September 2008 Movies

The life of an anonymous assassin takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. Joe (Nicolas Cage), a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat. He hires Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a street punk and pickpocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment. Strangely, Joe, the ultimate lone wolf, instead finds himself mentoring the young man while simultaneously being drawn into a tentative romance with a local shop girl. As he falls further under the sway of Bangkok's intoxicating beauty, Joe begins to question his isolated existence and let down his guard... just as Surat decides it's time to clean house.

Longboarding soul-surfer Steve Addington returns to Malibu for the summer to find his cool hometown vibe corrupted. New sponsorship demands Addington to expand into Virtual Reality Video Games and Reality TV. Unwilling to participate in this new digital-reality, he chooses to spend his summer surfing his home break. But in a twist-of-fate, the waves go flat and stay flat. Out of money, his expense-accounts canceled, and betrayed by his buddies, Addington is backed into a harsh corner. He must endure the insanity that comes with no waves or give into "the Man" and his new, reality-altering machines. Aided by his manager, his mentor, his guardian-angel and his summer lover, Addington has a chance of keeping his cool, but it's not going to be easy. The dude needs a wave, and there's never been a drought like this.

Paralyzed by learning disabilities, recovering alcoholic Jeff Nichols (Scott) is trying his darndest to figure who he is and how he's supposed to live his life... and nothing seems to be working.

A traumatized woman is questioned by a policeman and a psychiatrist about three stories that involve her and two of her female friends from childhood.

"The Women" tells the story of Mary Haines (Meg Ryan), a clothing designer who seems to have it all – a beautiful country home, a rich financier husband, an adorable 11-year-old daughter and a part-time career creating designs for her father's venerable clothing company. Her best friend, Sylvie Fowler (Annette Bening), leads another enviable life – a happily single editor of a prominent fashion magazine, a possessor of a huge closet of designer clothes and a revered arbiter of taste and style poised on New York's cutting edge. But when Mary's husband enters into an affair with Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), a sultry 'spritzer girl' lurking behind the Saks Fifth Avenue perfume counter, all hell breaks loose. Mary and Sylvie's relationship is tested to the breaking point while their tight-knit circle of friends, including mega-mommy Edie Cohen (Debra Messing) and author Alex Fisher (Jada Pinkett-Smith), all start to question their own friendships and romantic relationships as well.

Wealthy socialite Charlotte Cartwright and her dear friend Alice Pratt, a working class woman of high ideals, have enjoyed a lasting friendship throughout many years. Suddenly, their lives become mired in turmoil as their adult children's extramarital affairs, unethical business practices and a dark paternity secret threaten to derail family fortunes and unravel the lives of all involved. Alice's self-centered newlywed daughter Andrea is betraying her trusting husband Chris by engaging in a torrid affair with her boss and mother's best friend's son William. While cheating on his wife Jillian with a string of ongoing dalliances with his mistress Andrea, William's true focus is to replace the COO of his mother's lucrative construction corporation. Meanwhile, Alice's other daughter Pam, a kind but no nonsense woman married to a hard working construction worker, tries to steer the family in a more positive direction. While paternity secrets, marital infidelity, greed and unsavory business dealings threaten to derail both families, Charlotte and Alice decide to take a breather from it all by making a cross-country road trip in which they rediscover themselves and possibly find a way to save their families from ruin.

A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. CIA agent Osborne Cox decides to pen his memoirs and is fired from the agency. The disc containing the memoirs inadvertently gets left in a ladies locker room at a gym, where Linda and co-worker Chad, hatch a plan to sell its contents to the highest bidder.

A pair of veteran New York City police detectives are on the trail of a vigilante serial killer. After 30 years as partners in the pressure cooker environment of the NYPD, highly decorated Detectives David Fisk and Thomas Cowan should be ready for retirement, but aren't. Before they can hang up their badges, they are called in to investigate the murder of a notorious pimp, which appears to have ties to a case they solved years before. Like the original murder, the victim is a suspected criminal whose body is found accompanied by a four line poem justifying the killing. When additional crimes take place, it becomes clear the detectives are looking for a serial killer, one who targets criminals that have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. His mission is to do what the cops can't do on their own--take the culprits off the streets for good. The similarities between the recent killings and their earlier case raise a nagging question: Did they put the wrong man behind bars?

Set in the Old West territory of New Mexico, "Appaloosa" revolves around a pair of hired guns (Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris) who come to clean up a dangerous town run by a ruthless, powerful rancher (Jeremy Irons) and his band of outlaws. While boldly bringing new order to the town, the two fearless lawmen meet a provocative outsider (Renée Zellweger) whose unconventional ways threaten to destroy their decade-old bond.

Taking place in the 1960s American South, Dakota Fanning plays Lewellen. a troubled 12-year old girl who finds solace from an abusive life through blues music. Blues music is delicately woven throughout this touching film to create a colorful tapestry of a melancholy life that finds release and healing through the music of Elvis Presley, whose character appears in the movie, albeit briefly, and the singing of the Blues.

In the comedy "Ghost Town," Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) is a man whose people skills leave much to be desired. When Pincus dies unexpectedly, but is miraculously revived after seven minutes, he wakes up to discover that he now has the annoying ability to see ghosts. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who pesters him into breaking up the impending marriage of his widow Gwen (Téa Leoni).

