Movies This Week: Crude Retreats in Public
We've hit the lag that comes before the Oscar rush, folks. Not a lot of big new movies are coming out this week, but a few indie/arthouse films are opening here in Austin. The only new film in town we were given the opportunity to see before it opened was Couples Retreat, but we were all sickly slackers who didn't make it.
We Live in Public opens at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar with director Ondi Timoner in attendance Friday and Saturday night. It's a cautionary tale about how much we are living in public, oddly enough.
Paranormal Activity is getting another shot at the Austin box office after last weekend's special run at the Alamo Drafthouse, only this time with a couple more theaters added. It didn't scare me, but I'm hard to scare, and it did keep my attention all the way through. If you like being scared, you owe it to yourself to check out this flawed but very worthy ghost story.
Crude may sound like yet another "petroleum is bad" documentary, but this one focuses on the $27 billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case, directed by Joe Berlinger, acclaimed filmmaker of Paradise Lost and SXSW hit Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Haven't seen it, but it sounds like it's worthy of your time and dollars. (Dobie)
Couples Retreat looks more like a guys' comedy than a romantic comedy, but none of us were able to make it to an advance screening to say any more about it. It's directed by Peter Billingsley, and two of its writer/stars are Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, so you probably know what to expect anyway. (wide)
Beeswax is a locally made film from Andrew Bujalski that will be playing at Alamo South Lamar all week long, as Jette mentioned earlier this week. Bujalski will be at tonight's 7 pm screening.
From Mexico With Love is a boxing drama featuring Kuno Becker as a fruit picker who moonlights as a boxer.
A Woman in Berlin is a WWII saga by the director of Aimée & Jaguar. (Arbor)
Seraphine is a biopic about French painter Séraphine de Senlis. If I'd taken art history in college, I might be able to say something more intelligible about it ... but I didn't, so I won't. (Arbor)
Revanche is a crime drama taking place in the Austrian countryside. (Arbor)
That said, I think everyone needs to go out and see Whip It and Zombieland again -- good, strong films with Austin connections. But other things are going on in town. Check our event calendar for special film events.
Personal picks:
Debbie: I am going to see Zombieland again, and catch my breath before Austin Film Festival starts on October 22.
Jette: I still haven't seen Whip It, but I'm also interested in the Saturday night screening of local filmmaker Bob Ray's 1999 movie Rock Opera.
Jenn: The Hey, Homo! Sunday Brunch with Dario Argento's Suspiria. I've never seen it, and it's a cult classic horror film.