Weekend Movies: Matt Damon is ‘Bourne’ Again
Plus: Exclusive video from ‘Indignation’
EXCLUSIVE CLIP: Creating Indignation’s Powerful Face-Off
Indignation, opening this week, is the beautifully filmed, thoughtfully told story of an intense young Jewish man’s calamitous time as a student at an Ohio college in the early 1950s. It also features one of the year’s most compelling scenes: a 10-minute confrontation between the student (Logan Lerman) and the college dean (Tracy Letts). In this video, exclusive to Movies for Grownups, Lerman, Letts and writer-director James Schamus — at age 56 directing his first film — reveal the difficulties involved in creating the riveting segment.
EXCLUSIVE TRAILER: The Man Who Saved Ben-Hur
In the unexpectedly poignant new documentary The Man Who Saved Ben-Hur — available this week on DVD and Video on Demand — filmmaker Joe Forte explores the life and career of Johnny Alarimo. Never heard of him? That was the plan: As an in-demand assistant director, Alarimo was always behind the scenes, in charge of making sure the likes of Charlton Heston, Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Davis showed up for work on time and hit their marks. By the time filmmaker Forte filmed him in his late 80s, Alarimo was living alone in his Hollywood apartment, surrounded by boxes of fading photos and still-sharp memories. More than a Zelig-like study, the film looks at a life lived in the shadow of fame and the often-illusory nature of celebrity “friendships.”
Laurie Sparham/Bleecker Street
Tom Wilkinson in "Denial"
FIRST LOOK: Tom Wilkinson in Denial
One of this fall’s most-anticipated films is Denial, the true story of historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz), who was sued for libel by a Holocaust denier (Timothy Spall). Here’s a glimpse of costar Tom Wilkinson playing the lawyer — a man who has his own reasons for affirming the truth — who defends Lipstadt.
Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Matt Damon in "The Bourne Ultimatum"
New in Theaters
* Designates a Movies for Grownups Editors’ Choice
* Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley return for a big-screen sequel to their long-running British sitcom, starring as a pair of hard-drinking, bad-mannered publicists. On the run after apparently killing Kate Moss (it was an accident!), they encounter dozens of star cameos. FULL REVIEW
Jason Bourne
Matt Damon returns nearly 10 years after last playing author Robert Ludlum’s amnesia-stricken secret agent, and like the character’s past, this update is instantly forgettable. Turns out that since slipping under the CIA’s radar Jason’s been holed up in Greece, making a few bucks by engaging in impromptu bare-knuckle boxing matches. Events conspire to drag him back into the fray, and soon CIA director Tommy Lee Jones dispatches a worldwide network of assassins to make him wish he’d never been Bourne. Director Paul Greengrass adopts a determinedly humorless attitude: You know when the only guy who cracks a smile in the whole two hours is poker-faced Jones, it’s one grim affair.
New at Home
* Designates a Movies for Grownups Editors’ Choice
Playing a fallen corporate mogul making her comeback in the brownie business, Melissa McCarthy is as defiantly funny as ever. But her blowhard-with-a-heart-of-gold schtick is wearing thin. McCarthy needs to stretch more — pronto.
Kevin Costner stars as a career criminal who has the memories of a dead CIA agent (Ryan Reynolds) implanted in his brain so he can help stop a terrorist. Tommy Lee Jones plays the doc who messes with his mind.
The gang is back at Calvin’s Barbershop, this time rallying to take their neighborhood streets back from crooks. Cedric the Entertainer, Ice Cube and Regina Hall look for justice and laughs at Chicago’s favorite clip joint.
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Still Out There
* Designates a Movies for Grownups Editors’ Choice
* The BFG
Oscar winner Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) brings a ton of heart to the titular character, a Big Friendly Giant. Director Steven Spielberg expertly balances his appetite for sentiment with author Roald Dahl’s rascally sense of delightful danger. FULL REVIEW
Woody Allen’s latest, the story of a young New York man (Jesse Eisenberg) trying to remake himself in 1930s Los Angeles, starts out as a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood, then morphs into a meditation on life choices and regrets. Steve Carell is blustery at first, then appealingly melancholy as the hero’s talent-agent uncle. FULL REVIEW
Viggo Mortensen is splendid as a latter-day Thoreau who raises six children in a Pacific Northwest forest, hectoring them about the superiority of their lifestyle compared with us space-age softies. After a while, though, the backwoods boasting starts to chafe like wood chips in your hiking boots. FULL REVIEW
Ellen DeGeneres leads an A-list of veteran stars — including Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill, Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy — giving voice to the endearing aquatic characters in Pixar’s latest animated masterpiece. There are laughs aplenty, but also — as in every Pixar epic — moments of poignance and beauty. FULL REVIEW
Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) remakes the Gone With the Wind of supernatural comedies, this time with an all-female cast of ghost hunters: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. Look for appearances by original stars Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. FULL REVIEW
Bryan Cranston disappears into yet another character — this time a U.S. customs official who goes undercover in 1980s Miami to trap Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. John Leguizamo costars as his streetwise partner. FULL REVIEW
This live-action version of the 1967 Disney cartoon is about as close to Kipling’s literary classic as Angry Birds is to Audubon’s Birds of America. Still, the computer animation is jaw-dropping, and Bill Murray enjoys himself as the voice of Baloo the Bear.
After 98 years of movie Tarzans, they’re still coming up with new stories for the original swinger. Alexander Skarsgård plays Tarzan this time, returning from his adopted home of London to set things right in his old jungle digs. Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson costar.
This slam-bang buddy-cop flick harks back to the best of them (think Lethal Weapon or 48 Hrs.). In 1977 L.A., Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are mismatched detectives searching for an MIA porn star. The jokes are just one form of the rapid-fire killers here. FULL REVIEW
No, silly, it’s not about America’s current presidential campaign — it’s a horror movie.
Albert Brooks, Laraine Newman, Louis C.K. and Dana Carvey are among the familiar voices in this animated tale of how the critters will play when the master’s away.
You’d think by now they would have run out of places “where no man has gone before,” but in the 13th big-screen adaptation of the 1960s TV series, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) and company find themselves stranded on an unknown planet. There are, of course, bad guys hiding up there in the rocks.