[postlink]http://watchtvonlinemovie.blogspot.com/2011/04/list-of-new-hollywood-movie-free-watch.html[/postlink]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHVU3fKhsjIendofvid[starttext]Movies Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets:
New Movie List If You Want To Watch Full Movies You can Go to The Cinema Next Time::
★ ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ (PG-13, 1:46) A politician (Matt Damon) and dancer (Emily Blunt) try to hold on to love across time and space in an enjoyable film based loosely (very) on a short story by Philip K. Dick and directed with confidence by the writer George Nolfi. (Manohla Dargis)
‘American: the Bill Hicks Story’ (No rating, 1:41) Paul Thomas and Matt Harlock’s sterile portrait barely skims the surface of the comedian Bill Hicks’s scabrous wit and abrasive intelligence. Employing an animation technique that saps the tragedy from his untimely death from pancreatic cancer in 1994 at 32, the filmmakers recount a bright-burning life while leaving us mostly in the dark. (Jeannette Catsoulis)
‘Armadillo’ (No rating, 1:40, in Danish, Pashto and English) Another tough, ground-level documentary immersion in the tedium and brutality of modern combat, this time in the company of a group of Danish soldiers stationed in a dangerous part of Afghanistan. (A.O. Scott)
‘Arthur’ (PG-13, 1:50) There was no good reason to remake the beloved 1981 comedy starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli, but there was also no reason the remake had to be so bad. Russell Brand wears out his charm quickly as the infantile, alcoholic billionaire of the title, and the charms of Greta Gerwig (in the Minnelli role) and Helen Mirren (as Arthur’s nanny, Hobson) are not sufficient to rescue the movie from becoming a safe, second-rate bore. (Scott)
‘Battle: Los Angeles’ (PG-13, 1:56) The aliens invade. The Marines (led by Aaron Eckhart) fight back. The audience, excited at first, grows bored, restless and ultimately disdainful. (Scott)
‘Bill Cunningham New York’ (No rating, 1:24) Richard Press has made a sensitive portrait of a spiritual man whose devotion to fashion photography, that most worldly of pursuits, has chronicled an era. In street fashion, Mr. Cunningham, a photographer for The New York Times, has found something creative, life-affirming and free: proof of humanity amid the chaos of daily life. Interspersing lively interviews with affectionate commentary from longtime friends and subjects — socialites, editors, models, eccentrics, dandies, avant-gardists, curators and neighbors — Mr. Press has made an intimate portrait that feels more found than it does constructed. (Carina Chocano)
★ ‘Blank City’ (No rating, 1:35) Celine Danhier’s documentary looks back at the New York underground film scene of the 1970s and ’80s, blending old film clips with recent interviews to create a vivid, critically informed picture of a city in crisis and the artists who thrived on its desperate, decadent energies. (Scott)
‘Born to Be Wild 3D’ (G, :45) You may feel cheated by the length of this documentary about two women working in different parts of the world to save orphaned wildlife — it’s only 45 minutes long — but some of the 3-D camera work is pretty cool. An elephant’s trunk, it turns out, is admirably suited to three-dimensional filmmaking. (Neil Genzlinger)
★ ‘Certified Copy’ (No rating, 1:46, in Italian, French and English) Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliant first feature made outside his native Iran is such a conspicuous leap from neo-realism to European modernism, it sometimes feels like a dry comic parody. As it goes along, the movie begins to deconstruct itself by posing as a cinematic homage, or copy, if you will, of European art films of the 1950s and ’60s. (Stephen Holden)
‘The Conspirator’ (PG-13, 2:03) Robin Wright plays Mary Surratt, who was tried by a military tribunal in 1865 as part of the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The episode, rich in historical interest and topical implications, is turned into a dull and tendentious civics lesson by the director, Robert Redford. (Scott)
‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules’ (PG, 1:36) The most you can say about this sequel to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” based on Jeff Kinney’s illustrated children’s books, is that it’s inoffensive — which isn’t necessarily what you want in a movie about the humiliations of being a seventh grader with a bullying older brother. (Mike Hale)
★ ‘The Double Hour’ (No rating, 1:35, in Italian) This diabolically clever Italian psychological thriller, the feature debut of Giuseppe Capotondi, is the best mystery of its kind since Guillaume Canet’s “Tell No One.” (Holden)
