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OTHER OPENING FILMS PRESENTS Bring The
Blue is the Warmest Color
TYLER PERRY MADEA CHRISTMAS
Tyler Perry’s Madea takes on Christmas when she is asked by her niece Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) to spend the holiday in her daughter Lacey’s small town. Lacey (Tika Sumpter) is afraid that her mother will resent her decision to secretly marry a white boy (Eric Connor) and, instead of confessing the marriage, tells her that Connor is just a simple farmhand. When the farmhand’s folks come to visit, comedic misunderstandings follow, as Madea attempts to clear things up with advice and her usual threats of violence. After all, nothing says “Christmas” like falling into cow poop and threatening to strangle someone repeatedly. (ER) PG-13
THE ARMSTRONG LIE
Few athletes have accomplished the sort of career faceplant performed by Lance Armstrong over the course of the past decade. The Texan went from winning seven consecutive Tour de Frances, convincing most of America to wear yellow rubber bracelets for a cause they didn’t necessarily understand, to essentially becoming Voldemort on a bicycle. Director Alex Gibney began following Armstrong in 2008 when he was mounting a comeback and got rare access. Along the way, Armstrong tells lie after lie about his performance-enhancing drug use, fooling a public that — as Gibney points
NEBRASKA
Finding a Publishers Clearing House envelope stating that he’s won a million bucks, Woody Grant, a reckless, lonely boozer played by 77-year-old Bruce Dern, heads out from Montana to Nebraska to claim his fortune. He takes along his skeptical son (a post-SNL Will Forte), who’s humoring him, as Woody tells everyone he knows that he’s become a millionaire, gathering clingy new money-hungry friends along the way. Payne (Sideways, The Descendants, Election) shot the film in black and white, adding its already present sense of despair. (MB) R
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
At 15, Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is hungry for something more. Her voracious appetite mirrors an emptiness in her heart as she desperately craves a first love that is unfulfilled by handsome male classmates. Falling in with older, blue haired Emma (Léa Seydoux) is as easy as breathing, as the film chronicles their decade together. Intense and complicated as first love often is, Adèle finds herself lost in Abdel Kechiche’s epic three-hour drama about the tragedies and triumphs of romance. At Magic Lantern. (ER) NC-17
NOW PLAYING 12 YEARS A SLAVE
Based on his autobiography, this film tells the story of Solomon Northup, the free man turned slave in pre-Civil War U.S. It’s a heart wrenchingly amazing story about a man conned into slavery despite being a free citizen and his desperate fight for freedom. Chitewel Ejiofor finally gets center stage, but the film also features an all-star cast including Brad Pitt and Paul Giamatti. Definitely a powerfully artsy take on an old subject. (KS) Rated R
ALL IS LOST
We never learn the name of the grizzled yachtsman (Robert Redford) whose eightday fight to survive on the open sea is chronicled in J.C. Chandor’s magnificently primal All Is Lost. After all, how in the world are we supposed to sympathize with our soggy protagonist if we don’t know details about a rift with his daughter, or a childhood trauma he needs to overcome, or even why he’s sailing alone in the middle of nowhere? At Magic Lantern (SR) Rated PG-13
Whole Family!
out — may have wanted to be fooled all along. (MB) R
at the
BING CROSBY THEATER
THE BOOK THIEF
When the Markus Zusak bestseller The Book Thief came on the scene in 2005, it was only a matter of time before a movie studio gobbled it up. Told from the perspective of the young girl Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) who goes to live with a foster family during WWII (Emily Watson, Geoffrey Rush), the film depicts one family’s fight to stand up against the Nazis. (LJ) Rated PG-13
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
The true story of the Vermont cargo ship captain who delivers food and water to Africa, and whose ship is hijacked by Somali pirates is both a nail-biter and a fascinating character study, mostly centering on the relationship between the cool, calm captain (Tom Hanks) and the determined but unsure pirate leader Muse (newcomer Barkhad Abdi). The adventure parts are thrilling, the attack and takeover is unnerving, the lifeboat sequences are claustrophobic. (ES) Rated PG-13 ...continued on next page
WED, DEC. 18th, 2013 PRE SHOW: 6:30pm | SHOW STARTS: 7:00pm
AN ALL-AGES EVENT
TICKETS $5
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Benefiting DECEMBER 12, 2013 INLANDER 51