Please Give
Kate (Catherine Keener) has a lot on her mind. There's the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store (and how much markup can she get away with?). There's the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There's the marriage problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) but sensing doubt nibbling at the foundations. And there's Kate's free—floating 21st century malaise—the problem of how to live well and be a good person when poverty, homelessness, and sadness are always right outside the door. Plus, there's the neighbors: cranky, elderly Andra (Ann Guilbert) and the two granddaughters who look after her (Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet). As Kate, Alex, and Abby interact with the people next door, with each other, and with their New York surroundings, a complex mix of animosity, friendship, deception, guilt, and love plays out with both sharp humor and pathos. Please Give is writer/director Nicole Holofcener's perceptive—and devastatingly funny—take on modern life's contradictions, good intentions and shaky moral bearings. "The tone is low-key but very funny. Yet, at the same time, the film also manages to have a sardonic edge."-Box Office Magazine. "Like Holofcener's previous pictures, Please Give derives its narrative energy less from a series of plotted incidents than from its keenly observed interplay of clashing personality tics and worldviews."-Variety. 90 min., Rated R.
Casino Jack and The United States of Money
This portrait of Washington super lobbyist Jack Abramoff—from his early years as a gung-ho member of the GOP political machine to his final reckoning as a disgraced, imprisoned pariah—confirms the adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. A tale of international intrigue with Indian casinos, Russian spies, Chinese sweatshops, and a mob-style killing in Miami, this is the story of the way money corrupts our political process. Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney once again wields the tools of his trade with the skill of a master. Following the ongoing indictments of federal officials and exposing favor trading in our nation's capital, Gibney illuminates the way our politicians' desperate need to get elected—and the millions of dollars it costs—may be undermining the basic principles of American democracy. Infuriating, yet undeniably fun to watch, Casino Jack is a saga of greed and corruption with a cynical villain audiences will love to hate. "Gibney is as good as it gets at making complicated political material come alive on screen."-Los Angeles Times. "Mr. Abramoff may be in prison, but there are no signs that his kind of high-powered lobbying, which one talking head describes as "legalized bribery," is a thing of the past."-New York Times. "Grade: A-. I don't know about you, but the moment I hear the word lobbyist, my brain glazes over. Casino Jack and the United States of Money woke my brain, and my outrage, right up."-Entertainment Weekly. 120 min.
The Secret in Their Eyes - Oscar Winner, Best Foreign Language Film
With The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentinean writer-director-editor Juan Jose Campanella has created a multi-layered and poignant thriller interweaving the personal lives of a state prosecution investigator and a judge, with a manhunt spanning twenty-five years. Recently retired criminal court investigator Benjamin (Ricardo Darin - from 'Nine Queens'), decides to write a novel based on a twenty-five year old unresolved rape and murder case, which still haunts him. Sharing his plans with Irene (Soledad Villamil), the beautiful judge and former colleague he has secretly been in love with for years, Benjamin's initial involvement with the case is shown through flashbacks, as he sets out to identify the murderer. But Benjamin's search for the truth will put him at the center of a judicial nightmare, as the mystery of the heinous crime continues to unfold in the present, testing the limits of a man seeking justice and personal fulfillment at last. "A deeply rewarding throwback to the unself-conscious days when cinema still strove to be magical."-Variety. "Although it is structured like a thriller...The Secret in Their Eyes is really a cautionary tale about the consequences of a life of too much apprehension and propriety."-Miami Herald. 127 min., Rated R.