm, where he's assigned to keep watch on possible terrorist funding, then stumbles on Viktor's vile plan (call him the Sly Fox of Wall Street). Once deployed, Jack's caught at the core of a narrative with a shrewdly quickening pace, and one that finds time for riveting sequences in each stage of its progression. When Jack drowns an assassin during a bathroom brawl, it's his first kill, and the conflict of survival and remorse is achingly expressed in Pine's face. When Jack breaks away from a frenemy dinner with Viktor to raid his headquarters, the patient sophistication and European setting recall some of the best moments from Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible (which was also penned by this film's co­ writer, David Koepp).

People talk fast, and a lot, in this movie, and as the climax nears, it's hard to tell if the CIA clan sounds more like the savvy cast of Homeland or the self-serious quacks on Criminal Minds. Moreover, as he plays a man with constantly furrowed eyebrows and an ailment befitting a Russian lush, it's tough to decide if Branagh is nostalgically reviving the Slavic villain or milking a stereotype. Ultimately, the tricky mix works in all its see-sawing tonal merits and personality-fueled direction. And thanks also to sleekly staged espionage and car chases of brute believability, this is the rare series starter to leave me anticipating the next installment.

In the very capable hands of director Kenneth Branaugh (and he plays a great villain here too), this is a very entertaining and fast paced chapters to the series. Fans of THE MONUMENTS MEN, 3 DAYS TO KILL, RIDE ALONG, ANCHOR MAN 2, AMERICAN HUSTLE, GRAVITY, THOR, and RUSH will love this one too.

Chris Pine (UNSTOPPABLE, ST AR TREK: INTO THE DARKNESS, THIS MEANS WAR, SMOKIN' ACES, PEOPLE LIKE US), Kevin Costner (BULL DURHAM, DANCES WITH WOLVES, W ATERWORLD, FIELD OF DREAMS) Keira Knightley (LAST NIGHT, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, LOVE ACTUALLY, THE JACKET, NEVER LET ME GO, DOMINO)

ACTION $53 MILL BO 2958 SCREENS PG-13 105 MINUTES

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT 6/10 1

This movie is made with far more care and visual detail than you might expect. In the opening scene, the title appears as a vaporous apparition on a rain-pelted windshield, which is quickly juxtaposed with a shot of the weathered face of Neeson, who plays Bill Marks, a U.S. air marshal and ghost of a man still coping, by way of liquor and

cigarettes, with his young daughter's death. Even if it's a company vehicle, the make and model of his Chevy SUV-at least 10 years old by the look of the dashboard-implies he's a guy who's both stuck in the past and prefers to buy American.

And even if his senses are numbed, as indicated by an aural fuzziness and the film frame's blurred edges, Bill is sharp enough to note the heart-surgery scar on the chest of Jen (Moore), a passenger who's seated next to him on a flight from New York to London, and whose shortcomings will soon become useful to the plot.

Naturally, NON-STOP uses post-9/11 paranoia to provoke both its viewers and its characters. It repeatedly pins its focus on possible, stereotypical culprits (like a dark-featured bald man and an Arab), and it eventually sees the passengers rally together, when they come to suspect that Bill is the one causing this nightmare at 40,000 feet. When Bill, with the aid of Jen and Nancy (Michelle Dockery), a flight attendant he trusts, ushers everyone to the back of the plane in hopes of isolating the threat, an especially sensitive New York cop (Corey Stoll) even voices the scenario's similarities to that ill-fated September 11 flight. But the film also transcends its red-herring stereotypes and ostensibly dated themes. The Arab, Fahim Nasir (Omar Metwally), turns out to be a doctor essential to Bill's success, and the marked, overall diversity of the accomplished cast, including Scoot McNairy and Lupita Nyong'o, secure the movie as an equal-opportunity, everyone-is­ suspect mystery.

The film pretty much nails the fear of travel today and the profiling of those who do travel. The action and story is believable and entertaining. Fans of TAKEN, RIDE ALONG, THE MONUMENTS MEN, ANOTHER DAY TO DIE HARD, EXECUTIVE DECISION, GRAVITY and ENDER'S GAME will have a blast with this one too.

