New this week at the Anacortes Cinemas: The Informant: Matt Damon is a slippery corporate whistler who fancies himself 0014 because he's "twice as smart as 007." Other major releases this weekend include Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Jennifer's Body & Love Happens, none of which is showing here...yet.
The Informant
Starring Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Melanie Lynskey, and Joel McHale
Matt Damon is anything but the glamorous. buffed-up hunk he has played in his previous films in The Informant!
And almost every critic comments on his metamorphosis into a bland,
paunchy (he reportedly gained 30 pounds for the movie), corporate
executive who blew the whistle on the Archer Daniels Midland
conglomerate while embezzling money from it in the process. Damon gets
high marks from critics. Carrie Rickey comments in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"Damon's performance is worth watching even as his character exhausts
us with half-truths and whole lies." "Matt Damon is goofy perfection,"
writes Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. "Matt Damon delivers comedic gold," says Peter Howell in the Toronto Star. It all works to the benefit of the film itself, Michael Sragow observes in the Baltimore Sun. "At its peak, it's a crackpot character comedy," he writes. And Ty Burr in the Boston Globe concludes: "That the movie works as well as it does is due to Matt Damon." RATING: R for language.
9
Starring Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, and Crispin Glover
The time is the too-near future. Powered and enabled by the invention known as the Great Machine, the world’s machines have turned on mankind and sparked social unrest, decimating the human population before being largely shut down.But as our world fell to pieces, a mission began to salvage the legacy of civilization; a group of small creations was given the spark of life by a scientist in the final days of humanity, and they continue to exist post-apocalypse. With their group so few, these “stitchpunk” creations must summon individual strengths well beyond their own proportions in order to outwit and fight against still-functioning machines, one of which is a marauding mechanized beast. While showcasing a stunning “steampunk”-styled visual brilliance, 9 dynamically explores the will to live, the power of community, and how one soul can change the world. RATING: PG-13 for violence and scary images.
Whiteout
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short, Tom Skerritt, Alex O'Loughlin, and Shawn Doyle
For U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, things are about to get even more dangerous. The only law enforcement in this unforgiving territory, she has just been sent to investigate a body on the ice. Antarctica's first homicide. A shocking discovery in itself, it will plunge her into an even more bizarre mystery and the revelation of secrets long-buried under the endless ice...secrets that someone believes are still worth killing for. As Stetko races to find the killer before he finds her, winter is already closing in. In the deadly Antarctic whiteout, she won't see him till he's a breath away. RATING: R for violence, grisly images, brief strong language and some nudity.
Inglourious Basterds
Starring Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Cloris Leachman, and Samuel L. Jackson
In the first year of the German occupation of France, Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa. Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, lieutenant Aldo Raine organizes a group of Jewish American soldiers to perform swift, shocking acts of retribution. Later known to their enemy as "the basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquis, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own. RATING: R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality.