How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Simon Pegg in his glory in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (MGM)

I have made no secret of the fact that I love Simon Pegg. He won me over with Shaun of the Dead, a rom-zom-com that he wrote and starred in. Then secured that place in my heart with the Brit-com TV series Spaced (which was made before Shaun but was hard to track down in the U.S.), which is also wrote and starred in. His creative efforts reveal a fine attention to detail and a savvy sense of pop culture. But in the films where he's had less creative input, he's been less good (Mission Impossible 3, Run Fatboy Run). But now he has a project that seems a bit more worthy of his talents - How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (opening October 3 throughout San Diego), based on British journalist Toby Young's memoirs about his failed five-year attempt to make it as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine.

Tell No One

Francois Cluzet finds himself a suspect in his wife's murder in Tell No One (Music Box Films)

I don't envy any film opening against The Dark Knight. That's tough. But I hope the new French thriller Tell No One (opening July 18 at Landmark's Hillcrest and La Jolla Village Theaters) doesn't get completely over shadowed by the Batman. Based on American writer Harlan Coben's novel, Tell No One serves up an obsessive love story wrapped up in a thriller about murder and deception.

Savage Grace

Julianne Moore delivers a knockout performance in Savage Grace (IFC Films)

Filmmaker Tom Kalin burst on the indie scene in 1992 with a black and white take on the Loeb-Leopold murder case, Swoon. But he's been relatively silent since then, hovering under the radar making shorts and penning a script for photographer Cindy Sherman's Office Killer. But Kalin returns to art house feature films with an adaptation of Natalie Robins' book Savage Grace (opening July 4 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Harkening back to the kind of uncomfortable mother-son relationship of Bertolucci's Luna, Savage Grace offers us Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne as a perversely interdependent mother and son. The film boasts another sensational performance by Moore and a welcome return to feature directing by Kalin. Listen to our KPBS Film Club discussion of the film.

The Rape of Europa

The documentary The Rape of Europa looks at recovering art tresures from the Nazis. (Menemsha Films)

The Rape of Europa (opening June 20 at Landmark's La Jolla Village Theaters) is a documentary about World War II. Now before you start rolling your eyes and thinking that between PBS and the History Channel you know all you need to know about WWII, let me just say that this documentary serves up something that's genuinely fresh. The Rape of Europa, which played a couple years back at the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, offers something of a detective tale as it seeks to tell the story of the great art treasures that vanished during the war and then turned up years later. The impact of what Hitler and the Nazis did during the war still resonates today as more works of art resurface, heirs sue for restitution, and ownership is disputed. The case of Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer serves as bookends to the documentary with one of Adele's relatives seeking to regain possession of the famous portrait that once hung in the family home. (Although the film doesn't point out that the relative, after winning back the painting, quickly sold it for $100 million, but that raises a whole other issue about art.)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The youthful warriors of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Disney/Walden Media)

It's odd how J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia have remained connected over the decades. They arrived as books in close proximity to each other, and now find themselves once again drawing comparisons but this time as films. The books, and the films they have inspired, are all epic fantasy tales aimed primarily at young audiences. In the case of both the books and the films, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings preceded C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. So now that the Lord of the Rings Trilogy has run through its wildly successful film cycle (The Hobbit, though is yet to come), Disney is hoping that The Chronicles of Narnia, with its latest installment Prince Caspian (opening May 16 throughout San Diego), can capture the summer crowds. The only problem is that Narnia comes across as Lord of the Rings lite and seems to appeal more to just the 'tweener crowd than the broader fan base of the Tolkien inspired films.

C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia began in 1950 with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Like Tolkien's books, Lewis' seven book series created a fantasy world complete with its own history, geography, and culture. But Lewis' tale seems aimed more directly at a younger audience than Tolkien's books, and contains elements that feel culled from other sources.

Then She Found Me

Helen Hunt makes her feature film directing debut with Then She Found Me (THINKFilm)

Last year we had a trio of movies about female characters coping with unwanted pregnancies: Waitress, Knocked Up and Juno. This year we already have two films about thirtysomething women who want babies and just can't seem to get pregnant: Baby Mama and now Then She Found Me (opening May 9 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas and La Jolla Village Theaters). It's almost like Hollywood is feeling its biological clock ticking as much as these female characters are. This latest pregnancy-themed film also marks the feature-directing debut of actress Helen Hunt, and with its multiple mother-daughter themes, it's hoping to tap into the Mother's Day crowd.

My Brother is an Only Child

Brothers Accio and Manrico in My Brother is an Only Child (THINKFilm)

The new Italian film My Brother is an Only Child (opening May 2 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) focuses on two siblings who choose opposite sides of the political spectrum in Italy during the 60s and 70s. The film swept Italy's Donatelli awards, their equivalent of Hollywood's Oscars. Italian screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli see sibling rivalry as the perfect metaphor for exploring their country's often divisive politics. In 2003's The Best of Youth, two brothers reflect four decades of political turbulence beginning in 1963. In this year's My Brother is an Only Child, the writing duo partners with director Daniele Luchetti for another story set in the 60s and 70s, and focused on two very different brothers. (You can listen to my radio feature or read the extended review and interview.)

21

Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth try to beat the odds in 21. (Columbia)

The new film 21 (opening March 28 throughout San Diego) claims a true story as its source. That story involves a group of MIT students who put together a card-counting team that took Vegas casinos for several million dollars in the 1990s. A 2002 Wired magazine article called "Hacking Las Vegas" detailed the team's exploits and caught the eye of actor Kevin Spacey who decided to make a movie based on the article and subsequent book Bringing Down the House, written by Ben Mezrich. The end result is 21.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Whatever you do, don't read that book! The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount)

"Do not dare to read this book. For if you take one fateful look, you barter at your life’s expense and face a deadly consequence."

Well there's no better way to insure that a child will read a book than to forbid him/her to do so. This inscription on the cover of Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You is all that's needed to prompt young Jared Grace (Freddie Highmore) to open the forbidden text and read. But the book proves to be something of a Pandora’s Box, and Jared ends up opening the doors to a parallel universe of fairies, goblins, sprites and a nasty ogre. The Spiderwick Chronicles (opened on February 14 throughout San Diego and in IMAX at the Edward’s Mira Mesa Cinemas) brings the highly successful series of children’s books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black to the big screen.

The Prestige

Michael Caine and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige.

Christopher Nolan proved himself in the indie ranks with films such as Memento, and then played ball with the big boys on films such as Batman Begins. Now he takes another big studio turn with the period film The Prestige (opening October 20 throughout San Diego) about rival magicians.

The Prestige informs us right off the bat of what it is going to do. Michael Caine's cockney Cutter (a man who designs the equipment to pull off the illusions) tells us that every magic trick consists of three acts: the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige. The Pledge is where the magician shows you the ordinary with a promise to make it extraordinary. The Turn is when he actually pulls off the extraordinary. And that's when you might be prompted to ponder how the trick is done. That's where Cutter says the third act comes in: The Prestige. This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before. The film then sets itself up to pull off a cinematic magic trick with similar elements. But the promise of something extraordinary is always difficult to pull off, especially when you've challenged the audience to watch attentively because you're about to trick them.