Your New Movie Releases for the weekend of May 11th, 2012

[Earende]

Happy Friday!

Dark Shadows
Director Tim Burton brings the cult classic series “Dark Shadows” to the big screen featuring an all-star cast, led by Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter.
In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet—or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive.
Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles.
Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth’s ne’er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Moretz); and Roger’s precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Haley, and David’s new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.
Burton is directing “Dark Shadows” from a screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith, story by John August and Grahame-Smith, based on the television series created by Dan Curtis. Also producing are Oscar® winner Richard D. Zanuck (“Alice in Wonderland,” “Driving Miss Daisy”), continuing his long association with Burton; Oscar® winner Graham King, (“Rango,” “The Departed”), continuing his collaboration with Depp; Johnny Depp, Christi Dembrowski, and David Kennedy. The executive producers are Chris Lebenzon, Tim Headington, and Bruce Berman.
The behind-the-scenes creative team includes cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, Oscar®-winning production designer Rick Heinrichs (“Sleepy Hollow”), Oscar®-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood (“Alice in Wonderland”) and editor Chris Lebenzon (“Alice in Wonderland”). The score is composed by Danny Elfman.

Hick
Small town teenager Luli escapes to Las Vegas, leaving behind her alcoholic and abusive parents. Armed with her smarts, a pistol and pocket money, she hitchhikes her way west. Along the way, Luli crosses paths with Eddie , an unstable rebel with questionable motives and Glenda , a cocaine-snorting drifter on the run. Adapted from the critically acclaimed novel by Andrea Portes, this powerful story pulls you into a provocative world of drugs, seduction and murder.

Transit
A family on a road trip through the desert is stalked by criminals who stashed stolen money in their car.

The Cup
Born into a legendary racing family, jockeys Damien Oliver and his brother, Jason, were destined for greatness. However, tragedy strikes when Jason is in a deathly riding accident just days before the prestigious Melbourne Cup race. Damien considers bowing out of the race and wonders if he’ll ever ride again, but with the encouragement of famed Irish horse trainer Dermot Weld, he realizes that racing is the one way he can pay tribute to the memory of his beloved brother. In a moment that captured the attention – and the hearts – of the world, Damien and his horse Media Puzzle victoriously cross the finish line at the Melbourne Cup.

Dragon Eyes
In St. Jude, drug dealers and corrupt cops have destroyed an urban neighborhood. But newcomer, Hong, has the fighting skills and moral vision to save this town from itself.

God Bless America
On a mission to rid society of its most repellent citizens, terminally ill Frank makes an unlikely accomplice in 16-year-old Roxy.

Sleepless Night
A drug heist goes wrong, as one of the drug carriers escapes after stabbing the robbers, gets a glimpse of their faces. The two masked men are actually two police officers, who decided to plan the heist. Vincent, a lieutenant who now has a bad stab wound, ends up with a huge bag of coke. The bag of coke belongs to a powerful mob boss/nightclub owner named Jose, who kidnaps Vincent's son in hopes to reclaim his property. Vincent has until the end of the night to return the stash and save his son.

Girl in Progress
Grace (Eva Mendes) is a single mom. She is too busy juggling work, bills, and the very married Dr. Hartford (Matthew Modine), to give her daughter, Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez) the attention she desperately needs. When Ansiedad's English teacher, Ms. Armstrong (Patricia Arquette), introduces her students to classic coming-of-age stories, Ansiedad is inspired to skip adolescence and jump-start her life without mom. While Grace becomes preoccupied with the increasing affections of her co-worker (Eugenio Derbez), Ansiedad enlists the help of her loyal friend, Tavita (Raini Rodriguez), to plot her shortcut to "adulthood". But as her misguided plan unravels, Ansiedad and Grace must learn that sometimes growing-up means acting your age.

A Bag of Hammers
A comedy about two misfit best friends incapable of growing up, whose direction is tested by an abandoned child, worn beyond his years; together they invent the family they've always needed.

Barfi!
Barfii is a romantic and mystery movie in which Ranbir plays the role of a deaf and dumb person and Priyanka as a mentally-challenged girl.

Bonsai
A young writer recounts an earlier romance in hopes of attracting his new love interest.

Changing the Game
An epic tale about a bright young African-American male who rises from the ferocious and oppressive streets of North Philadelphia to being a shining star in the lucrative world of high finance at Wall Street's most prestigious firm. However, he soon finds that the white-collar world is filled with crime and death just like the drug-filled hood he left behind. His only chance of survival is to fully integrate a mysterious gift from a slain childhood friend fully into the fabric of his character.

El Gringo
A man crossing into Mexico with a satchel of $2,000,000, and a bloody past, finds himself under sudden attack in the sleepy town of El Fronteras.

I Wish
Twelve-year-old Koichi lives with his mother and retired grandparents in Kagoshima, in the southern region of Kyushu, Japan. His younger brother Ryunosuke lives with their father in Hakata, northern Kyushu. The brothers have been separated by their parents’ divorce and Koichi’s only wish is for his family to be reunited. When he learns that a new bullet train line will soon open, linking the two towns, he starts to believe that a miracle will take place the moment these new trains first pass each other at top speed. With help from the adults around him, Koichi sets out on a journey with a group of friends, each hoping to witness a miracle that will improve their difficult lives.

Nesting
When a thirty-something couple set aside the home furnishings catalogue and decide to rekindle their relationship, they return to their old neighborhood and end up squatting illegally in their twenty-something lives.

Nobody Else But You
A French mystery drama about a crime novelist (Jean-Paul Rouve) investigating a cold case murder of a beautiful model (Sophie Quinton) who believed she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. As the writer dives deeper into the mystery of the woman's death, he finds himself caught in her world.

Otter 501
A wild otter separated from her mother gets a second chance as she is released back into the wild.

Philly Kid
A former NCAA champion wrestler is paroled after 10 years in prison. Now, to save a friend's life, in a series of cage fights he must agree to do the impossible - lose.

Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish
Eve Annenberg's gritty, funny new feature stars predominantly non-actor twenty somethings who grew up speaking Yiddish as a first language in Brooklyn. This is possibly the first narrative film acted by both men and women in this much spoken, colloquial Yiddish in over seventy years.

Small, Beautifully Moving Parts
When technophile Sarah Sparks (Anna Margaret Hollyman) becomes pregnant, her uncertainties about motherhood trigger an impulsive road trip to the source of her anxiety: her long-estranged mother living far away and off-the-grid. Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson co-direct this comic coming-of-parenthood tale for the internet age.