★ ‘Even the Rain’ (No rating, 1:44, in Spanish) Icíar Bollaín’s bluntly political film makes pertinent if heavy-handed comparisons between European imperialism five centuries ago and modern globalization. In particular, it portrays a high-end film made on location in Bolivia as an offshoot of colonial exploitation. (Holden)
‘The First Beautiful Thing (La Prima Cosa Bella)’ (No rating, 2:02, in Italian) This sweet, thoughtful film by the Italian director Paolo Virzì uses the flashback to perfection, showing why an indolent fellow named Bruno (Valerio Mastandrea) is reluctant to go visit his dying mother. You expect a simple story of bedside reconciliation but end up with something considerably richer and more nuanced. (Genzlinger)
‘Hanna’ (PG-13, 1:51) Saoirse Ronan plays a girl raised by wolves (well, Eric Bana) who matches wits and weapons against a wicked queen (Cate Blanchett as a C.I.A. operative) in a twisted modern fairy tale directed by Joe Wright. (Dargis)
‘Hop’ (PG, 1:30) An animated would-be Easter Bunny (voiced by Russell Brand) interacts with his human counterpart, an underachiever played by James Marsden. The best that can be said is that this is not as ghastly as “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” which was also directed by Tim Hill. (Scott)
‘I Am Number Four’ (PG-13, 1:50) Based on the young-adult novel by Pittacus Lore, D. J. Caruso’s elaborate puberty metaphor concerns an alien teenager (Alex Pettyfer) hiding out in Ohio from an evil race resembling an apocalyptic biker gang with a bad case of ringworm. Despite the presence of a hot protector (Timothy Olyphant) and a hotter Number Six (Teresa Palmer), this sluggish high-school drama is only marginally more fun than a week’s worth of detention. (Catsoulis)
‘In a Better World’ (R, 1:53, in Danish, Swedish and English) Illustrating that good intentions don’t always produce good movies, Susanne Bier’s thoughtful drama (this year’s Oscar winner for best foreign-language film) explores the problem of violence and the nature of justice in the modern world. Nothing wrong with that, but the narrative — in which two young boys in Denmark plot revenge against a grown-up bully, while the father of one of them tries to help refugees in an unnamed African country — is heavy and schematic, squeezing the life out of a potentially interesting and provocative situation. (Scott)
‘Insidious’ (PG-13, 1:42) The first half of James Wan’s haunted-house picture is a dark, suggestive bump-in-the-night thriller with some honest scares; the second half of the film, which stars Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson as embattled parents battling shadowy presences, is literal-minded, overexplained and run-of-the-mill. (Hale)
★ ‘Jane Eyre’ (PG-13, 2:01) Mia Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland,” “The Kids Are All Right”) is Jane and Michael Fassbender (“Hunger,” “Fish Tank”) is Rochester in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s smart and vigorous adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel — the latest and one of the best, though surely not the last. (Scott)
‘Limitless’ (PG-13, 1:46) Bradley Cooper plays a blocked novelist who takes a neuro-active wonder drug that gives him access to his entire brain and plunges him into all manner of paranoid shenanigans. The movie, directed by Neil Burger and based on a novel by Alan Glynn, is a bit of a mess, but also stylish and energetic and saved from total silliness by a bracing dose of satire. It’s both an exercise in and a critique of the hollow, shallow, obsessive materialism that drives so many of us these days. (Scott)
‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ (R, 1:59) Matthew McConaughey, with ace support from the likes of Marisa Tomei and William H. Macy, plays a dodgy Los Angeles lawyer in Brad Furman’s satisfying adaptation of the Michael Connelly crime novel. (Dargis)
★ ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ (PG, 1:44) Kelly Reichardt’s latest film, set in the Oregon Territory in 1845, is a stripped-down western that looks at the mythology of Manifest Destiny through a feminist lens, and with an acute eye for heroism, folly and danger. The cast, which includes Shirley Henderson, Bruce Greenwood and Will Patton, is excellent, with Michelle Williams standing out as a pioneer wife whose patience and resilience is sorely tested (Scott)
★ ‘My Perestroika’ (No rating, 1:27, in Russian) Robin Hessman’s enthralling documentary about growing up in the Soviet Union during the final years of Communism gives you a privileged sense of learning the history of a place not from a book, but by being told about it by the people who lived it. (Holden)
