What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Day Watch - Entry number two in the trilogy of films based on the best-selling Russian sci-fi/fantasy novels. The story is a classic one: the forces of light and good vs. the forces of darkness and evil. The movies are a huge hit in Russia, and are supposedly loaded with awesome special effects and thrilling action. We hear they're pretty confusing, though, so you might want......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Most Likely to Suck: Even Money - Lot of red flags on this one: it's an ensemble drama (ick), it's a message film (ugh!), AND it's about a seemingly unrelated group of people whose lives all end up intersecting (argh!!). And, indeed, the news from the tomatoes is not good. It may star Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, Kelsey Grammer, Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker, and Jay Mohr,......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend Paris Je T'Aime - A love letter to the city of love, taking the form of a series of vignettes that tell stories of unusual encounters in the various neighborhoods of the city, each directed by a different famous director (including the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven, and Walter Salles) and starring a different team of famous stars (including Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elijah......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Fay Grim - Even indie movies get sequels now. This is Hal Hartley's follow-up to Henry Fool, and it tells the story of the title character (played by indie darling Parker Posey), the mother of Henry's son, who ends up in the middle of espionage, conspiracies, and con-games when the CIA asks her to travel to Paris to retrieve Henry's property. Jeff Goldblum also stars. This......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. The Hip Hop Project - This documentary, produced by Bruce Willis and Queen Latifah, is about Kazi, a once-homeless teenager who now works with teenagers in New York City to craft hip hop songs from their personal lives as "a vehicle for self-development and personal discovery." Russel Simmons has helped to fund the Hip Hop Project, even, along with Bruce Willis, donating a recording studio......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. The Flying Scotsman - Apparently the long, slow process of Philadelphia Film Festival movies getting "real" releases has begun, as here's The Flying Scotsman, a Film Festival film that tells the true story of Graeme Obree, an untrained amateur who broke the world one-hour record on a bike in 1993 using a bike he built himself out of scrap metal and washing machine parts. Sounds like......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Most Likely to Rule: Into Great Silence - A documentary about the remote Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps, on the occasion of its opening its doors to the public for the first time since being founded by St. Bruno in 1084. The director adapted himself to the ascetic lifestyle of the monks and captured their lives here without voice-over, musical score, interviews, or archival......

What's new and/or interesting at Philly theaters this weekend. Philadelphia Film Festival - To those of us deep inside it, it feels like it's been going on for a long time now, but it's still here, and you've still got a chance to catch a lot of really cool movies this weekend. Click through for the schedule and detailed info on movies, times, and venues. After the Wedding - A Danish man running an orphanage......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Philadelphia Film Festival - We've mentioned this once or twice. It's here again! All kinds of movies at all kinds of venues around the city. Take a look at the website for more details. Most Likely to Rule: Grindhouse - There's not much we can say about this movie we haven't already said. It's an homage to the titular gritty, extreme '70s-era genre, and consists of......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. The Lookout - A down on his luck janitor at a bank ends up entangled in a plot to rob the place in this crime thriller starring the surprisingly talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the janitor, and Jeff Daniels as... somebody else. This is the directorial debut of screenwriter Scott Frank, who wrote the excellent Out of Sight. Sounds good! Trailer Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Avenue Montaigne - A beautiful young woman comes to Paris and ends up working as a waitress at a fashionable cafe on the titular street, which is the "city’s nexus for art, music, theater, and fashion." So her customers are all famous, rich, or trying to be famous or rich. But she's not really aware of this, and her honesty and naivety changes them, and in......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Starter for 10 - A romantic comedy set in '80s Britain, where a working class kid, along the way to achieving his dream of appearing on University Challenge (a TV quiz show), falls in love with his teammate and decides "to win her heart through his advanced general knowledge skills." Charles Dance and James McAvoy star. Can't say we're too interested in this one, but it......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. God Grew Tired of Us - What sounds like a pretty intense and interesting documentary about three young men, refugees of the civil war in Sudan in the '80s, trying to adapt to life in America, and understand the new culture they've been thrown into. Certainly worth a viewing if you're up for this kind of thing. Trailer Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse Most Likely......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Puccini for Beginners - The concept: an operatic screwball romantic comedy. A New York writer and opera addict (Elizabeth Reaser) gets dumped by her lesbian lover because she can't commit, and ends up starting secret relationships with two other people - a philosophy professor named Phillip and a girl who used to be straight named Grace (Gretchen Mol). Little does she know that Phillip and Grace......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Amazing Grace - The tagline ("Behind the song you love is a story you will never forget.") is absolutely awful, but the movie sounds like it might actually be pretty interesting. It's directed by Michael Apted, written by Steven Knight, and tells the true story (dramatized, of course) of the life of William Wilberforce, a British politician who successfully wages the first modern political campaign, and......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. The Italian - A Russian film - originally released there in 2005 but apparently only just now getting to screens in America - about a six-year-old orphan named Vanya living in a children's home run by a corrupt headmaster. An affluent Italian family is interested in adopting him, but he wants to find his birth mother, so he teaches himself to read, tracks down his mother's......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Breaking and Entering - Oh no! Another movie about three people whose lives intersect! Still, this one does sound rather intriguing, as it features Jude Law as a landscape architect who decides to start investigating the repeated thefts at his state-of-the-art offices in inner-city King's Cross (a seedy area of town he's trying to help rejuvenate), and ends up stumbling outside the confines of his familiar......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Most Likely to Rule: Becket - Not a new movie, but a classic award-winner from 1964 starring Peter O'Toole as King Henry II and Richard Burton as Thomas a Becket. Yes, it's an historical costume drama, but it's anything but boring. Burton and O'Toole are both amazing, and the story is intense and moving - Henry and Becket start out buddies, but when Henry appoints Becket......

