Description:

Based on the best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson this David Fincher-directed English-language remake of the recent Swedish-language release stars Daniel Craig in the lead role of Stockholm investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and relative newcomer Rooney Mara (The Social Network) as troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander.

Facing prison time for libel, discredited journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired by a reclusive and wealthy industrialist for one last job; to solve a long unresolved family disappearance.

Aided by the mysterious hacker, Lisbeth Salander, Blomkvist soon finds out that even the wealthiest families have skeletons in the closet as they uncover a dark world of brutality, deception and ritualistic murder.

The deeper they dig for the truth, however, the greater the risk of being buried alive by members of the family, who will go to great lengths to keep their secrets tightly sealed.

Description:

Director Simon Wincer (Free Willy, Phar Lap, Lonesome Dove and Into the West) brings to the screen this drama that centres on events surrounding the iconic annual Melbourne Cup horse race which is truly "the race that stops a nation".

Since its inception, great stories have emerged from this famous horse race, run each year on the first Tuesday in November, but none had a more extraordinary effect on the entire nation than the running of the 2002 Melbourne Cup.

In the wake of the Bali bombings less than three weeks earlier, Australians were seeking refuge in their most cherished tradition - The Cup. But a grieving jockey's courage in the face of his own loss, gave his countrymen far more than just a great race.

The final thrilling moments of this story will be forever etched in Australian folklore. The Cup is not just a story about horse racing; it's about triumph over adversity and that inner courage inside all of us.

Description:

The Metropolitan Opera New York season continues with this classic Charles Gounod-composed retelling of the Faust legend. With Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, René Pape as the devil, and Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite, the production couldn’t be better served.

Tony Award-winning director Des McAnuff updates the story to the first half of the 20th century with a production that won praise in London last season. A later run features two other first-tier Fausts: Roberto Alagna and Joseph Calleja, with Ferruccio Furlanetto stepping in as the devil. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts on the heels of his Don Carlo success.

Description:

In this sci-fi horror film, palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) travels to a desolate region of Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime as she joins a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extra-terrestrial ship buried in the ice.

Once there she discovers an organism that is thought to have died in the crash eons ago, but is about to wake up after a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison.

Now, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.

Description:

Inspired by the incredible true story of a courageous dolphin named Winter who was rescued off the Florida coast after her tail became caught in a crab trap, this family movie details her fight to survive and the group of compassionate people who banded together to help her when she needed human help most of all.

The film centres in particular on the unique bond between the injured dolphin and a young boy. After Winter loses her tail in the accident that almost killed her, her young friend convinces the locals to build her a prosthetic replacement, inspiring hope and courage in the local community as well as in handicapped people across the globe.

Description:

Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer returns with this remake of the 80’s big screen musical favourite which launched the career of Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer and Sarah Jessica Parker.

When city kid Ren (Kenny Wormald) and his family move from the East Coast to a small town Western town called Bomont he is dismayed to find his two real loves - dancing and music - have been banned due to the recent road deaths of 5 kids returning from a local dance.

Upholding the ban is the well-meaning Reverend Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid) with whose daughter Ariel (Julianne Bough) Ren soon finds himself smitten.

But when Ren dons his dancing shoes and begins to challenge the ban he and Ariel come up against some resistance from her father and the town council. Now, with prom coming up, Ren has to make a difficult choice – go head to head with the town elders to fight for the music he loves, or let the elders continue to repress the spirit of the town’s kids.

Description:

This thriller from first-time writer/director J.C. Chandor features an all-star cast including Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons and Stanley Tucci, and centres on events surrounding the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.

Investment-firm analyst Peter Sullivan (Star Trek’s Zachary Quinto who also co-produces) uncovers sensitive information that could easily plunge the entire business into peril, inadvertently destroying the lives and careers of his colleagues.

Over the course of the next 24 hours, Sullivan realizes that the decisions he makes will not only affect the employees of the firm, but the lives of everyday Americans from coast to coast as well.

Description:

Marley Corbett (Kate Hudson) is a vice-president at an advertising agency in New Orleans. Full of energy and surrounded by great friends including sassy gal pal Sarah and heavily pregnant Renee, Marley seems to have everything to live for with the possible exception of her perfect mate.