★ ‘Of Gods and Men’ (R, 2:00, in French and Arabic) The true story of a group of French Cistercian monks caught in the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, brought to vivid and intelligent life by the director Xavier Beauvois and an excellent cast led by Lambert Wilson as the prior, a brave man of conscience in impossible circumstances. (Scott)
‘Paul’ (R, 1:44) Greg Mottola directs this low-key, genial comedy about a little green dude from outer space (voiced by Seth Rogen) who wants to phone home and enlists two British geeks (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) to help. (Dargis)
★ ‘The Princess of Montpensier’ (No rating, 2:20, in French) Bertrand Tavernier directs a rousing amalgam of ambition, moods and genre conceits, set against a 17th-century French civil war, that looks like one of those old-fashioned diversions where swords clang as bosoms rise with passion but is mostly greater than its pretty parts. The excellent cast includes Lambert Wilson. (Dargis)
★ ‘Le Quattro Volte’ (No rating, 1:28) An elderly man, a baby goat, a towering tree, a lump of charcoal — these are the subjects of Michelangelo Frammartino’s sublime and strange inquiry into the nature of existence. It’s a deadpan pantheistic head trip, with more life in 88 minutes than movies twice as long. (Scott)
★ ‘Queen to Play’ (No rating, 1:36, in French) Caroline Battaro’s tangy comic bonbon plucks the game of chess out of the metaphorical realm of spy thrillers and re-imagines it as a fable about relationships and upward mobility. (Holden)
★ ‘Rango’ (PG, 1:47) This lizard-themed western, chockablock with creepy-crawly critters and learned movie references, is a rarity among recent animated features in that it allows itself to be odd and complicated as well as cute and sensational. It’s also not in 3-D, which is refreshing. Gore Verbinski of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise directed, with Johnny Depp as the chameleonic protagonist, who becomes the sheriff of a dry desert town called Dirt. (Scott)
‘Rio’ (PG, 1:38) A rich voice cast, exuberant music and a vibrant palette make this animated outing a big step forward from the “Ice Age” movies for Fox animation. As kids’ movies go, “Rio” brings a lot to the party. (Andy Webster)
‘Scream 4’ (R, 1:43) Like its predecessors, this sequel replaces the joys of storytelling and suspense with the satisfaction of being in on the joke. Unfortunately, in the 11 years since “Scream 3,” the joke — primarily, that the characters’ fates are determined by the “rules” of the horror-movie genre — has gotten really old. (Hale)
★ ‘A Screaming Man’ (NC-17, 1:32, in French and Arabic) A quiet, tender and finally wrenching fictional story of an individual at the intersection of the personal and the political: an Everyman who works at a pool becomes engulfed by calamitous jealousies even as a civil war fast approaches. From the Chadian-born filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (“Daratt”). (Dargis)
‘Soul Surfer’ (PG, 1:46) For all its pronounced religious overtones and glossy, commercial sheen, this picture about Bethany Hamilton, the competition surfer who at 13 lost her arm to a shark, manages to provide an interesting portrait of a determined athlete. It benefits from strong performances and an honesty about its protagonist’s daunting challenges. (Webster)
‘Source Code’ (PG-13, 1:33) Duncan Jones (“Moon”) directs and Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a nifty science-fiction thriller with a contemporary twist about a man who toggles between realities, one of which lasts eight minutes and ends with a boom. (Dargis)
★ ‘Win Win’ (R, 1:46) Tom McCarthy’s comedy of middle-class anxiety and scrambled good intentions is sharp and sweet, and in no hurry to reach conclusions or teach lessons. This gives plenty of room for the terrific cast — including Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale and a young first-timer named Alex Shaffer supporting the sad sack in chief, Paul Giamatti — to give the movie a scruffy, lived-in shape and texture. (Scott)
‘Wretches & Jabberers’ (No rating, 1:34) The two autistic men followed by this documentary are evidence in favor of never giving up on a person with a disability: only when they reached adulthood did they learn how to communicate effectively using a keyboard. The film follows the men, Larry Bissonnette and Tracy Thresher, as they (and two aides) travel to several foreign countries to tell their story. It can be slow going — the men need lots of time to peck out their thoughts letter by letter — but it’s inspiring nonetheless. (Genzlinger)
