Your New Movie Releases for the Weekend of December 16th, 2011

[Earende]

Here are the new movies being released in theaters near you!!!!

Enjoy!!!!

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) has always been the smartest man in the room...until now. There is a new criminal mastermind at large—Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris)—and not only is he Holmes’ intellectual equal, but his capacity for evil, coupled with a complete lack of conscience, may actually give him an advantage over the renowned detective. When the Crown Prince of Austria is found dead, the evidence, as construed by Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan), points to suicide. But Sherlock Holmes deduces that the prince has been the victim of murder—a murder that is only one piece of a larger and much more portentous puzzle, designed by Professor Moriarty. The cunning Moriarty is always one step ahead of Holmes as he spins a web of death and destruction—all part of a greater plan that, if he succeeds, will change the course of history.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked
The vacationing Chipmunks and Chipettes are turning a luxury cruise liner into their personal playground, until they become 'chipwrecked' on a remote island. As the 'Munks and Chipettes try various schemes to find their way home, they accidentally discover their new turf is not as deserted as it seems.

The Descendants
From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning SIDEWAYS, set in Hawaii, The Descendants is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.

The Iron Lady
The Iron Lady is a surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep), the first and only female Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. One of the 20th century’s most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.

Carnage
A showdown between two kids: about eleven, in a local playground. Swollen lips, broken teeth… Now the parents of the “victim” have invited the parents of the “bully” to their apartment to sort if out. Cordial banter gradually develops a razor-sharp edge as all four parents reveal their laughable contradictions and grotesque prejudices. None of them will escape the ensuing carnage.

The Flowers of War
In 1937, Nanking stands at the forefront of a war between China and Japan. As the invading Japanese Imperial Army overruns China’s capital city, desperate civilians seek refuge behind the nominally protective walls of a western cathedral. Here, John Miller (CHRISTIAN BALE), an American trapped amidst the chaos of battle and the ensuing occupation takes shelter, joined by a group of innocent schoolgirls and thirteen courtesans, equally determined to escape the horrors taking place outside the church walls. Struggling to survive the violence and persecution wrought by the Japanese army, it is an act of heroism which eventually leads the seemingly disparate group to fight back, risking their lives for the sake of everyone. Through treacherous surroundings and facing unimaginable evil, THE FLOWERS OF WAR, inspired by true life events, manages to tell a genuine story of hope, love and sacrifice. With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, fate always has a way of bringing the most unlikely heroes together.
Adapted from Geling Yan’s historical novel 13 Flowers of Nanjing (Harvill Secker / Random House; 2012), THE FLOWERS OF WAR stars Academy Award winning actor Christian Bale (The Fighter; The Dark Knight) as John Miller, an American trapped within the besieged city of Nanking when it is invaded by the Japanese Army. The ensemble includes 13-year-old Zhang Xinyi, here in her first film role as Shu, an innocent school girl who along with her fellow classmates is taken under Miller’s protective wing.

Footprints
From award-winning writer Steven Peros, author of the play and screenplay for The Cat’s Meow (directed by Peter Bogdanovich) and twice-published Samuel French playwright, comes Footprints, a haunting, hopeful and unforgettable mystery. The film chronicles a young woman’s journey of discovery in one day, from sunrise to sunset.
Sybil Temtchine (Ten Benny, Passion of Ayn Rand) stars as a young woman who wakes up at dawn on the footprints and handprints of the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood with no idea who she or how she got there. Upon awakening, she wonders if she isn’t, in fact, lost in a dream. And perhaps she is…
Regardless of whether she is dreaming or wide awake, Our Gal sets off on her journey, from one person to the next, one famous locale after the other. Among the Hollywood fringe denizens with whom she comes into contact are a pair of tour guides (Charley Rossman, John Brickner), two super hero impersonators (Catherine Bruhier, Riley Weston), a Scientology auditor (Joe Roseto), and a memorabilia shop owner (R.J. Cantu). She also finds herself disquietingly followed by a Stranger (Kirk Bovill) who may be real or a figment of her unsteady imagination.
Although her feet only fleetingly leave Hollywood Boulevard, by sundown Our Gal will piece together the revelatory truth about her existence and the reason for her awakening, forcing her to make choices that will literally result in either her life… or death.
In their heart-breaking portrayals of two veterans of the boulevard and all it represents, Footprints marks the return to the big screen of The Searchers’ Pippa Scott and H. M. Wynant (The Twilight Zone, Sam Fuller’s Run of the Arrow, Budd Boetticher’s Decision at Sundown).

Cook County
Xander Berkeley, Anson Mount, and Ryan Donowho explode on the screen in this visceral tale about three generations of meth addicts living in the piney woods of East Texas. Living in a small town and amongst a house full of crystal meth abusers, seventeen year-old Abe (Donowho) wrestles to beat an addiction to meth and struggles to protect himself and his young niece from an abusive Uncle Bump (Mount). When Sonny (Berkeley) returns home from prison seeking redemption from his son, Abe, the two must navigate the treacherous waters created by Bump, who will do almost anything to maintain a dangerous lifestyle fueled by crystal meth. The tension and suspense build up to an electrifying ending where harrowing choices are made by all three men leading each of them to a different fate. Unlike any other movie, Cook County unflinchingly tells a raw and real story of rural life where crystal meth dictates the family dynamic.