Movies Released December 7, 2007

"Grace is Gone" is a heart-wrenching drama about a young father (John Cusack) whose soldier wife has just been killed in Iraq. Rather than tell his two daughters the news, he decides to take them on a cross-country road trip to an amusement park. The story was inspired by a similar trip the film's director James C. Strouse made with his older brother and his two children several years ago.

Juno is a whip-smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker. With the help of her hot best friend Leah, Juno finds her unborn child a "perfect" set of parents: an affluent suburban couple, Mark and Vanessa, longing to adopt. Luckily, Juno has the total support of her parents as she faces some tough decisions, flirts with adulthood and ultimately figures out where she belongs.

Lyra Belacqua is an orphan who lives happily in Jordan College, Oxford, playing with local boys and terrorizing the professors. However, when Lyra overhears scholars discussing a plot against her uncle, Lord Asriel, centering on a mysterious substance called Dust, her curiosity is roused. Soon Lyra is in over her head as she uncovers a frightening plot and a whole new world of possibilities.

Hotshot Las Vegas gambler Jake Green is rarely allowed to play in the casinos because he's a winner. Jake has taken in so much money, in fact, that he's the only client of his accountant and older brother, Billy. Jake, Billy and their other brother Joe are invited to sit in on a private game. Crime boss and casino owner, Dorothy Macha is sitting in on the game, too. Though he's a terrible player he always wins because people are scared to lose to him. Jake not only beats Dorothy but insults the man. Macha puts out a hit on Jake, but Jake ends up working for and being protected by a pair of brothers, Avi and Zack, who are out to take Dorothy down.

In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion. On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Briony's vivid imagination. Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the educated son of the family's housekeeper, carries a torch for Briony's headstrong older sister Cecilia (Kiera Knightley). Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings; all it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust. When it does, Briony - who has a crush on Robbie - is compelled to interfere, going so far as accusing Robbie of a crime he did not commit. Cecilia and Robbie declare their love for each other, but he is arrested - and with Briony bearing false witness, the course of three lives is changed forever. Briony continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination, she finds the path to her uncertain atonement, and to an understanding of the power of enduring love.