‘Your Highness’ (R, 1:42) David Gordon Green directs this self-conscious, sometimes overly self-satisfied goof about ye olde high times with James Franco and Danny McBride as two princely brothers on a royal if not royally excellent quest. (Dargis)
Film Series
The Urge for Survival: Kaneto Shindo (Friday through Thursday) Best known in the West for his grim, unsettling period thriller “Onibaba” (1964), Mr. Shindo is a protean filmmaker whose work often circles the bombing of Hiroshima, the city where he was born in 1912. This 11-film retrospective, which continues through May 5, is sponsored by the actor Benicio Del Toro, who will appear with the director’s son, Jiro Shindo, to introduce Friday’s 6:50 p.m. screening of “The Naked Island,” an allegorical account of a family’s struggle for survival on a small island. The series will include rarely seen works from all periods of Mr. Shindo’s long career, including the 1952 “Children of Hiroshima” (which is being screened daily through Thursday) and “Postcard,” the 2010 feature that Mr. Shindo, who will turn 99 on Thursday, has said will be his last. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene , (718) 636-4100, bam.org; $12; $25 for “The Naked Island,” with proceeds going to the earthquake relief effort in Japan. (Dave Kehr)
Kino! 2011: New Films from Germany (Friday through Thursday) MoMA’s annual survey of recent films from Germany includes “The Weissensee Saga: A Berlin Love Story,” Friedmann Fromm’s hit six-part television series about two families in East Berlin (Thursday, Episodes 1 to 3 at 4 p.m.; Episodes 4 to 6 at 7:30 p.m.), and Florian Cossen’s first feature, “The Day I Was Not Born,” about a champion swimmer who discovers her unsuspected origins (Friday at 4 p.m.; Saturday at 7:30 p.m.). Next week’s screenings include the documentary “Dancing Dreams: Teenagers Dance Pina Bausch’s ‘Contact Zone’ ,” in which the filmmakers Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann observe Ms. Bausch, who died in 2009, at work (May 1 at 1 p.m.; May 2 at 6 p.m.). Museum of Modern Art Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, 11 West 53rd Street , (212) 708-9400, moma.org; $10. (Kehr)
W. C. Fields (Friday through Thursday) Here are 28 films in 12 days (the series runs through May 3) starring the great misanthrope; rarities include four of Fields’s silent films, including Gregory La Cava’s 1926 “So’s Your Old Man” (Thursday, 6 p.m.). Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village , (212) 727-8110, filmforum.org; $11 (Kehr)[endtext]
New Movie List If You Want To Watch Full Movies You can Go to The Cinema Next Time::
★ ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ (PG-13, 1:46) A politician (Matt Damon) and dancer (Emily Blunt) try to hold on to love across time and space in an enjoyable film based loosely (very) on a short story by Philip K. Dick and directed with confidence by the writer George Nolfi. (Manohla Dargis)
‘American: the Bill Hicks Story’ (No rating, 1:41) Paul Thomas and Matt Harlock’s sterile portrait barely skims the surface of the comedian Bill Hicks’s scabrous wit and abrasive intelligence. Employing an animation technique that saps the tragedy from his untimely death from pancreatic cancer in 1994 at 32, the filmmakers recount a bright-burning life while leaving us mostly in the dark. (Jeannette Catsoulis)
‘Armadillo’ (No rating, 1:40, in Danish, Pashto and English) Another tough, ground-level documentary immersion in the tedium and brutality of modern combat, this time in the company of a group of Danish soldiers stationed in a dangerous part of Afghanistan. (A.O. Scott)
‘Arthur’ (PG-13, 1:50) There was no good reason to remake the beloved 1981 comedy starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli, but there was also no reason the remake had to be so bad. Russell Brand wears out his charm quickly as the infantile, alcoholic billionaire of the title, and the charms of Greta Gerwig (in the Minnelli role) and Helen Mirren (as Arthur’s nanny, Hobson) are not sufficient to rescue the movie from becoming a safe, second-rate bore. (Scott)
‘Battle: Los Angeles’ (PG-13, 1:56) The aliens invade. The Marines (led by Aaron Eckhart) fight back. The audience, excited at first, grows bored, restless and ultimately disdainful. (Scott)
‘Bill Cunningham New York’ (No rating, 1:24) Richard Press has made a sensitive portrait of a spiritual man whose devotion to fashion photography, that most worldly of pursuits, has chronicled an era. In street fashion, Mr. Cunningham, a photographer for The New York Times, has found something creative, life-affirming and free: proof of humanity amid the chaos of daily life. Interspersing lively interviews with affectionate commentary from longtime friends and subjects — socialites, editors, models, eccentrics, dandies, avant-gardists, curators and neighbors — Mr. Press has made an intimate portrait that feels more found than it does constructed. (Carina Chocano)
