2009 Least Anticipated Movies (Page #5)

The film centers on Nancy (Bello), an unhappy wife who, instead of committing suicide, meets a man (Liotta) over the Internet and hires him to kill her. Problems arise when they form a relationship.

Innovative director Spike Jonze collaborates with celebrated author Maurice Sendak to bring one of the most beloved books of all time to the big screen in "Where the Wild Things Are," a classic story about childhood and the places we go to figure out the world we live in. The film tells the story of Max, a rambunctious and sensitive boy who feels misunderstood at home and escapes to where the Wild Things are. Max lands on an island where he meets mysterious and strange creatures whose emotions are as wild and unpredictable as their actions. The Wild Things desperately long for a leader to guide them, just as Max longs for a kingdom to rule. When Max is crowned king, he promises to create a place where everyone will be happy. Max soon finds, though, that ruling his kingdom is not so easy and his relationships there prove to be more complicated than he originally thought.

Handyman and ex-con Arkin aims to repay a debt to his ex-wife by robbing his new employer's country home. Unfortunately for Arkin, a far worse enemy has already laid claim to the property - and the family. As the seconds tick down to midnight, Arkin becomes a reluctant hero trapped by a masked "Collector" in a maze of lethal invention - the Spanish Inquisition as imagined by Rube Goldberg - while trying to rescue the very family he came to rob.

Located deep in the heart of the "cursed land" of Transylvania in a centuries-old castle, Razvan University isn't your typical institution of higher learning -- and the black leather-clad professors, three-foot-tall dean, instruction in crucifix-wielding, and topless vampiresses lurking in dark corners are just the start.

In this high-octane sequel, hitman Chev Chelios' (Jason Statham) launches himself on an electrifying chase through Los Angeles in pursuit of the Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart.

Benjamin, home-schooled by his eccentric mother, is a loveable loner whose passion for writing leads him on an offbeat and hilarious journey as his story gets ripped off by the legendary novelist Ronald Chevalier and then is adapted into a disastrous movie by the small town's most prolific homespun filmmaker.

When five sorority girls inadvertently cause the murder of one of their sisters in a prank gone wrong, they agree to keep the matter to themselves and never speak of it again, so they can get on with their lives. This proves easier said than done, when after graduation a mysterious killer goes after the five of them and anyone who knows their secret...

The movie, which will mix archival footage and family memorabilia with fresh interviews, follows LeBron James' high school basketball days, following the five starters on the varsity team at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. The team travels a winding road from a rundown gymnasium to national glory and NBA riches, seeking to remain a tight-knit quintet even as James becomes a megamillionaire. James was drafted out of high school in 2003 and led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals in 2007. He becomes a free agent in 2010.

This is a story of boy meets girl, begins the wry, probing narrator of "500 Days of Summer", and with that the film takes off at breakneck speed into a funny, true-to-life and unique dissection of the unruly and unpredictable year-and-a-half of one young man’s no-holds-barred love affair.

Tom, the boy, still believes, even in this cynical modern world, in the notion of a transforming, cosmically destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer, the girl, doesn’t. Not at all. But that doesn’t stop Tom from going after her, again and again, like a modern Don Quixote, with all his might and courage. Suddenly, Tom is in love not just with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman – not that he minds any of that -- but with the very idea of Summer, the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world.

"Broken Embraces" is a four-way tale of amour-fou, shot in the style of '50s American film noir at its most hard-boiled, and will mix references to works like Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place" and Vincente Minnelli's "The Bad and the Beautiful," with signature Almodóvar themes such as Fate, the mystery of creation, guilt, unscrupulous power, the eternal search of fathers for sons, and sons for fathers.

See what happens when a family is torn apart by one sister’s selfishness and another sister’s refusal to let go of the lover of her life. All the while, Madea is in rare form and is determined to get and keep the family together.

In his most powerful performance to date, Ben Foster stars as Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army officer who has just returned home from a tour in Iraq and is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Partnered with fellow officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) to bear the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers, Will faces the challenge of completing his mission while seeking to find comfort and healing back on the home front. When he finds himself drawn to Olivia (Samantha Morton), to whom he has just delivered the news of her husband's death, Will’s emotional detachment begins to dissolve and the film reveals itself as a surprising, humorous, moving and very human portrait of grief, friendship and survival.

The action takes place on Halloween night, when a videostore clerk, Stan Helsing, must reluctantly save a town from the six most-feared monsters in cinematic history.

In the first year of the German occupation of France, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). 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 (Brad Pitt) 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 (Diane Kruger) 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....

The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa's underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

Body snatchers Arthur Blake and Willie Grimes have pillaged their last grave. With just five hours before Arthur follows Willie to the chopping block, he recounts his life story to Father Francis Duffy. It soon becomes clear that Blake and Grimes are no ordinary grave robbers. And through Arthur's story the priest learns that not all corpses are equal.

"Motherhood" is a bittersweet comedy that distills the dilemmas of the maternal state (marriage, work, self, and not necessarily in that order) into the trials and tribulations of one pivotal day. "Motherhood" forms a genre of one – no other movie has dedicated itself in quite this way to probing exactly what it takes to be a mother, with both wry humor and an acute sense of authenticity.