Author: Boston SNFC Newsletter

“After being deemed unfit for military service, Steve Rogers volunteers for a top secret research project that turns him into Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America’s ideals.”

From the Oscar-winning team behind Man On Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim’s extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature – and indeed our own – is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) are workers who would like nothing better than to grind their oppressive employers into the dirt. Quitting their jobs is not an option, so — fueled by alcohol and dubious advice from a shady ex-convict (Jamie Foxx) — the men devise a complex and seemingly foolproof plan to permanently rid themselves of their terrible bosses. The problem is, any plan is only as clever as the brains behind it.

East Africa during World War I: after British missionary Robert Morley dies in the wake of a German attack, his prissy spinster sister Rose (Hepburn) hitches a ride on the African Queen, a rundown riverboat operated by gin-sodden Canadian Charlie Allnut (Bogart) who later finds shes got a formidable agenda: whip up a few homemade torpedoes to get revenge on a German gunboat floating on a lake, with only a hair-raising ride down the rapids, an enemy fort, and Deutsch officer Theodore Bikels noose in the way. Shot on location in the Belgian Congo and Uganda by Technicolor specialist par excellence Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes), THE AFRICAN QUEEN had its own set of off-camera adventures: Mrs. Bogie, Lauren Bacall, came along on the trip as probably the most glamorous waitress in the world; the boat sank in the river and had to be salvaged; Huston kept the camera turning when a hippo nearly capsized it during the final scene; and virtually the entire crew came down with dysentery, except for the strictly whiskey-imbibing Huston and Bogart. Oscar nominations to Hepburn, Huston, and screenplay with Bogart winning for Best Actor, beating out Fredric March, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brandos Stanley Kowalski. Seen for decades only in washed-out prints (the original 3-strip Technicolor negatives had long since shrunk), THE AFRICAN QUEEN, in this new 35mm restoration, once again looks magnificent, with deep, burnished browns and yellows and a level of detail that picks out every drop of sweat on Bogarts brow (Dave Kehr). Restored by ITV Global Entertainment and Paramount Pictures. notes adapted from the Film Forum, NYC

“Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) has two big ambitions: to save his parents’ marriage via carefully plotted intervention and to lose his virginity before his next birthday. Worried that his mom (Sally Hawkins) is having an affair with New Age weirdo Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine), Oliver monitors his parents’ sex life by charting the dimmer switch in their bedroom. He also forges suggestive love letters from his mom to dad. Meanwhile, Oliver attempts to woo his classmate, Jordana (Yasmin Paige), a self-professed pyromaniac who supervises his journal writingespecially the bits about her. When necessary, she orders him to cross things out. Based on Joe Dunthorne’s acclaimed novel, Submarine is a captivating coming-of-age story with an offbeat edge.”

For his new film, master director Patricio GuzmA!n (The Battle of Chile, The Pinochet Case) travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, Chileas Atacama Desert. There, atop the mountains where the sky is so translucent that telescopes can see right to the boundaries of the universe, astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. Meanwhile, at the base of the mountains, the harsh heat of the sun preserves secrets from the past: the remains of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th-century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners adisappeareda by the Chilean army in the 1970s. So it happens that, while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies above, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared, search below for the remains of their loved ones.

From Terrence Malick, the acclaimed director of Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, comes The Tree of Life, an impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick’s signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life. Winner of the Palme d’Or (top honors) at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival.

Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams star as a young engaged couple traveling to Paris with her parents on a business trip in Woody Allen’s new romantic comedy. Once in Paris, however, this couple must confront the fact that perhaps the life that they are living is an illusion.

Gil (Wilson) is a man who is comfortable with the basic pleasures of every-day life, but when he and his fiancee arrive in Paris, Inez (McAdams) is swept off her feet by the charm of the city, including a visit by an old acquaintance, Paul (Michael Sheen). As Gil becomes the curmudgeon of the group, not wanting to take part in the Parisian night-life, he ends up taking midnight strolls along the streets of Paris, alone, and finds a completely new twist on life. Wanting to find out where her fiance goes at night, Inez and her father hire a private detective, but when he goes missing after following Gil on one of his midnight strolls, is the marriage in trouble?

Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.

When notary Lebel (Remy Girard) sits down with Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Melissa Desormeaux Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) to read them their mother Nawals will (Lubna Azabal), the twins are stunned to receive a pair of envelopes one for the father they thought was dead and another for a brother they didnt know existed.

In this enigmatic inheritance, Jeanne sees the key to Nawals retreat into unexplained silence during the final weeks of her life. She immediately decides to go to the Middle East to dig into a family history of which she knows next to nothing.

Simon is unmoved by their mothers posthumous mind games. However, the love he has for his sister is strong, and he soon joins her in combing their ancestral homeland in search of a Nawal who is very different from the mother they knew.

With Lebels help, the twins piece together the story of the woman who brought them into the world, discovering a tragic fate as well as the courage of an exceptional woman.

An adaptation of Wajdi Mouawads hit play, INCENDIES is a deeply moving story that brings the extremism and violence of todays world to a starkly personal level, delivering a powerful and poetic testament to the uncanny power of the will to survive.