Liam Neeson (TAKEN, SCHINDLER'S LIST, GANGS OF NEW YORK, LOVE ACTUALLY, THE GREY, UNKNOWN) Julianne Moore (BEING FLYNN, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, MAGNOLIA, I'M NOT THERE, THE HOURS, THE BIG LEBOWSKT)

6/10 1 NON STOP ACTION $80 MILL BO 3126 SCREENS PG-13 106 MINUTES

Much of this story hinges on the power of light, something that Akiva Goldsman doesn't let you forget. His frames are filled with often blinding and unpleasant candlelight, and his narrative concerns light, reflected off of gems, that gives a crime boss, Pearly (Crowe), special powers. It proves especially useful when used to locate his nemesis,

Peter Lake (Farrell), a master thief who was to be his successor and whose red-haired betrothed, Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay), suffers from consumption and is introduced trying to describe the wonder of the light around her through poetic him-hawing. But of course, it's not just light, but rather His light.

Adapted from Mark Helprin's novel, Winter's Tale is set in 1912 New York, though it exists in a timeless world of angels and demons, pure good and pure evil. Not long after his parents are kicked out of Ellis Island, Peter, the story's immortal protagonist, arrives as a baby in America resting inside a-no joke-floating manger. And Goldsman certainly doesn't take the scenic route to let us know that Pearly is in league with the dark side, as the flamboyant hood takes conference with a pestered Lucifer (Will Smith) and runs a vague, hugely corrupt finance enterprise. At another point, Pearly kills a waiter and uses his blood to paint a vision.

Crowe gets to sink his teeth into a few cartoonish diatribes about how much he loves evil, while Farrell and Findlay stumble through gooey romantic speechifying as if it were verbal quicksand. It's hard to pinpoint one moment that crystalizes the self-serious platitudes that Goldsman's script is built on, though Pearly's bragging of having "crushed miracles" for eons is a strong contender. As a movie about demons, fantasy and such, the film will find its audience with those that liked DEVIL'S DUE, THE GRANDMASTER, ESCAPE PLAN, THOR, R.l.P.D., THE CALL and, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS.

Russell Crowe (A BEAUTIFUL MIND, GLADIATOR, AMERICAN GANGSTER, BROKEN CITY, A GOOD YEAR, L. A. CONFIDENTIAL) Colin Farrell (THE PHONE BOOTH, HORRIBLE BOSSES, IN BRUGES, MINORITY REPORT, SAVING MR. BANKS)

$14 MILL BO 746 SCREENS DRAMA

PG-13

WINTER'S TALE 6/10 3

Benicio Del Torro (SAVAGES, SNATCH, THE FAN, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, TRAFFIC, 21 GRAMS)

$2 MILL 387 SCREENS R 117 MINUTES JIMMY P. DRAMA 6/17 3

The U.S. is home to nearly 600 different indigenous peoples, each of them possessing a distinctive culture. Yet rather than approach their traditions with anything resembling complexity, American perception stands largely on reductive stereotypes, with all these groups lumped into an amorphous blob defined by blanket generalizations and some wispy notions of mystical serenity. It's enough to drive any Native American a little crazy, so you can

understand the dilemma of Jimmy Picard ( Del Toro), a Blackfoot Indian who, aside from enduring the slings and arrows of an overtly racist late-'40s America, is also a WWII vet recovering from a serious head injury, not to mention a laundry list of basic psychological complexes. These get him sent off to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, where a puzzled staff of doctors eventually places him in analysis with a daffy anthropologist known for his unorthodox methods.

Jimmy's transfer from his Montana ranch to the narrow confines of the infirmary functions as a reprise of the Native-American crisis in miniature, sacrificing wide open fields for an existence under glass. At the clinic, he's pushed into the psych ward after it's determined that his panic attacks have no physical explanation. Then, despite being further diagnosed as mentally sound, he's kept there with the only other Native-American patient, a catatonic incapable of anything but puffing on a cigarette. The staff seems to have his best interests at heart, but remain committed to the inane idea that they don't know how to treat Native Americans, working off the presumption that persons like Jimmy operate off a different intellectual baseline. This facilitates sending for Georges Devereux (Mathieu Amalric), a New York-based Frenchman who's spent two studying the Mojave, thus making him the best candidate to diagnose Jimmy's mental state.

This film unfolds through their sessions, with Devereux pressing the taciturn Jimmy for more and more information. It's gradually revealed that his episodes stem less from head trauma than a gradual accumulation of psychological issues, which after years of repression have started manifesting physically. Devereux teaches Jimmy to alleviate this pressure via a process of systematic unburdening, gradually revealing his past through the cathartic self-focus of talk therapy. An interesting little film that will appeal to those that liked GRAND PIANO, STILL MINE, OLDBOY, THE DEBT, THE SPECTACULAR NOW and THE ENGLISH TEACHER.

