Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
With: Reviews,
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Santa Cruz area movie theaters >
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New This Week
THE BOY NEXT DOOR Jennifer Lopez stars as a recent divorcee whose affair with a much-younger neighbor leads to his sinister obsession with her in this psychological thriller from Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious). Ryan Guzman, John Corbett and Kristin Chenoweth co-star. (R) Starts Friday.
MORTDECAI! It’s Johnny Depp in burlesque comedy mode as a roguish art dealer on an international hunt to locate a stolen painting that might be the key to a treasure trove of Nazi gold. Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Olivia Munn, Jeff Goldblum, and Paul Bettany co-star for director David Koepp. (R) 106 minutes. Starts Friday.
MR. TURNER Timothy Spall stars as the famed English Romantic-era painter J. M. W. Turner, whose life was as tumultuous as his wild, stormy landscapes, in this biographical drama from filmmaker Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Another Year). (R) 149 minutes. Starts Friday.
Film Events
NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE Highlights from the current season of Britain’s acclaimed National Theatre of London, broadcast digitally, in HD, to movie theaters worldwide, play locally in the Grand Auditorium of the Del Mar. This week: TREASURE ISLAND Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic pirate adventure gets an audacious gender-bent makeover from Bryony Lavery with actress Patsy Ferran as a tomboyish female Jim Hawkins falling in with Long John Silver and his cutthroat crew. (Not rated) 180 minutes. At the Del Mar, Thursday only (January 22),7:30 p.m. Encore performance Sunday (January 25), 11 a.m. Admission: $15. Seniors, students, and Santa Cruz Shakespeare subscribers: $13.
CONTINUING EVENT: LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MOVIES This informal movie discussion group meets in downtown Santa Cruz. Movie junkies are invited to join in on Wednesday nights to pursue the elusive and ineffable meanings of cinema. This week (Jan 21): SELMA Tonight only meeting at Erik’s DeliCafe 155 walnut Ave, SC. Discussion begins at 7 pm and admission is free. For more information visit groups.google.com/group/LTATM.
Movie Times click here.
Now Playing
AMERICAN SNIPER Reviewed this issue. (R) 132 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
BLACKHAT International cybercrime is the subject of this action thriller from Michael Mann, starring Chris Hemsworth as a furloughed convict recruited to track down a cybercrime organization with his American and Chinese partners. Viola Davis and Tang Wei co-star. (R) 135 minutes.
PADDINGTON The adorable bear in the red rain hat, hero of a series of beloved children’s’ books, gets lost in London’s Paddington Train Station and taken in by a kindly English family in this mostly live-action (+ CGI bear) family adventure. Nicole Kidman, Peter Capaldi, Julie Walters, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent head the humanoid cast. Ben Whishaw provides the voice of Paddington. (PG) 90 minutes.
SELMA The struggle to make the Voting Rights Act a reality is dramatized in this extraordinarily powerful and accomplished feature from director Ava DuVernay; the story chronicles a few months in 1965 when Dr. Martin Luther King (played with stoic poise and uncompromising determination by David Oyelowo) organized a series of protest marches from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery to dramatize the suppression of black voting rights to the White House—and the world. In our own particular historical moment, when “Black Lives Matter” has become a rallying cry in our streets, and the VRA has been shamefully gutted by the current Supreme Court, this movie could not be more timely. (PG-13) 123 minutes. (***1/2)—Lisa Jensen.
SPARE PARTS Four Hispanic high school students form a robotics club and find themselves in a competition with the robotics wizards of MIT in this upbeat drama based on a true story. Marisa Tomei, George Lopez, and Jamie Lee Curtis head the cast. Sean McNamara directs. (PG-13) 113 minutes.
THE WEDDING RINGER A socially awkward groom-to-be (Josh Gad) rents a hip best man-for-hire (Kevin Hart) to make his wedding a success in this modern comedy of manners. Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting and Alan Ritchson co-star for director Jeremy Garelick. (R) 101 minutes.