★ ‘Blank City’ (No rating, 1:35) Celine Danhier’s documentary looks back at the New York underground film scene of the 1970s and ’80s, blending old film clips with recent interviews to create a vivid, critically informed picture of a city in crisis and the artists who thrived on its desperate, decadent energies. (Scott)
‘Born to Be Wild 3D’ (G, :45) You may feel cheated by the length of this documentary about two women working in different parts of the world to save orphaned wildlife — it’s only 45 minutes long — but some of the 3-D camera work is pretty cool. An elephant’s trunk, it turns out, is admirably suited to three-dimensional filmmaking. (Neil Genzlinger)
★ ‘Certified Copy’ (No rating, 1:46, in Italian, French and English) Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliant first feature made outside his native Iran is such a conspicuous leap from neo-realism to European modernism, it sometimes feels like a dry comic parody. As it goes along, the movie begins to deconstruct itself by posing as a cinematic homage, or copy, if you will, of European art films of the 1950s and ’60s. (Stephen Holden)
‘The Conspirator’ (PG-13, 2:03) Robin Wright plays Mary Surratt, who was tried by a military tribunal in 1865 as part of the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The episode, rich in historical interest and topical implications, is turned into a dull and tendentious civics lesson by the director, Robert Redford. (Scott)
‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules’ (PG, 1:36) The most you can say about this sequel to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” based on Jeff Kinney’s illustrated children’s books, is that it’s inoffensive — which isn’t necessarily what you want in a movie about the humiliations of being a seventh grader with a bullying older brother. (Mike Hale)
★ ‘The Double Hour’ (No rating, 1:35, in Italian) This diabolically clever Italian psychological thriller, the feature debut of Giuseppe Capotondi, is the best mystery of its kind since Guillaume Canet’s “Tell No One.” (Holden)
★ ‘Even the Rain’ (No rating, 1:44, in Spanish) Icíar Bollaín’s bluntly political film makes pertinent if heavy-handed comparisons between European imperialism five centuries ago and modern globalization. In particular, it portrays a high-end film made on location in Bolivia as an offshoot of colonial exploitation. (Holden)
‘The First Beautiful Thing (La Prima Cosa Bella)’ (No rating, 2:02, in Italian) This sweet, thoughtful film by the Italian director Paolo Virzì uses the flashback to perfection, showing why an indolent fellow named Bruno (Valerio Mastandrea) is reluctant to go visit his dying mother. You expect a simple story of bedside reconciliation but end up with something considerably richer and more nuanced. (Genzlinger)
‘Hanna’ (PG-13, 1:51) Saoirse Ronan plays a girl raised by wolves (well, Eric Bana) who matches wits and weapons against a wicked queen (Cate Blanchett as a C.I.A. operative) in a twisted modern fairy tale directed by Joe Wright. (Dargis)
‘Hop’ (PG, 1:30) An animated would-be Easter Bunny (voiced by Russell Brand) interacts with his human counterpart, an underachiever played by James Marsden. The best that can be said is that this is not as ghastly as “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” which was also directed by Tim Hill. (Scott)
‘I Am Number Four’ (PG-13, 1:50) Based on the young-adult novel by Pittacus Lore, D. J. Caruso’s elaborate puberty metaphor concerns an alien teenager (Alex Pettyfer) hiding out in Ohio from an evil race resembling an apocalyptic biker gang with a bad case of ringworm. Despite the presence of a hot protector (Timothy Olyphant) and a hotter Number Six (Teresa Palmer), this sluggish high-school drama is only marginally more fun than a week’s worth of detention. (Catsoulis)
‘In a Better World’ (R, 1:53, in Danish, Swedish and English) Illustrating that good intentions don’t always produce good movies, Susanne Bier’s thoughtful drama (this year’s Oscar winner for best foreign-language film) explores the problem of violence and the nature of justice in the modern world. Nothing wrong with that, but the narrative — in which two young boys in Denmark plot revenge against a grown-up bully, while the father of one of them tries to help refugees in an unnamed African country — is heavy and schematic, squeezing the life out of a potentially interesting and provocative situation. (Scott)
