Rueben's Ramblings

Based on information provided by the Box Office Mojo, Dark Horizons and some internet research, here are just some of the movies you can expect to see in the movie theatres in January:

The Best Offer
Opens: January 3

Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) is a solitary, cultured man whose reluctance to engage with others, especially women, is matched only by the dogged obsessiveness with which he practices his profession as a high-end antiques dealer. One day Virgil receives a phone call from a mysterious young heiress, Claire, who asks him to evaluate some family works of art. It will be the beginning of a relationship that will change his life forever. The cast includes Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland.

Hercules: The Legend Begins
Opens: January 10

In Ancient Greece 1200 B.C., a queen succumbs to the lust of Zeus to bear a son promised to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the king and restore peace to a land in hardship. But this prince, Hercules (Kellan Lutz of the Twilight Saga), knows nothing of his real identity or his destiny. He desires only one thing: the love of Hebe (newcomer Gaia Weiss), Princess of Crete, who has been promised to his own brother. When Hercules learns of his greater purpose, he must choose: to flee with his true love or to fulfill his destiny and become the true hero of his time. The cast includes Liam McIntyre (Spartacus), Johnathon Schaech (That Thing You Do) and Rade Serbedzija (Red Widow).

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Opens: January 17

Jack Ryan (Chris Pine), as a young covert CIA analyst, uncovers a Russian plot to crash the U.S. economy with a terrorist attack. The cast also includes Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh, Keira Knightley and Colm Feore.

The Nut Job
Opens: January 17

This animated film is set in fictional Oakton, following the travails of Surly (Will Arnett), a mischievous squirrel and his rat friend Buddy, who plan a nut-store heist of outrageous proportions and unwittingly find themselves embroiled in a complicated adventure. Additional voices will be provided by Brendan Fraser, Liam Neeson, Stephen Lang, Katherine Heigl, Sarah Gadon and Maya Rudolph.

Gimme Shelter
Opens: January 24

Street-wise, and only 16 years old, Apple (Vanessa Hudgens) has never had an easy life. Her mother, June Bailey (Rosario Dawson), an addict and prostitute, is verbally and physically abusive, and is grooming her daughter to follow in her footsteps. Apple knows the streets, alleys and motels like the back of her hand but wants more from her life. Apple runs away from her mother and tracks down her father whom she has never known, as he was only 19 when he got Apple’s mother pregnant. Apple begs her now Wall Street Broker father, Tom Fitzpatrick (Brendan Fraser), to take her in. In the few days under her father’s care, she learns she’s become pregnant by a kid from the streets she met on the train, who now wants nothing to do with her. She is forced to leave her father’s home because of her choice to give birth to the baby she is carrying. Apple runs away again, and is eventually taken under the wing of Father McCarthy (James Earl Jones), the chaplain of the local hospital after almost getting herself killed. He offers to let Apple live at a shelter for pregnant young women run by a spiritual woman named Kathy (Ann Dowd). It is here that Apple begins to tentatively interact with the other girls who are in the same predicament as she gradually begins to make a family for herself.

I, Frankenstein
Opens: January 24

Frankenstein’s monster, named Adam (Aaron Eckhart), having taken the surname of his creator, becomes involved in a war between two immortal clans in an ancient city. The cast includes Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck and Dexter), Miranda Otto and Jai Courtney.

Labor Day
Opens: January 31

Set in 1987 over the late summer holiday weekend, the film opens with divorced, depressed single mom Adele (Kate Winslet) clothes shopping with her 13-year-old son, Henry. They encounter a large, fearsome man who is bleeding badly, and against all judgment, they give him a ride to their home. The injured man is in fact an escaped convict from the local prison, and as the police search narrows, the mother and son gradually learn his true story and their options become more and more limited. The cast includes Josh Brolin, Tobey Maguire, Clark Gregg, J.K. Simmons and James Van Der Beek.

Movies coming out in February will be posted at the end of January.

Enjoy!

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Based on information provided by the Dark Horizons website and some internet research, here are just some of the movies you can expect to see in the movie theatres in December:

Inside Llewyn Davis
Opens: December 6

This film from The Coen Brothers is about a singer-songwriter navigating New York’s Greenwich Village during the 1960s. The cast includes Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman and Garrett Hedlund.

Khumba
Opens: December 6

A half-striped zebra named Khumba (Jake T. Austin) is born into an insular, isolated herd obsessed with stripes. Rumors that the strange foal is cursed spread and, before long, he is blamed for the drought that sets into the Great Karoo, except for Tombi (AnnaSophia Robb) his female zebra friend. When even his father (Laurence Fishburne), the leader of the herd, blames him for the lack of rain and the subsequent death of his mother (Anika Noni Rose), the outcast zebra leaves the confines of his home knowing that he cannot survive in the herd without all his stripes. Khumba ventures beyond the fence – vulnerable to the ferocious Leopard Phango (Liam Neeson), who controls the waterholes and terrorizes the animals in the Great Karoo. Khumba is rescued from an opportunistic wild dog (Steve Buscemi) by a quirky duo: a wildebeest, Mama V (Loretta Devine), and an ostrich, Bradley (Richard E. Grant). When a mystical mantis (Adrian Rhodes) appears to the foal, drawing a map to what could be interpreted as either water or stripes, the duo join Khumba on his quest in the hope that their own search for a safe waterhole is over.