Joe eagerly seeking work. The tenuous but paternal bond Joe develops with Gary is the film's main narrative thrust, and also at times its biggest detriment: Joe and Gary are more complex and tangible characters when alone or interacting with other people; in scenes featuring just the two of them, Joe's symbolism can become heavy-handed. Joe and Gary are, to borrow a binary system from THE TREE OF LIFE the embodiment of nature (Joe) and grace (Gary), and when they function as a unit-or rather, complementary inverses­ they resemble ideals rather than actual people. In Joe's third act, by far its plot-heaviest, Green's balance of symbolism and realism threatens to tip too far in favor of the former, but the filmmaker's skill in establishing mood, and his actors' proficiency, generally prevent the film from treading into overwrought territory.

Cage and Sheridan work hard to ground Joe and Gary in the everyday of their rural Texas environment, never overplaying scenes or allowing their characters to trust each other too much. Cage delivers his strongest performance in some time, relaying the insecurity and indecision behind Joe's tough exterior while still remaining an imposing, often frightening presence. Gary as written is a bit too pure and perfect, but Sheridan emphasizes his boyishness and trepidation, finding rough edges in a character that could have easily descended into martyrdom. Most of Joe's other characters are merely peripheral, with the exception of Gary's alcoholic father, Wade (Gary Poulter). His tyrannical hold on his son includes violent beatings, stealing his money, belittling his entire family, and drinking himself regularly into a stupor. As played by Poulter, however, he's as pitiful as he is monstrous. Joe's most terrifying sequence follows Wade as he stalks and then brutally kills a homeless man for alcohol in broad daylight; in contrast, a scene in which Gary tends to an drunkenly incapacitated Wade is absorbing in its strange tenderness.

It's a surprising film making strategy for a story about such earthbound people, but Green has a gift for balancing the abstract with the mundane. He isn't afraid of visual flourishes: a bulldog's mouth dripping with another dog's blood; a hog, hanged vertically, being stripped of meat; the kitchen of a brothel, its windows boarded up, with everything aglow in red. These are striking images, but not indulgent ones-bloody portents of things to come, but also products of their environment. Similarly, Joe is both an atmospheric allegory and a muted character drama, shapeshifting and showing new sides of itself up until its very end.

An excellent little film will be well received by those that also liked AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, HER, THE MONUMENTS MEN, DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB, MUD, THE BUTLER, and FRUITVALE STATION.

Joe (Nicolas Cage) is a Townes Van Zandt song come to life. Hard­ working, hard-drinking, brusque, and hot-tempered, he spends his days poisoning trees for a lumber company and his nights chugging Coke and whiskey. Vague mentions of a destructive past posit him as an archetype of regret and redemption, and he unwittingly finds an agent for salvation in Gary (Tye Sheridan), a young drifter boy who comes to

Nicolas Cage (BIRDY, SNAKE EYES, FACE/OFF, CON AIR, WORLD TRADE CENTER, RUMBLE FISH, RACING WITH THE MOON) Tye Sheridan (MUD, THE TREE OF LIFE)

$4 MILL BO 792 SCREENS R 118 MINUTES JOE DRAMA 6/17 3

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BILLY CRUDUP (ALMOST FAMOUS, WAKING THE DEAD, THIN ICE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III, EAT PRAY LOVE) CLIVE OWEN (KILLER ELITE, CHILDREN OF MEN, SHADOW DANCER, SIN CITY, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, GOSFORD PARK)

ACTION 127 MINUTES

BLOOD TIES 592 SCREENS R

6/24 3 $2 MILL BO

Written and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the film focuses on Emmet (Chris Pratt), a lowly construction worker whose life is just like that of the rest of his LEGO-ville lemmings, until a black-clad babe named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) extracts him from his realm and brings him to Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), an all-knowing god-wizard who tells him he's "The Special." Having found the curious Piece of Resistance ttres intelligent), Emmet must fight back against the Agent Smith-like Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson) and free the whole LEGO universe from a brainwashing force, embodied by the Instruction

Manual-adherent President Business (Will Ferrell). The Matrix similarities are so extreme that one might take THE LEGO MOVIEas an all-in-jest homage, but Lord and Miller have not created a Toys "R" Us twist on the SPACEBALLS formula. Thus, appreciation of the film lies, perhaps aptly, in the pieces built on a pillaged foundation.

