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021 suggests movies that are worth watching this autumn RELEASE DATE: 4 MARCH CONVICTION Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell throw themselves into in this true-life crime drama. The brother of a Massachusetts wife and mother of two is sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Convinced of her brother’s innocence, she puts herself through high school, college and, finally, law school in an 18-year quest to free him. Persuasively told, Conviction is perhaps more like a television movie than big screen entertainment.
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU A fastpaced exploration of the big question: Do we control our destiny, or are we manipulated by unseen forces? Matt Damon plays a man who glimpses the future Fate has planned for him and realises he wants something else. To get it, he must pursue the only woman he’s ever loved through the streets of modern-day New York. LOVE AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE PURSUITS Based on bestselling author Ayelet Waldman’s novel and directed by The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Don Roos, this drama tells the story of a woman’s difficult relationship with her stepson. Natalie Portman is endearing in the role of Emilia Woolf, a sensitive young woman who wants nothing more than to love and be loved.
THE DILEMMA When Ronny inadvertently sees his best friend’s wife cheating on him, his amateur investigation quickly dissolves into comic mayhem, and he soon learns that his friend may have a few secrets of his own. pictures nu metro
RELEASE DATE: 11 MARCH
NEVER SAY NEVER
/ ster kinekor
/ w w w. i m a g e . n e t
Never Say Never charts the meteoric rise of Justin Bieber from street performer in the small town of Stratford, Ontario, to internet phenomenon and global superstar, culminating in a sold-out show at the famed Madison Square Garden in 3D. The most fascinating aspect of this movie is that it shows how 21st century social networking (most notably YouTube) can create celebrities. Bieber is the unanimous first crush and his teenage fans would probably have flocked to watch a movie about him mowing his lawn
Tomorrow, When the War Began
(assuming he does such mundane tasks). The older generation must see it so that they don’t ask “who?” when teenagers mention Justin Bieber.
ALL GOOD THINGS In 2003 Andrew Jarecki made the remarkable and creepy Sundance-winning documentary Capturing the Friedmans, about a family with a penchant for child molestation. In All Good Things, he leaps from documentary to feature film, and his lack of experience shows. However flawed, this is a good story and the movie has the eerie power of a nightmare. Set in the 1970s, it is a fictional version of the real-life tabloid sensation about a New York City real-estate magnate who gets away with murder, more than once.
HALL PASS Here’s one for the wives. Fed up with their husbands’ constant ogling of the opposite sex, two wives grant their partners a “hall pass” – one week of freedom to do whatever they want, no questions asked. But it isn’t long before the men discover that their expectations of the single life, and themselves, are completely out of sync with reality. RELEASE DATE: 1 APRIL Based on a Pulitzerwinning play by David Lindsay-Abaire, this is a lucid and tough examination of emotional fortitude. Playing a grieving mother, Nicole Kidman produced the film after falling in love with the play, and it seems to have given her ice-blue gaze its focus once again.
RABBIT HOLE
RELEASE DATE: 18 MARCH FREAKONOMICS A brisk and visually inventive documentary based on the bestselling 2005 attempt by economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen J. Dubner to explain “the hidden side of everything”. There are enough surprising and nonintuitive revelations so that even the most jaded viewer will likely learn a thing or two. Freakonomics is thought-provoking but smug and, after the recession, its moment has really passed. If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably find the movie irrelevant.
NO STRINGS ATTACHED Yet another Natalie Portman movie! Can friendship survive sex and can you have sex without love getting in the way? But the real question is, can you go to the movies and avoid Natalie Portman?
RELEASE DATE: 25 MARCH
RELEASE DATE: 8 APRIL
adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s profoundly
A candid confessional, told by the central character,
NEVER LET ME GO A beautifully realised
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affecting novel. The theme of constructing delicate fictions to mask the dehumanisation of modern life might be too abstract to be conveyed on screen. Discreetly disturbing and depressing, this is a remarkable story of love, loss and hidden truths that asks a fundamental question: What makes us human?
MAGAZ I NE
AUTUMN
BARNEY’S VERSION
2011
2/21/11 5:27:14 PM