FILM CAPSULES CP
the hero. Wolfgang Petersen directs this 1984 family adventure film. 7:30 p.m. Wed., March 27. AMC Loews. $5
= CITY PAPER APPROVED
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BUBBA HO-TEP. After Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) secretly traded places with a lowbudget impersonator, he ended up in a rest home, forced to live out his days as a nobody. When things go weird at the home, Elvis bonds with another resident, an elderly black man who claims to be President John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis). Together they discover that a misplaced Egyptian mummy who eats souls to survive has made the home his personal Old Country Buffet. This 2003 film sounds cheesy, but director Don Coscarelli has created a surprisingly lowkey black comedy. Bubba wisely plays on the worst fears we all have: that our bodies will fail us, that the meaning of our lives will slip away, and our world will shrink to the dimly lit hallways of a shabby rest home. 7:30 p.m. Thu., March 28; 9:15 p.m. Fri., March 29; 5 p.m. Sat., March 30; and 4 p.m. Sun., March 31. Hollywood (AH)
NEW G.I. JOE: RETALIATION. The action-figureinspired ass-kicker is back and still waging a battle against Cobra. Expect big guns, explosions and not a lot of story. Jon M. Chu directs; Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson star. Starts Thu., March 28. THE HOST. Andrew Niccol directs this thriller, adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s novel, about a young woman (Saoirse Ronan) trying to prevent an unseen force that’s wiping out people’s memories. Starts Fri., March 29. LEONIE. Hisako Matsui’s recent film is a bio-pic of Leonie Gilmour, whose primary entry in the historical record was being the influential mother of renowned sculptor Isamu Noguchi. But the film doesn’t forefront this, instead choosing to highlight Gilmour’s remarkable life as a protofeminist, educator and free spirit in the early 20th century. Despite a few confusing jogs in time, the story follows Gilmour (Emily Mortimer) from her Bryn Mawr education through her marriage to Japanese poet Yonni Noguchi (whose work she edited) to her struggles as a divorced, single mother in both California and Japan. Matsui makes the most of what appears to be a small production budget, even finding occasional moments of lyricism, and the capable Mortimer elevates the occasionally trite script. In English, and Japanese, with subtitles. 7 p.m. Fri., March 29; 3 p.m. Sat., March 30; and 1 p.m. March 31. Hollywood, Dormont (Al Hoff)
Lore
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LORE. After all these years and all these films, it seems remarkable that someone could deliver a new angle on World War II, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But Cate Shortland’s quietly devastating coming-of-age story, adapted from Rachel Seiffert’s novel The Dark Room, is just that. As the Allies take Germany, a 15-year-old girl named Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) confronts a hard reality: Her high-ranking SS parents have been arrested, and she must escort her four younger siblings on a cross-country journey to an aunt in Hamburg The formerly privileged Hitler Youth kids set off across a country reeling from defeat, a place
of privation, danger, anger and confusion. Food and comfort have a price — if not a financial and sexual one, then a post-war reality-check. One shelter provides food only after displaced Germans examine photos of concentration-camp victims. Lore’s struggles are further complicated when a strange young man joins the rag-tag family. Shortland’s feature is smartly filmed, and relates its story in a low-key but potent manner. (It’s summertime, and the film matches the horrors of a war-torn country with the nature’s inevitable beauty.) Rosendahl gives an assured performance: She deftly navigates Lore’s tumultuous interior journey, which careens between pride, fear, horror, betrayal and even sexual awakening. Few escape the effects of the war, and while some outcomes were clearly worse than hers, Lore’s re-ordered and re-assessed life is still a bitter pill. In German, with subtitles. Starts Fri., March 29. Manor (AH)
THE MAN WHO SOULED THE WORLD. Mike Hill’s 2007 documentary recounts the story of Steve Rocco, who helped develop skateboard culture’s DIY scene in the early 1990s. Presented by local skate shop Scumco & Sons. 7:30 p.m. Sat., March 30. Melwood. $5.
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NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Arguably, George Romero’s locally produced, low-budget 1968 nail-biter started American filmmakers’ late-20thcentury fascination with zombies. Romero’s depiction of flesh-munching was ground-breaking for its time, but what really makes this horror flick resonate still is its nihilism and sense of futility: No heroes, no easy resolutions — something terrible is just outside the door, and it’s gonna get us. Midnight, Sat. March 30. Manor (AH) MARNIE. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 thriller about a thief named Marnie (Tippi Hedren), who has some serious psycho-sexual issues, and the man (Sean Connery) who pursues her, concludes a Sunday-night series of Hitchcock films. Less seen than Vertigo, but similarly weird vis-à-vis memory and mental health. 8 p.m. Sun., March 31. Regent Square
NO. In 1988 Chile, a man comes up with an advertising campaign to sway voters against Augusto Pinochet. Gael Garcia Bernal stars; Pablo Lorrain directs. In Spanish, with subtitles. Starts Fri., March 29. Manor STOKER. After the head of the Stoker family dies, his teen-age daughter, India (Mia Wasikowska), and his chilly wife (Nicole Kidman) get a visit from his brother, the sort-of charming, sort-of creepy Charlie (Matthew Goode). Korean director Chan-wook Park’s first English-language film doesn’t have the outlandish brio of the best of his past work (like 2003’s Oldboy), but he definitely puts his mark on this slow-burner of a psychological thriller that peels the already-cracked veneer from a dysfunctional family. It’s handsomely filmed, with both amusing visual puns and some icky close-ups of bodily fluids. The story is something of a riff on Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. (The screenplay was written by Prison Break’s Wentworth Miller.) India is both repulsed by and attracted to the globe-trotting and sophisticated Uncle Charlie, and his presence completes her journey from child to adult, with plenty of disturbing mileposts at sex and violence. The film isn’t for everyone — it’s slow, melancholy and more a series of set pieces than a straightforward narrative. It also feels somewhat neutered compared to Park’s more in-your-face films. But for the patient viewer, it’s an intriguing 100 minutes, even if all its expertly rendered stray bits of malice and beauty never quite add up to a wholly satisfying work. AMC Loews, Manor (AH)
REPERTORY THE NEVERENDING STORY. A book leads a bullied boy into a fantasy land where he has a chance to be
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 03.27/04.03.2013
Leonie STEVE NICKS: IN YOUR DREAMS. Catch up with former Fleetwood Mac chanteuse Stevie Nicks as she collaborates on a new album with Dave Stewart, formerly of The Eurythmics. This documentary was co-directed by Nicks and Stewart. 7 p.m. Tue., April 2. SouthSide Works. $10 BLOOD IN THE MOBILE. When Danish filmmaker Frank Poulsen learns that rare-earth minerals used in his cell phone might be fueling destructive civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he investigates. Visits to the Finland HQ of the world’s largest cellphone supplier, Nokia, get the corporate run-around. But his off-the-grid trek to remote parts of eastern