Reel Life – February 2013

Synopsis: Unlimited funds have allowed Diana (Melissa McCarthy) to live it up on the outskirts of Miami, where the queen of retail buys whatever strikes her fancy. There’s only one glitch: The ID she’s using to finance these sprees reads “Sandy Bigelow Patterson”… and it belongs to an accounts rep (Jason Bateman) who lives halfway across the U.S. With only one week to hunt down the con artist before his world implodes, the real Sandy Bigelow Patterson heads south to confront the woman with an all-access pass to his life. And as he attempts to bribe, coax, and wrangle her the 2,000 miles to Denver, one easy target will discover just how tough it is to get your name back.

Director: Seth Gordon
Starring: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, John Cho, Clark Duke, Amanda Peet, and Jon Favreau

Synopsis: A funny twist on a classic love story, “Warm Bodies” is a tale about the power of human connection. After a zombie epidemic, R (a highly unusual zombie) encounters Julie (a human survivor), and rescues her from a zombie attack. Julie sees that R is different from the other zombies, and as the two form a special relationship in their struggle for survival, R becomes increasingly more human – setting off an exciting, romantic, and often comical chain of events that begins to transform the other zombies and maybe even the whole lifeless world.

Director: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Analeigh Tinton, and Rod Coddry

Synopsis: A New Orleans hitman (Stallone) and a Washington D.C. cop (Kang) form an alliance to bring down the killers of their respective partners. An unlikely alliance between a cop and a hitman takes place after each watches his partner die. The new partners seek revenge and discover they have a shared enemy and much in common despite being on opposite sides of the law.

Director: Walter Hill
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, and Sarah Shahi

Synopsis: Dwayne Johnson stars as a father whose teenage son is wrongly accused of a drug distribution crime and is looking at a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years. Desperate and determined to rescue his son at all costs, he makes a deal with the U.S. attorney to work as an undercover informant and infiltrate a drug cartel on a dangerous mission — risking everything, including his family and his own life.

Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Susan Sarandon, Michael Kenneth Williams, Barry Pepper, Harold Perrineau, and Jon Bernthal

Synopsis: A provocative thriller about Emily and Martin (Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum), a successful New York couple whose world unravels when a new drug prescribed by Emily’s psychiatrist (Jude Law) – intended to treat anxiety – has unexpected side effects.

Director: Steven Sodenbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jude law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rooney Mara, and Vinessa Shaw

Synopsis: Val is released from prison after serving 28 years for refusing to give up one of his close criminal associates. His best friend Doc is there to pick him up, and the two soon re-team with another old pal, Hirsch. Their bond is as strong as ever, and the three reflect on freedom lost and gained, loyalties ebbed and flowed, and days of glory gone by. And despite their age, their capacity for mayhem is still very much alive and well – bullets fly as they make a hilariously valiant effort to compensate for the decades of crime, drugs and sex they’ve missed. But one of the friends is keeping a dangerous secret- he’s been put in an impossible quandary by a former mob boss, and his time to find an acceptable alternative is running out. As the sun rises on the guys’ legendary reunion, their position becomes more and more desperate and they finally confront their past once and for all.

Director: Fisher Stevens
Starring: Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Julianna Marguiles, Alan Arkin, and Addison Timlin