‘Insidious’ (PG-13, 1:42) The first half of James Wan’s haunted-house picture is a dark, suggestive bump-in-the-night thriller with some honest scares; the second half of the film, which stars Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson as embattled parents battling shadowy presences, is literal-minded, overexplained and run-of-the-mill. (Hale)
★ ‘Jane Eyre’ (PG-13, 2:01) Mia Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland,” “The Kids Are All Right”) is Jane and Michael Fassbender (“Hunger,” “Fish Tank”) is Rochester in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s smart and vigorous adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel — the latest and one of the best, though surely not the last. (Scott)
‘Limitless’ (PG-13, 1:46) Bradley Cooper plays a blocked novelist who takes a neuro-active wonder drug that gives him access to his entire brain and plunges him into all manner of paranoid shenanigans. The movie, directed by Neil Burger and based on a novel by Alan Glynn, is a bit of a mess, but also stylish and energetic and saved from total silliness by a bracing dose of satire. It’s both an exercise in and a critique of the hollow, shallow, obsessive materialism that drives so many of us these days. (Scott)
‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ (R, 1:59) Matthew McConaughey, with ace support from the likes of Marisa Tomei and William H. Macy, plays a dodgy Los Angeles lawyer in Brad Furman’s satisfying adaptation of the Michael Connelly crime novel. (Dargis)
★ ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ (PG, 1:44) Kelly Reichardt’s latest film, set in the Oregon Territory in 1845, is a stripped-down western that looks at the mythology of Manifest Destiny through a feminist lens, and with an acute eye for heroism, folly and danger. The cast, which includes Shirley Henderson, Bruce Greenwood and Will Patton, is excellent, with Michelle Williams standing out as a pioneer wife whose patience and resilience is sorely tested (Scott)
★ ‘My Perestroika’ (No rating, 1:27, in Russian) Robin Hessman’s enthralling documentary about growing up in the Soviet Union during the final years of Communism gives you a privileged sense of learning the history of a place not from a book, but by being told about it by the people who lived it. (Holden)
★ ‘Of Gods and Men’ (R, 2:00, in French and Arabic) The true story of a group of French Cistercian monks caught in the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, brought to vivid and intelligent life by the director Xavier Beauvois and an excellent cast led by Lambert Wilson as the prior, a brave man of conscience in impossible circumstances. (Scott)
‘Paul’ (R, 1:44) Greg Mottola directs this low-key, genial comedy about a little green dude from outer space (voiced by Seth Rogen) who wants to phone home and enlists two British geeks (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) to help. (Dargis)
★ ‘The Princess of Montpensier’ (No rating, 2:20, in French) Bertrand Tavernier directs a rousing amalgam of ambition, moods and genre conceits, set against a 17th-century French civil war, that looks like one of those old-fashioned diversions where swords clang as bosoms rise with passion but is mostly greater than its pretty parts. The excellent cast includes Lambert Wilson. (Dargis)
★ ‘Le Quattro Volte’ (No rating, 1:28) An elderly man, a baby goat, a towering tree, a lump of charcoal — these are the subjects of Michelangelo Frammartino’s sublime and strange inquiry into the nature of existence. It’s a deadpan pantheistic head trip, with more life in 88 minutes than movies twice as long. (Scott)
★ ‘Queen to Play’ (No rating, 1:36, in French) Caroline Battaro’s tangy comic bonbon plucks the game of chess out of the metaphorical realm of spy thrillers and re-imagines it as a fable about relationships and upward mobility. (Holden)
★ ‘Rango’ (PG, 1:47) This lizard-themed western, chockablock with creepy-crawly critters and learned movie references, is a rarity among recent animated features in that it allows itself to be odd and complicated as well as cute and sensational. It’s also not in 3-D, which is refreshing. Gore Verbinski of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise directed, with Johnny Depp as the chameleonic protagonist, who becomes the sheriff of a dry desert town called Dirt. (Scott)
‘Rio’ (PG, 1:38) A rich voice cast, exuberant music and a vibrant palette make this animated outing a big step forward from the “Ice Age” movies for Fox animation. As kids’ movies go, “Rio” brings a lot to the party. (Andy Webster)
‘Scream 4’ (R, 1:43) Like its predecessors, this sequel replaces the joys of storytelling and suspense with the satisfaction of being in on the joke. Unfortunately, in the 11 years since “Scream 3,” the joke — primarily, that the characters’ fates are determined by the “rules” of the horror-movie genre — has gotten really old. (Hale)