However, when a routine check-up at the local hospital reveals the shocking news that she has cancer her life is upended. Suddenly she has to face the possibility of impending demise and life takes on a whole new meaning.

As she sets about dealing with her illness, Marley is supported by her handsome doctor, Julian (Gael Gabriel Garcia), on whom she soon realizes she has an incurable crush. But just as she finds she may have met her soul mate, she discovers that the threat of falling in love may be scarier than death itself.

Description:

Bollywood meets South Africa in this fictionalised heist film from SA-director John Barker (Bunny Chow). In 1997, 31 million rand was stolen in the middle of the night from a cash holding facility in Pinetown, Durban.

Now 14 people are sitting in jail. But a few crooked cops from Chatsworth got away with it. And urban legend has it there was far more money at the deposit facility than was ever made public. This is the fictionalised story about corrupt Durban cop Rennie who has illusions of being above the criminal class, and who desperately wants to clean up his act.

Rennie is given the opportunity to go legit by a cash-in-transit guard... but only by orchestrating the biggest cash heist in South African history.

Description:

This play by John Hodge comes live from the stage of London’s National Theatre. It is set in Moscow in 1938. It was a dangerous place to have a sense of humour; even more so a sense of freedom.

Mikhail Bulgakov, living among dissidents, and stalked by secret police, has both. And then he’s offered a poisoned chalice: a commission to write a play about Stalin to celebrate his sixtieth birthday.

Inspired by historical fact, Collaborators embarks on a surreal journey into the fevered imagination of the writer as he loses himself in a macabre and disturbingly funny relationship with the omnipotent subject of his drama.

Collaborators will be showing exclusively at Cinema Nouveau theatres nationally on the 21, 22, 25 & 26 January 2012

Description:

When ex-biker-gang member Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) makes the life-changing decision to go to East Africa to help repair homes destroyed by civil war, he is outraged by the unspeakable horrors faced by the region's vulnerable populace, especially the children.

Ignoring the warnings of more experienced aid workers, Sam breaks ground for an orphanage where it's most needed — right in the middle of territory controlled by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a renegade militia that forces children to become soldiers before they even reach their teens.

But for Sam, it is not enough to shelter the LRA's intended victims. Determined to save as many as possible, he leads armed missions deep into enemy territory to retrieve kidnapped children, restoring peace to their lives — and eventually his own.

Description:

In this thriller drama from Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar (Volver, Bad Education) we meet eminent plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) who has been interested, ever since his wife was burned in a car crash, in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her.

After twelve years, he manages to cultivate a skin that is a real shield against every assault. In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed a further three things: no scruples, an accomplice and a human guinea pig. Scruples were never a problem. Marilia, the woman who looked after him from the day he was born, is his most faithful accomplice. And as for the human guinea pig...

Description:

The Underworld franchise continues with this fourth film, bringing the action horror hybrid franchise into 3D for the first time. Kate Beckinsale returns to the series after taking the third outing off.

In this film Selene escapes imprisonment to find herself in a world where humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans, and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both immortal species.

Description:

Based on the best-selling novel by Lionel Shriver, this psychological drama deals with the fallout experience by a tormented mother as she grapples with feelings of accountability and intense grief after her troubled 15-year-old son commits an act of violence that shakes their community to its very core.

Eva (Tilda Swinton) had a promising career when an unplanned pregnancy threw her life off-balance, though she selflessly put her own ambitions aside to give her son, Kevin, a good life. From the moment Kevin was born, there was a palpable tension between mother and son. Years later, as a teenager, Kevin (Ezra Miller) snaps.

As the community recoils from Kevin and his family, Eva begins to question whether or not she ever really loved her son in the first place. John C. Reilly co-stars.

Description:
Nicolas Cage stars as a high school teacher who bands with a group of vigilantes in order to avenge a violent crime against his wife in this thriller from director Roger Donaldson (The Recruit, The Bank Job). January Jones, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Carpenter and Lost’s Harold Perrineau round out the cast.

