Acclaimed by many as Jack Nicholson’s break thru role,  a drop-out from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil-rigs when his life isn’t spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest. The film tells the story of  surly oil rig worker, Bobby Dupea, whose blue-collar existence belies his privileged youth as a child prodigy. When word reaches Bobby that his father is dying, he reluctantly takes his girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black), a dimwitted, pregnant waitress, back home to make peace with his family. trailer I’ll just have toast.

(QUICK UPDATE: On Friday, 8/27, with 512 theaters in US and Canada playing this film, the Kentucky Theatre ranked 12th in attendance! Way to go Kentucky Fans!)

Featuring three of the finest actors working today, Get Low is the kind of film that you rarely see anymore—intelligent storytelling that’s awash in humanity, warmth, insight, and wit.

Felix is a miserable old hermit who has lived in an isolated cabin for the past 38 years. He catches word that an old friend has passed away and hatches a plan to throw himself a “funeral party.” He even wants the townsfolk, who either despise him or fear him, to attend the party and share all the crazy stories they may have heard about creepy old Felix. Is he a fugitive? A murderer? Or something worse?

Director Aaron Schneider places his humorous fable in 1930s Tennessee, and his attention to period detail is extraordinary. Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek are exceptional, but it’s Robert Duvall’s masterful performance as Felix that brings everything together in this heartfelt story about guilt, loss, and forgiveness. trailer

“The Girl Who Played With Fire”, (in Swedish with English subtitles) based on the bestselling novel of the same name by the late Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson. This is the second in the three novel series and follows the hugely popular “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. This time out Lisbeth Salander returns to Sweden after spending a year abroad. Having returned, she falls under suspicion for having committed the murder of a journalist and his girlfriend as well as her guardian Nils Bjurman. Mikael Blomkvist has to do what he can to find her before the authorities do. The action starts almost immediately and continues non-stop.  trailer

Tilda Swinton stars in “I Am Love”, a cinematic orgy of food, sex, guilt and grief. An intimate and quiet  movie, its subtle shadings veil turbulent emotions. And after two hours of torrid romance, with furtive assignations, lies and betrayal, in an almost wordless finale, those emotions erupt. trailer

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are long time partners with two teenaged children by artificial insemination. When the biological father enters the picture, the household will never be the same, as family ties are defined, re—defined, and re—re—defined. Here’s what the critics are saying:

 “The movie we’ve been waiting for all year: a comedy that doesn’t take cheap shots, a drama that doesn’t manipulate, a movie of ideas that doesn’t preach. It’s a rich, layered, juicy film, with quiet revelations punctuated by big laughs.” Slate

 “It is outrageously funny without ever exaggerating for comic effect, and heartbreaking with only minimal melodramatic embellishment.” The New York Times

 “Movies like The Kids Are All Right — beautifully written, impeccably played, funny and randy and true — don’t come along very often.” Boston Globe

 “The Kids Are All Right ranks with the most compelling portraits of an American marriage, regardless of sexuality, in film history.” Salon

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Harry Brown lets Michael Caine show us his action-hero side one more time in a film that Charles Bronson would have been proud to call his own. This British Death is about a lonely pensioner (Caine) whose wife is in a home. Harry is a man with a past, and when his best friend is killed, he decides to act.

The script takes us into the parallel world of a police detective (Emily Mortimer) just trying to fit in with the boys’ club that is her precinct. As in Death Wish, one cop suspects Harry, and that’s her. But her colleagues aren’t that interested when a lot of pretty awful crooks turn up dead.

 Caine, however, is magnificent. This is not some laughable Stallone-boxing-at-60 exercise in vanity. He’s an old man playing an old man, but one who lived through experiences that both scarred him for life and prepared him for his final test. trailer

Starring John C. Riley, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill and Catherine Keener. With John’s social life at a standstill and his ex—wife about to get remarried, a down on his luck divorcee finally meets the woman of his dreams, only to discover she has another man in her life — her son. Written and directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, the iconoclastic filmmaking team behind Sundance Film Festival favorite THE PUFFY CHAIR, CYRUS takes an insightful and funny look at love and family in contemporary Los Angeles. trailer

Final days for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Ends Tuesday July 20

Summer Movie Classics for Wednesday July 21: The original 3-D movies from 1953: The Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space.  And you certainly won’t want to miss Episode 9 of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Fighting the Fire Dragon when Aura has Flash drugged to make him lose his memory.