★ ‘A Screaming Man’ (NC-17, 1:32, in French and Arabic) A quiet, tender and finally wrenching fictional story of an individual at the intersection of the personal and the political: an Everyman who works at a pool becomes engulfed by calamitous jealousies even as a civil war fast approaches. From the Chadian-born filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (“Daratt”). (Dargis)
‘Soul Surfer’ (PG, 1:46) For all its pronounced religious overtones and glossy, commercial sheen, this picture about Bethany Hamilton, the competition surfer who at 13 lost her arm to a shark, manages to provide an interesting portrait of a determined athlete. It benefits from strong performances and an honesty about its protagonist’s daunting challenges. (Webster)
‘Source Code’ (PG-13, 1:33) Duncan Jones (“Moon”) directs and Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a nifty science-fiction thriller with a contemporary twist about a man who toggles between realities, one of which lasts eight minutes and ends with a boom. (Dargis)
★ ‘Win Win’ (R, 1:46) Tom McCarthy’s comedy of middle-class anxiety and scrambled good intentions is sharp and sweet, and in no hurry to reach conclusions or teach lessons. This gives plenty of room for the terrific cast — including Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale and a young first-timer named Alex Shaffer supporting the sad sack in chief, Paul Giamatti — to give the movie a scruffy, lived-in shape and texture. (Scott)
‘Wretches & Jabberers’ (No rating, 1:34) The two autistic men followed by this documentary are evidence in favor of never giving up on a person with a disability: only when they reached adulthood did they learn how to communicate effectively using a keyboard. The film follows the men, Larry Bissonnette and Tracy Thresher, as they (and two aides) travel to several foreign countries to tell their story. It can be slow going — the men need lots of time to peck out their thoughts letter by letter — but it’s inspiring nonetheless. (Genzlinger)
‘Your Highness’ (R, 1:42) David Gordon Green directs this self-conscious, sometimes overly self-satisfied goof about ye olde high times with James Franco and Danny McBride as two princely brothers on a royal if not royally excellent quest. (Dargis)
Film Series
The Urge for Survival: Kaneto Shindo (Friday through Thursday) Best known in the West for his grim, unsettling period thriller “Onibaba” (1964), Mr. Shindo is a protean filmmaker whose work often circles the bombing of Hiroshima, the city where he was born in 1912. This 11-film retrospective, which continues through May 5, is sponsored by the actor Benicio Del Toro, who will appear with the director’s son, Jiro Shindo, to introduce Friday’s 6:50 p.m. screening of “The Naked Island,” an allegorical account of a family’s struggle for survival on a small island. The series will include rarely seen works from all periods of Mr. Shindo’s long career, including the 1952 “Children of Hiroshima” (which is being screened daily through Thursday) and “Postcard,” the 2010 feature that Mr. Shindo, who will turn 99 on Thursday, has said will be his last. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene , (718) 636-4100, bam.org; $12; $25 for “The Naked Island,” with proceeds going to the earthquake relief effort in Japan. (Dave Kehr)
Kino! 2011: New Films from Germany (Friday through Thursday) MoMA’s annual survey of recent films from Germany includes “The Weissensee Saga: A Berlin Love Story,” Friedmann Fromm’s hit six-part television series about two families in East Berlin (Thursday, Episodes 1 to 3 at 4 p.m.; Episodes 4 to 6 at 7:30 p.m.), and Florian Cossen’s first feature, “The Day I Was Not Born,” about a champion swimmer who discovers her unsuspected origins (Friday at 4 p.m.; Saturday at 7:30 p.m.). Next week’s screenings include the documentary “Dancing Dreams: Teenagers Dance Pina Bausch’s ‘Contact Zone’ ,” in which the filmmakers Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann observe Ms. Bausch, who died in 2009, at work (May 1 at 1 p.m.; May 2 at 6 p.m.). Museum of Modern Art Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, 11 West 53rd Street , (212) 708-9400, moma.org; $10. (Kehr)
W. C. Fields (Friday through Thursday) Here are 28 films in 12 days (the series runs through May 3) starring the great misanthrope; rarities include four of Fields’s silent films, including Gregory La Cava’s 1926 “So’s Your Old Man” (Thursday, 6 p.m.). Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village , (212) 727-8110, filmforum.org; $11 (Kehr)[endtext]
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