This Week

So what’s out there this week?  It’s an interesting week at the movie plex coming to a theater near you and in limited release: 3 Needles, The Architect, Christmas at Maxwell’s, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, The Nativity Story and Turistas.

C’mon in and let us get you ready for the week!

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Here’s what’s scheduled to hit theaters this week.  Want to know more?  Just click on the title for film info including a full cast list.  Want a closer look?  Just click on the poster to watch the trailer.

Opening Friday:

National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj

Just in case the first bomb wasn’t enough for you, here is another. National Lampoon is back again and in it’s usual color. They should have stopped with National Lampoon’s Christmas and left it at that. Now we have to suffer through some film that should have went straight to DVD. How do they get such bad humor green lit?  Taj, Van Wilder’s geeky apprentice from the first film, goes international. He heads off to Camden University in England and adopts a group of misfit geeks and teaches them a little Wilder magic. Plenty of T & A and nerds being picked on, but they win in the end.

Rated R for pervasive crude sexual content (like the first), some nudity and language. Projected bomb.

The Nativity Story

Director Catherine Hardwicke and crew painstakingly produce this story down to the finest detail. A great deal of work and fine-tuning went into the set design, costuming and location. Well acted and written, The Nativity Story comes to the big screen in all its marvelous wonder glory. I don’t feel I need to summarize the film, it’s well known throughout. Just in time for the holidays and family gatherings.

Rated PG for some violent content. Projected 3.5 out of 5 razors.

Turistas

Just in case the first bomb wasn’t enough for you, here is another. National Lampoon is back again and in it’s usual color. They should have stopped with National Lampoon’s Christmas and left it at that. Now we have to suffer through some film that should have went straight to DVD. How do they get such bad humor green lit? As if Hostel wasn’t enough, now we have Turistas. A group of young and beautiful Americans go on vacation off the beaten path in beautiful exotic Brazil. After a bus crash and being a little shook up, the group runs into a couple of British travelers and some kind locals.

As the night draws on and the exotic drinks keep coming, the tourists wake up the next morning on the beach with no wallets, id’s or passports. Left in a country with no way out, they trust a local boy to take them to a safe house, or not. They find other passports and photo ids’s from past tourists and start to become unnerved. Sleeping in groups with one eye open, they are attacked in the middle of the night, but by whom? Horrible tortures and experiments locked in a cage and trying to escape the “Turistas” may not make it through their lavish vacation. After some of the films released this year and last, I may never want to travel out of the U.S., or my own hometown, for that matter, again.

Rated R for strong graphic violence and disturbing content, sexuality, nudity, drug use and language. On a fear factor and pure adrenaline projected 4 out 5 razors. You must remember I’m rating this based on the genre, not the Oscars.

Limited Release:

3 Needles

Beautiful visuals and touching stories, 3 Needles hits on 3 continents, South Africa, China and North America. In South Africa, Clara (Chloe Sevigny) tries to lead the dying to Jesus before it’s too late. She and her crew run across a group of orphans and she finds herself making a deal with a wealthy plantation owner to by the safety of the orphans. In China, Jin Ping (Lucy Liu) sets up a blood collection service. A local farmer, Tong Sam (Tanabadee Chokpikultong), has the flu and cannot sell his blood, so he lies about his daughter’s age and sells hers. He uses the money to make improvements on his farm, but when his farm finally prospers his daughter and wife mysteriously die.

Sam sets out on a journey to find out what caused their deaths and when he returns, he finds the whole town ill and the mobile blood collection out of business. In North America, Denny (Shawn Ashmore) is a porn star that passes his blood tests with his father’s blood. He is busted and the family falls on extremely hard times. His mother, Olive (Stockard Channing), takes out a large life insurance policy, purposely contracts a life threatening disease and sells her life insurance for a settlement worth millions. All stories have a strong tie to a particular disease and blood, each story is human and touching and spread through out the world. Projected 4 out of 5 razors.

Christmas at Maxwell’s

From the site:Christmas at Maxwell’s is an inspirational but light romantic Christmas drama, a story about the human struggle, the power of love, forgiveness, trust and uplifting the human spirit. It is the story of a fortysomething man confronting the overwhelming effect his past actions seem to be taking on his life and his family. Christmas at Maxwell’s was created to supplement the lack of family-friendly movies on the market today. It is inspired by a true story of faith, hope, love, and forgiveness, and is a movie based on traditional spiritual values.