One of the most seemingly frivolous, yet ultimately memorable, pieces is a catchy track called "Everything Is Awesome," which, as instructed, is the favorite jam of everyone Emmet knows, and calls to mind our own pack mentality when it comes to inane, earworm-y pop. Other elements have a meta nature that's far less implicit, like Batman's (Will Arnett) endowment with a very Christian Bale-type growl, and the LEGO universe's realms themselves-lively, inhabited visualizations of popular LEGO playsets, like "The Old West" and a Tolkien-esque place called "Middle Zealand." Some of the knowing humor is truly funny (Green Lantern and Superman, frenemies and two of many "Master Builders," are giddily voiced by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum), but the movie's self-reflexive triumph is the very notion of world-building. Like last year's WRECK IT RALPH this is a state-of-the-art CG rendering of an iconic, retro pastime, complete with similar passages between the pastime's sub-worlds. Here, though, we get to see, often in glorious, low-tech-meets-high-tech fashion, the structures before us being assembled and disassembled, as if we're watching the animators craft a work in progress. Considering that LEGO is 65 years old, it's a surprisingly novel visual experience.

Fans of THE NUT JOB, FROZEN, DESPICABLE ME 2, THE SMURFS 2, TURBO 2, and EPIC will love this one too.

VOICES OF: Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Neeson, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman

$251 MILL BO 4307 SCREENS PG 100 MINUTES THE LEGO MOVIE ANIMATED 6/17 1

Set primarily during a stormy interwar period beset by the looming clouds of fascism, this film is Anderson's most violent film yet. It's also his most characteristic, which means much, much more of everything you'd expect: fey, fragile characters spouting stylized dialogue; stories within stories within stories; elaborate uniforms; color schemes that vary between thrift-store shabbiness and sweet-shop luster (orange sherbet in one scenario, rose-pink fondant in another). After two brief preludes, the second featuring a writer (played first by Tom Wilkinson, then by Jude Law in a '60s-set flashback) describing his experience with the titular hotel, the story sinks into its lush early-'30s setting, the froofy old-word decadence among which M. Gustave ( Fiennes), a master concierge, beds rich old ladies while managing the hotel with military-like meticulousness. This perfectly calibrated timepiece is eventually disturbed by a murder, a perfunctory plot point that allows Anderson to spin out the action into new realms and take-offs, from a prison break which merges Bresson with Mouse Trap, to a bobsled chase that pushes our heroes through a ridiculous battery of Winter Olympics-style events.

All this occurs across the snow-capped peaks and verdant valleys of Zubrowka, a fictional country anchored by the Grand Budapest, an immense mountain hideaway accessible only by cable car.

Ralph Fiennes (IN BRUGES, THE HURT LOCKER, SKYFALL, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, WRATH OF THE TITANS) F. Murray Abraham (AMADEUS, DEAD MAN DOWN, INSIDE LLEWYN DA VIS, FINDING FORRESTER, MIGHTY APHRODITE)

R 100 MINUTES COMEDY

$36 MILL BO 1958 SCREENS

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL 6/24 1

Just-paroled Chris ( Owen) and upstanding cop Frank ( Crudup), brothers on opposite sides of the law, clash over the farmer's predilection for armed robbery. Naturally, their conflict is just the long-repressed boiling over of friction originating in childhood betrayal. There's a cancer-ridden blue-collar father (James Caan), assorted madonnas (Zoe Saldana, Mila Kunis) and whores (among them a jarringly miscast Marion Cotillard, as Chris's self-destructive ex-wife), and a last job that turns out to be anything but. Badges and guns are angrily relinquished, attempts to go straight flame out spectacularly, and every second scene is overlaid with the keening emotional shorthand of carefully curated hits from the era.

Both Chris and Frank are assigned separate subplots, punctuated further by the accompanying setup of one paramour's menacing ex (Matthias Schoenaerts) as a potential threat. There are Chris's multiple business endeavors, both legitimate and criminal. Multiple character arcs sputter out as tangents to the core storylines, while the dramatic potential promised by certain relationships-between Frank and his cop colleagues, Chris and his ex-con partner-goes untapped. Chris's various violent encounters have a sense of controlled chaos and immediacy about them that recalls the messy yet intimate feel of the carnage in Francis Ford Coppola or William Friedkin's films. And a dazzling armored car heist is especially tense and staged with all the mannered formalism of a Michael Mann shootout. This technical polish extends to every aspect of the production, from the meticulous design to the elegant (albeit predictably grainy) cinematography.