Ends Thursday, July 15. Don’t miss this audience favorite and Sundance Award winner!  Ree Dolly (played by Louisville native Jennifer Lawrence), is a teen-ager in backwoods Missouri whose father has skipped out on bond after being arrested for cooking methamphetamine. Now he’s disappeared – and he’s put up the family home and property as collateral. So Ree must track down her father to keep her family from becoming homeless. But she faces a culture of silence among the drug-addled and drug-dealing crews, who also happen to be related to her – but who threaten her nonetheless.

The film is unusual in its willingness to focus on characters living below the poverty line, without making poverty – or drug addiction – the focus of the film. trailer

Anyone worried about the fate of Bella, Edward, Jacob and the rest of the “Twilight” gang after the moody blues of movie No. 2 can breathe a sigh of relief. “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is back with all of the lethal and loving bite it was meant to have: The kiss of the vampire is cooler, the werewolf is hotter, the battles are bigger and the choices are, as everyone with a pulse knows by now, life-changing.

“Roman Holiday” is this week’s Summer Classic Movie on Wednesday, July 14, 1:30 and 7:15. Audrey Hepburn earned an Oscar for this, her first major film role, starring with Gregory Peck. The film includes many unscripted moments as the cameras rolled after the take ended, catching the two stars as they joked and kidded with each other. 

In 1999, Roman Holiday was selected for preservation in the  National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

And you won’t want to miss Episode 8 of “Flash Gordon: Tournament of Death” when Ming forces Flash to fight against a masked opponent, and then a vicious orangopoid! Can our hero hope to survive until next week?

Friday, June 25:

Winter’s Bone Held Over. This film is drawing rave reviews. See previous blog entry for details.

Opening Friday:

Mother and Child, starring Annette Benning, Naomi Campbell and Samuel Jackson. This is an unconventional family drama that centers on the subject of adoption. It shows the effects of giving away a child as well as the highs and lows of bringing one into your life. Without being too preachy or sentimental the film examines what really makes a family. Is it blood ties or emotional relationships? trailer

Also Opening Friday for 5 days only:

In Dream Boy, Nathan is an intelligent, but shy, adolescent boy, who wants to escape from his abusive and violent father and fantasizes about a relationship with Roy, the boy who lives next door. Gradually the boys start talking and their relationship deepens and becomes sexual. Drunk one evening, Nathan’s father tries to molest him. This is clearly not the first time it has happened and helps explain Nathan’s desire to escape from his family. His mother avoids the issue, although she knows what is going on. Nathan feels that he has to hide both this abuse and his secret love for Roy from everyone. trailer

Tuesday June 29 at Midnite: Lexington Premiere of  The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Tickets go on sale Saturday.

Wednesday, June 30: Summer Classics Series presents Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick in Ilia Kazan’s Wild River. A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man’s love affair with that woman’s widowed granddaughter.

And of course Episode 6 of Flash Garden: Flaming Torture where Dale pretends to fall in love with King Vultan in order to save Flash, Barin and Thun, who are put to work in the Hawkmen’s Atom Furnaces.

Winter’s Bone tells the story of Ree Dolly (played by Louisville native Jennifer Lawrence), a teen-ager in backwoods Missouri whose father has skipped out on bond after being arrested for cooking methamphetamine. Now he’s disappeared – and he’s put up the family home and property as collateral. So Ree must track down her father to keep her family from becoming homeless. But she faces a culture of silence among the drug-addled and drug-dealing crews, who also happen to be related to her – but who threaten her nonetheless.

The film is unusual in its willingness to focus on characters living below the poverty line, without making poverty – or drug addiction – the focus of the film. trailer