In Cinemas this week (9 – 15 August)

The Call

The skilled 911 operator Jordan Turner receives a phone call from the teenager Leah Templeton reporting a burglary at home. Jordan instructs Leah to hide herself in a room, but Jordan commits a mistake with tragic consequences, affecting her career. Six months later, Jordan is a trainer of rookies in the 911 service haunted by her past. While showing the operation to the group, a new operator faces the call from the teenager Casey Welson that tells that she has been abducted. The operator panics and Jordan assumes the call, trying to calm down Casey and to get information to identify where she is and who kidnapped her. Now Jordan faces the chance of redemption and gives her best efforts to help Casey.

Cast:
Halle Berry (Jordan Turner)
Abigail Breslin (Casey Welson)
Morris Chestnut (Paul Phillips)
Michael Eklund (Michael Foster)

Director: Brad Anderson
Writer: Richard D’Ovidio
Runtime: 94 min
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Rating: 18
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

This is the End

Six friends (James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Jay Baruchel) are trapped in a house after a series of strange and catastrophic events devastate Los Angeles. As the world unravels outside, dwindling supplies and cabin fever threaten to tear apart the friendships inside. Eventually, they are forced to leave the house, facing their fate and the true meaning of friendship and redemption.

Cast:
James Franco (James Franco)
Jonah Hill (Jonah Hill)
Seth Rogen (Seth Rogen)
Jay Baruchel (Jay Baruchel)

Director: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen
Writer: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen
Runtime: 107 min
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Rating: 18
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

Before Midnight

Building on the first two installments in Richard Linklater’s well-crafted Before trilogy – Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) – Before Midnight offers intelligent, powerfully acted perspectives on love, marriage, and long-term commitment. We meet Jesse and Celine nine years on in Greece. Almost two decades have passed since their first meeting on that train bound for Vienna.

Cast:
Ethan Hawke (Jesse Wallace)
Julie Delpy (Céline Wallace)
Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (Hank)
Jennifer Prior (Ella)

Director: Richard Linklater
Writer: Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy
Runtime: 109 min
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rating: 12
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

The Big Wedding

Don and Ellie were once married and have two children, Lyla and Jared. They adopted a boy from Colombia, Alejandro. Eventually they divorce, Ellie moves away and Don hooks up with Bebe, Ellie’s best friend. When Alejandro is about to get married, he informs Don and Ellie that he never told his natural mother who is so traditional that they got divorced. And she is coming for the wedding so he asks them if they can pretend to still be married. Don and Ellie reluctantly agree to it and Bebe moves out and she is also upset that Don for some reason doesn’t want to commit.

Cast:
Robert De Niro (Don)
Katherine Heigl (Lyla)
Diane Keaton (Ellie)
Amanda Seyfried (Missy)

Director: Justin Zackham
Writer: Justin Zackham, Jean-Stéphane Bron
Runtime: 89 min
Genre: Comedy
Rating: 12
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

The Wolverine 3D/2D

In modern day Japan, Wolverine is out of his depth in an unknown world as he faces his ultimate nemesis in a life-or-death battle that will leave him forever changed. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than we have ever seen him before.

Cast:
Hugh Jackman (Logan)
Tao Okamoto (Mariko)
Rila Fukushima (Yukio)
Svetlana Khodchenkova (Viper)

Director: James Mangold
Writer: Mark Bomback, Scott Frank
Runtime: 126 min
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Rating: 12
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

Chinese Zodiac

Asian Hawk leads a mercenary team to recover several lost artifacts from the Old Summer Palace, the bronze heads of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals which was looted by foreigners in the 1800s. Assisted by a Chinese student and a Parisian lady, Hawk stops at nothing to accomplish the mission.

Cast:
Jackie Chan (Asian Hawk)
Oliver Platt (Lawrence Morgan)
Sang-woo Kwon (Simon)
Xingtong Yao (Coco)

Director: Jackie Chan
Writer: Frankie Chan, Jackie Chan
Runtime: 120 min
Genre: Action, Adventure
Rating: K
Language: English
Production Year: 2012

R.I.P.D.

Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds headline the 3D supernatural action-adventure R.I.P.D. as two cops dispatched by the otherworldly Rest In Peace Department to protect and serve the living from an increasingly destructive array of souls who refuse to move peacefully to the other side. Veteran sheriff Roy Pulsifer has spent his career with the legendary police force known as R.I.P.D. tracking monstrous spirits who are cleverly disguised as ordinary people. His mission? To arrest and bring to justice a special brand of criminals trying to escape final judgment by hiding among the unsuspecting on Earth. Once the wise-cracking Roy is assigned former rising-star detective Nick Walker as his junior officer, the new partners have to turn grudging respect into top-notch teamwork. When they uncover a plot that could end life as we know it, two of R.I.P.D.’s finest must miraculously restore the cosmic balance… or watch the tunnel to the afterlife begin sending angry souls the very wrong way.

Cast:
Jeff Bridges (Roy)
Ryan Reynolds (Nick)
Kevin Bacon (Hayes)
Mary-Louise Parker (Proctor)

Director: Robert Schwentke
Writer: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Runtime: 96 min
Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime
Rating: 12
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

Turbo 3D/2D (Greek)

Theo, a.k.a Turbo, is a garden snail who dreams of being the greatest racer in the world, just like his hero, 5-time Indianapolis 500 champ, Guy Gagne. His obsession with speed and all things fast has made him an oddity and an outsider in the slow and cautious snail community, and a constant embarrassment to his cautious older brother, Chet. Turbo desperately wishes he could escape the slow-paced life he’s living, but his one chance to live proves a near fatal disaster. Demoralized Theo wanders onto a freeway to admire the traffic and gets into a freak accident when he gets sucked into the supercharger of a drag racer, fusing his DNA with nitrous oxide on a street race.

Cast:
Yiorgos Skoufis
Antinoos Albanis
Yiannis Stefopoulos
Fotis Petridis

Director: David Soren
Writer: Darren Lemke, Robert D. Siegel
Runtime: 96 min
Genre: Animation
Rating: K
Language: Greek
Production Year: 2013

Now You See Me

Four magicians each answer a mysterious summons to an obscure address with secrets inside. A year later, they are the Four Horseman, big time stage illusionists who climax their sold out Las Vegas show with a bank apparently robbed for real. This puts agents Dylan Rhodes of the FBI and Alma Vargas of Interpol on the case to find out how they did it. However, this mystery proves difficult to solve even with the insights of the professional illusion exposer, Thaddeus Bradley. What follows is a bizarre investigation where nothing is what it seems with illusions, dark secrets and hidden agendas galore as all involved are reminded of a great truth in this puzzle: the closer you look, the less you see.

Cast:
Jesse Eisenberg (J. Daniel Atlas)
Mark Ruffalo (Dylan Rhodes)
Woody Harrelson (Merritt McKinney)
Morgan Freeman (Thaddeus Bradley)

Director: Louis Leterrier
Writer: Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin
Runtime: 115 min
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Rating: 12
Language: English
Production Year: 2013

Despicable Me 2 3D/2D

Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment’s worldwide blockbuster Despicable Me entertained audiences around the globe in 2010, grossing more than $540 million and becoming the 10th-biggest animated motion picture in U.S. history. In summer 2013, get ready for more Minion madness in Despicable Me 2.

Cast:
Steve Carell (Gru)
Kristen Wiig (Lucy)
Benjamin Bratt (Eduardo / El Macho)
Russell Brand (Dr. Nefario)

Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Writer: Ken Daurio, Cinco Paul
Runtime: 98 min
Genre: Animation, Adventure
Rating: K
Language: English/Greek
Production Year: 2013

Epic

Young Mary Katherine (M.K.) returns to her eccentric scientist father’s home, but his all-consuming quest to discover a tiny civilization in the neighboring forest drives them apart. However, M.K. soon finds herself shrunken down by Queen Tara of that forest, mortally wounded by the putrefying Boggans, and charged to deliver a pod bearing the new Queen to safety. Together with a veteran Leafman warrior, two goofy mollusks and a young maverick, M.K. agrees to help. As the villainous Boggan leader, Mandrake closes in, M.K. and her new friends must draw on the best of themselves together and discover what they have to save their world.

Cast:
Amanda Seyfried (Mary Katherine)
Josh Hutcherson (Nod)
Christoph Waltz (Mandrake)
Colin Farrell (Ronin)

Director: Chris Wedge
Writer: James V. Hart, William Joyce
Runtime: 102 min
Genre: Animation, Adventure
Rating: K
Language: English
Production Year: 2013