Description:

In this comedy, Tripp Kennedy (Patrick Dempsey) ambles into a bank near closing time, just as two different gangs unwittingly converge to rob it. A shoot-out erupts, and Tripp tackles the smart, pretty teller, Kaitlin (Ashley Judd), to protect her.

The gangs — one clearly made up of pros and the other a couple of buffoons — have deadlocked themselves in a Mexican standoff and the bank's security system starts the end-of-day lockdown and seals everyone into the building.

As the night evolves, a hilarious game of cat and mouse ensues as Tripp and Kaitlin try to save the day, escape being killed, and avoid falling in love... almost.

Description:

Brazil's toughest cop is out to stop some bad men in blue uniforms in this sequel to Jose Padilha’s international hit Tropa de Elite (aka Elite Squad).

Capt. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is the leader of Rio de Janeiro's BOPA Squad, a special police battalion designed to deal with critical situations. When a riot in a prison turns into a standoff between Nascimento and Fraga (Irandhir Santos), a left-wing activist married to Nascimento's ex-wife, things take a turn for the worse and Nascimento's superiors re-evaluate his position with the BOPA.

Rather than fire him, Nascimento is transferred to an intelligence gathering team, and he begins compiling evidence against Brazil's top drug lords. However, it turns out that criminals aren't Nascimento's only enemies; Col. Fabio (Milhem Cortaz), a high-ranking member of the military, is also running a drug-trafficking ring on the side, and Nascimento quickly learns just how corrupt Brazil's military and government officials really are.

Description:

This biodrama from director Clint Eastwood centres on one of the most controversial authority figures in US history. First Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) was the face of law enforcement in America for almost 50 years. His position gave him enormous power, causing him to become feared and admired, reviled and revered.

Power, however, often goes hand-in-hand with corruption, and behind closed doors, Hoover held secrets that would have destroyed his image, his career and his life.

Description:

Director Chris Gorak (Right at Your Door) teams with producer Timur Bekmambetov for this tense apocalyptic thriller centring on the fight for survival waged by five youths who find themselves stranded in Moscow during an alien invasion.

As the invisible extra-terrestrials absorb all of Earth's energy and life forms, finding a means of escaping the unstoppable attackers becomes a seemingly impossible task. Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby and Max Minghella star.

Description:

In this thriller drama from director Sean Durkin, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) is a young woman rapidly unravelling amidst her attempt to reclaim a normal life after fleeing from a cult and its charismatic leader (John Hawkes).

Seeking help from her estranged older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy), Martha is unable and unwilling to reveal the truth about her disappearance. When her memories trigger a chilling paranoia that her former cult could still be pursuing her, the line between Martha's reality and delusion begins to blur.

Description:

While on vacation in Los Angeles, Walter, the world's biggest Muppet fan, and his friends Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) from Smalltown, USA, discover that oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) plans to raze the Muppet Theatre so he can drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets' former stomping grounds.

To raise the $10 million needed to save the theatre, Walter, Mary and Gary stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever and help Kermit reunite the Muppets, who have all gone their separate ways: Fozzie now performs with a Reno casino tribute band called the Moopets, Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor at Vogue Paris, Animal is in a Santa Barbara clinic for anger management, and Gonzo is a high-powered plumbing magnate.

Directed by James Bobin and written by Segel and Nicholas Stoller, The Muppets features cameos by Zach Galifianakis, Billy Crystal, Jack Black, Alan Arkin and Jean-Claude Van Damme among others.

Description:

As law enforcement officers, Adam Mitchell, Nathan Hayes, and their partners are confident and focused. They willingly stand up to the worst the world can offer. Yet when they take off their badges at the end of the day, they face a challenge that none of them are truly prepared to tackle: fatherhood.

While they consistently give their best on the job, good enough seems to be all they can muster as dads. But they're quickly discovering that their standard is missing the mark. They know that God desires to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, but their children are beginning to drift further and further away from them.

Will they be able to find a way to serve and protect those that are most dear to them? When tragedy hits home, these men are left wrestling with their hopes, their fears, their faith, and their fathering. Can a newfound urgency help these dads draw closer to God ... and to their children?