What's new and/or interesting at Philly theaters this weekend. The Departed - This film came out quite a while ago, and we talked about it then, but we wanted to mention that it's being re-released this weekend, in a shameless attempt to drum up some more box office action based on its Oscar nomination. So if you didn't catch it before, and you're curious, now's your chance. Trailer Showing at: Ritz Five Blood and Chocolate......

What's new and/or interesting at Philly theaters this weekend. Most Likely to Rule: Venus - Peter O'Toole essentially plays himself - a veteran English actor - except as if he never really hit the big time, and as if he were lusting after his friend's grand-niece (which may or may not be based on reality). Hanging around with the young girl and teaching her about life makes him realize how little he really knows himself.......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Most Likely to Rule: Pan's Labyrinth - Ofelia and her pregnant mother move in with the girl's stepfather, a Fascist officer named Captain Vidal, in Navarra in post-Civil War Spain. As Vidal works to get rid of the rebels, Ofelia retreats into a fantasy world: a labyrinth behind the mill, which harbors a creature named Pan who claims to know her secret destiny. Directed by the......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Curse of the Golden Flower - Zhang Yimou does the epic period melodrama thing with Chow Yun Fat as the Emperor of 10th Century China, and Gong Li as the ailing Empress, who's been having an affair with her stepson. The plot summary (which you can read here) is quite complex, so we won't go into any more detail - suffice it to say there's lots......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Tideland - We really wanted to label this our Most Likely to Rule this week - we really did! It's the new movie from one of our favorite directors - Terry Gilliam. It's got on of our favorite actors, Jeff Bridges, as Noah, a burnt-out, drug-addicted rock star. It's even also got Jennifer Tilly - who's not really a very good actor, but we like her......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. The History Boys - Uncle Vernon from the Harry Potter movies (Richard Griffiths) plays a lovable history teacher attempting the impossible task of getting his unruly students into Oxford or Cambridge - but more important to him is that they become better, more rounded human beings. Adapted from the Broadway play by the playwright himself (Alan Bennett), and featuring the Broadway cast, this one looks like......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Candy - An Australian indie film adaptation of the novel of the same name starring Heath Ledger as a poet named Dan and Abbie Cornish as the title character, an art student who falls for Dan. To get closer to him, she starts taking heroin. "Their story becomes a love triangle - a boy, a girl, and a drug." We haven't read the book, but we've......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Mutual Appreciation - Read our review here. Trailer Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse Bobby - Using both archival and newly shot footage, Bobby tells the story of 22 different fictionalized characters (played by a host of Hollywood stars, including Harry Belafonte, Emilio Estevez [who also directs], Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, David Krumholtz, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy,......

What's new and/or interesing in Philly theaters this weekend. Fast Food Nation - We wouldn't have figured in a million years that someone would think to adapt an expose of the fast food industry into a fictional drama, but that is exactly what's happened here. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the writer/director of this odd film is oddball Richard Linklater who, judging by his filmography, will try anything once. We can't call ourselves a Linklater fan, but we're......

What's new and/or interesting at Philly theaters this weekend. American Hardcore - A documentary film adaptation of a book by Steven Blush, this is a look at the wave of popular and influential anti-establishment punk (is that redundant?) bands that arose during the Reagan era - including Minor Threat, The Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys. Awesome. We don't see how this could be bad. Trailer Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse Copying......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Driving Lessons - This looks like sort of a combination of Harold and Maude and Sunset Boulevard, starring Ronald Weasley. Well, okay, the actor's name is Rupert Grint, but when we saw him in the trailer, we just said, "Holy crap, it's Ron!" We have a feeling most people say that when they see him. Anyway, in this movie he plays a shy kid with an......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. Death of a President - What if George W. Bush were assassinated a year from now? That's the question this fictional documentary/political thriller answers, using new and archival footage. The reviews aren't that great, but it sounds like fun... Trailer Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse Little Children - The reviews for this one are great, but the synopsis makes us sick. Suburban malaise, blah blah......