Out of the Furnace
Opens: December 6

This is a thriller about two brothers living in a mill town in the economically depressed Rust Belt. After a cruel twist of fate puts the elder brother (Christian Bale) in prison, the younger (Casey Affleck) becomes involved with one of the most violent and ruthless crime rings in the Northeast. Once released, the older brother must choose between his own freedom, or risk it all to seek justice for his family. The cast includes Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson and Willem Dafoe.

Saving Mr. Banks
Opens: December 13

This film is about the fourteen-year courtship by Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) to persuade Australian author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to sell him the film rights to her book “Mary Poppins”. Travers’ book was highly personal, and reflected hardships in her own life and her relationship with her alcoholic father (Colin Farrell) who died when she was seven and living in rural Queensland. Disney finally persuaded her to let him make the film, though she was prickly all the way to the end. The story will switch between three time periods – Travers’ childhood in 1907, the negotiations with Walt in the 1940’s and 1950’s and the making of the film in the 1960’s. The cast includes Ruth Wilson, Rachel Griffiths, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzmann, B.J. Novak, Kathy Baker and Paul Giamatti.

The Last Days on Mars
Opens: December 6

A small colony of astronaut explorers from all nations on Earth succumb one by one to a mysterious and terrifying unknown life form while gathering specimens on Mars. The cast includes Live Schreiber, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas and Olivia Williams.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Opens: December 13

The next film in the prequel trilogy will follow where the first left off, covering the Misty Mountains, the second film is expected to deal with a lot of what remains in the book – the Mirkwood spiders, the Wood-elves dungeon, the barrel sequence, Laketown, Bilbo entering Smaug’s lair, and the dragon itself. The cast includes Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, Evangeline Lilly and Bill Connolly.

Her
Opens: December 20

The story follows a lonely writer who develops an unlikely romantic relationship with his newly-purchased Siri-esque operating system that’s designed to meet his every need. The cast includes Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams Olivia Wilde, Rooney Mara and Samantha Morton.

47 Ronin
Opens: December 25

The story follows a group of outcast samurai who seek vengeance upon the treacherous warlord who slaughtered their master. Keanu Reeves, playing a half-Brit/half-Japanese man, leads a Japanese cast that includes Hiroyuki Sanada, Kou Shibasaki, Tadanobu Asano and Rinko Kikuchi.

August: Osage County
Opens: December 25

This film is an adaptation of the Tracy Letts Pulitzer Prize-winning play that is a dark comedy focuses on an extended Oklahoma family that comes together when the patriarch goes missing and is found a few days later having committed suicide. The cast includes Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Grudge Match
Opens: December 25

Two retired Pittsburgh boxers Billy “The Kid” McDonnen (Robert De Niro) and Henry “Razor” Sharp (Sylvester Stallone), have a thirty years old grudge which hasn’t subsided yet. It revolves around the fact that Razor had retired the night before the match for the title thus destroying both of their careers. Now they have an opportunity to get the score even with one last match, in which they both have their respective interest to participate in, but the one in common is getting the score even. However, it will be hard to keep calm with all the popularity the match got with social networks and with the training they both gave up long ago. The cast includes Alan Arkin, Kevin Hart, Jon Bernthal and Kim Basinger.

Labor Day
Opens: December 25

Kate Winslet plays depressed single mom Adele who, along with her son Henry (Dylan Minnette), offer a wounded drifter (Josh Brolin) a ride. As police search town for an escaped convict, the mother and son gradually learn his true story as their options become increasingly limited. Over the holiday weekend, he ultimately teaches Henry important life lessons, along with helping Adele come out of her shell. The cast includes Tobey Maguire, James Van Der Beek, Clark Gregg and Jacki Weaver.

The Invisible Woman
Opens: December 25

Based on the Claire Tomalin book, the affair between the then 45-year-old and married Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) and 18-year-old actress Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) was kept hush-hush due to the huge scandal it would have become if it had been made public. Even after Dickens’ separation from his wife, the relationship remained a secret. When Dickens died, Nelly married a man 12 years her junior and disguised her own age. The cast includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Hollander and Michelle Fairley.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Opens: December 25

The film is based on the 1947 Danny Kaye film which was based on a 1939 James Thurber short story. This take follows a quintessential daydreamer, a timid magazine photo manager (Ben Stiller), whose vivid imagination allows him to escape from the mundane constraints of his ordinary life. Things change though when his latest assignment sets him out on a true-life adventure to find an important film negative that has gone missing. The cast includes Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Shirley MacLaine and Patton Oswalt.

Lone Survivor
Opens: December 27

This film chronicles one of the most infamous failures among the U.S. Armed Forces in the Middle East; the Operation Red Wings June 2005 mission about a team of four men, SEAL Team 10, who were tasked with the mission of surveillance and reconnaissance of the notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shah. Just hours after insertion, the group fell into an ambush and three of the four were killed. A sixteen-man helicopter crew sent in to rescue them was subsequently shot down by a rocket propelled grenade. The operation lasted three more weeks as the bodies of the deceased were recovered and the only survivor, Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), was rescued. The cast includes Eric Bana, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster.

Movies coming out in January will be posted at the end of December.

Enjoy!

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