The cast and story will help this film attract those that liked McCANICK, 47 RONIN, OLDBOY, ESCAPE PLAN, THE FAMILY, and BULLET TO THE HEAD.

The protagonists' inadequate criminal credentials are established upfront with a botched flower-shop heist that lands Tommy (an inky-haired Pitt) 18 months in the slammer. Rosemarie (Arianda) attempts to go straight, securing employment with Lovell (Griffin Dunne), a smarmy ex-con debt collector who believes in second chances and agrees to hire Tommy, too, upon his release. Tommy's mind, however, is only half on the job. Fascinated by the ongoing Gotti trial, which he regularly skips work to attend, he fixates on one witness' testimony about Mafia-owned drinking holes where no guns are permitted - with his and Rosemarie's combined incomes barely getting them by, the criminal allure of this sitting-duck setup is too great to resist.

Kitted out with an Uzi he can barely handle and an initially skeptical Rosemarie as his getaway driver, Tommy pulls off his initial heists in such straightforwardly successful fashion that even he is taken off-guard - to say nothing of the FBI agents monitoring the raided clubs, or tabloid reporter Cardozo (

Michael Pitt (TV'S DAWSON'S CREEK, BOARDWALK EMPIRE,-FILM--- FINDING FORRESTER, THE DREAMERS, MURDER BY NUMBERS, THE VILLAGE) Andy Garcia (A DARK TRUTH, NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU, SMOKIN' ACES, AT MIDDLETON, DESPERATE MEASURES) Ray Romano (TV'S PARENTHOOD, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE, THE KING OF --- QUEENS)

6/24 3 ROB THE MOB ACTION $3 MILL BO 683 SCREENS R 104 MINUTES

,.;n ARli"NDA ROM'aNO oiiil'CIA

So while the violence may still be delicately staged (an early conflict with imperial soldiers yields mirrored scuffles and matching nosebleeds for Gustave and his assistant Zero, played by Tony Revolori), there's a much deeper sense of darkness behind it than usual. It's telling how that scuffle eventually ties up, with another reflecting scenario near the end of the film, one that defies Gustave's imagined substructure of polite, clear­ headed men preventing a total descent into madness. Inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig, Grand Budapest Hotel also has the morbid dreaminess of a Grimm fairy tale: quaint and picturesque, but reflecting real-world anxieties which necessitate the softening fictionalization of such fears.

A delightful film with Bill Murray and Jeff Goldblum ins small roles adding more depth and color to the story that is already strong enough and well-acted enough to appeal to all that liked THE MONUMENTS MEN, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, HER, BLUE JASMINE, QUARTET, THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, and THE DEBT will really enjoy this one too.

The concept of creating an entire kingdom for his tics and fasciations to play out in lockstep rhythm is

treated with appropriate levity by Anderson, who repeatedly parodies how low the stakes are in this realm of color-coded dominoes, staging a lengthy heart to heart while escape alarms sound, a moment of

silence in the face of a hail of bullets, with repeated establishing shots of what look like the world's most

detailed cardboard dioramas. But even these jokes have a purpose. Zubrowka is a snow-globe

simulacrum defined by its fakeness and fragility. The tenuous relationship between several brittle bubble

worlds is an especially fraught topic when joined up to the days preceding WWII.

This is a fun story with a good cast. The appeal will be to those liking McCANICK, 3 DAYS TO KILL, RIDDICK, RUNNER RUNNER, PARANOIA, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, OUT OF THE FURNACE, and HOMEFRONT will be pretty happy.

Jonathan Fernandez's brisk, flavorful script doesn't exactly

romanticize Tommy and Rosemarie's misguided activity: Like

Robin Hood, they're stealing from the rich to give to the poor,

with the sullying qualification that they alone are the poor in

question. This adds a lot to the story with a touch of humor to

lighten things up a bit.

Romano), who offers Rosemarie a sympathetic ear and gives their story front-page placement. Most bewildered of all, of course, is the mob itself. Local don Fiorello (Garcia, exuding sage weariness from under a salt-and-pepper beard) initially deems the couple too lightweight to merit violent counteraction;

when Tommy chances upon crucial inside information that could undo the entire syndicate, however, the stakes are

raised.