A playfully irreverent comedy with a new twist to the classic monster genre, "Igor" is the story of a mad scientist's hunchbacked lab assistant who has big dreams of becoming a scientist in his own right and winning the coveted first place award at the annual Evil Science Fair.

When guys get dumped, they hire Tank to take their ex-girlfriends out on the worst date of their lives--an experience so horrible it sends them running gratefully back to their beaus. So when Tank's best friend, Dustin, is dumped by his new girlfriend, Tank naturally offers to help out--and ends up meeting the challenge of a lifetime. Smart, beautiful and headstrong, Alexis is the first girl who knows how to call his bluff, and Tank soon finds himself torn between his loyalty to Dustin and his love for his best friend's girl.

A vibrant beauty and celebrity of her time is trapped in an unhappy triangle with her husband and his live-in mistress. She falls passionately in love with an ambitious young politician, and the affair causes a bitter conflict with her husband and threatens to erupt into a scandal.

In "Lakeview Terrace", a young couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) has just moved into their California dream home when they become the target of their next-door neighbor, who disapproves of their interracial relationship. A stern, single father, this tightly wound LAPD officer (Samuel L. Jackson) has appointed himself the watchdog of the neighborhood. His nightly foot patrols and overly watchful eyes bring comfort to some, but he becomes increasingly harassing to the newlyweds. These persistent intrusions into their lives ultimately turn tragic when the couple decides to fight back.

At work, inside burning buildings, Capt. Caleb Holt lives by the old firefighter's adage: Never leave your partner behind. At home, in the cooling embers of his marriage, he lives by his own rules. After seven years of marriage, Caleb and Catherine Holt have drifted so far apart that Catherine wishes she had never married. Neither one understands the pressures the other faces--he as firefighter and she as the public relations director of a hospital. Regular arguments over jobs, finances, housework, and outside interests have readied them both to move on to something with more sparks. As the couple prepares to enter divorce proceedings, Caleb's father challenges his son to commit to a 40-day experiment he calls "The Love Dare." Wondering if it's even worth the effort, Caleb agrees, but more for his father's sake more than for his marriage. When Caleb discovers the book's daily challenges are tied into his parents' newfound faith, his already limited interest is further dampened. While trying to stay true to his promise, Caleb becomes frustrated time and again. He finally asks his father, "How am I supposed to show love to somebody who constantly rejects me?" When his father explains that this is the love God shows to us, Caleb makes a life-changing commitment to love God. And--with God's help--he begins to understand what it means to truly love his wife. But is it too late to fireproof his marriage? His job is to rescue others. Now Caleb Holt is ready to face his toughest job ever--rescuing his wife's heart.

Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane), a woman with her life in chaos, retreats to the tiny coastal town of Rodanthe, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to tend to a friend's inn for the weekend. Here she hopes to find the tranquility she so desperately needs to rethink the conflicts surrounding her—a wayward husband who has asked to come home, and a teenaged daughter who resents her every decision. Almost as soon as Adrienne gets to Rodanthe, a major storm is forecast and Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) arrives. The only guest at the inn, Flanner is not on a weekend escape but rather is there to face his own crisis of conscience. Now, with the storm closing in, the two turn to each other for comfort and, in one magical weekend, set in motion a life-changing romance that will resonate throughout the rest of their lives.

When three very different U.S. soldiers find themselves on an unplanned road trip across America, they form a deep bond that may be the closest thing any of them has to real family. T.K. Poole, Colee Dunn and Fred Cheever arrive in New York from Germany only to find their connecting flights canceled due to a power outage. Anxious to get to their respective destinations, they agree to share a rented minivan to suburban St. Louis where Cheever is to reunite with his wife and teenage son. From there, the other two plan to fly to Las Vegas where the macho T.K. wants to make an important stop before seeing his fiancée and the tough yet naïve Colee plans to pay a visit to a fallen fellow-soldier's family. But, when Cheever's homecoming turns out to be a far cry from what he anticipated, the trio's one-day drive expands into an impromptu cross-country marathon. Along the way, they experience a string of surprising adventures ranging from the hilarious to the heartbreaking. As their interstate journey takes them from a barroom brawl to a high society dance to a bizarre Sunday morning church service, T.K., Colee and Cheever discover that home is not quite what they remembered and the unlikely companionship they've found in one another might be what matters most of all.

Jasira wants something she can't define: attention, love, acceptance or a normal life. Unfortunately, she doesn't know the right way to find it. When Jasira's mother exiles her to Houston to live with her strict, quick-to-anger Lebanese father, she quickly learns what aspects of herself to suppress in front of him. In private, however, she conducts her sexual awakening with all the false confidence that pop culture and her neighbor's magazines have provided. The result is a funny, dark, bold and harrowing look at the confusion and misguided exploration of youth in America's track houses, public schools and suburban wastelands.

Actor-turned-director Clark Gregg shows he is as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it with "Choke", a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida (Huston), in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who "save" him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father's identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny (Henke) and his mother's beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Macdonald), to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.

"Eagle Eye" is a race-against-time thriller starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Mackie and Billy Bob Thornton. Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) and Rachel Holloman (Monaghan) are two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, she pushes Jerry and Rachel into a series of increasingly dangerous situations – using the technology of everyday life to track and control their every move. As the situation escalates, these two ordinary people become the country's most wanted fugitives, who must work together to discover what is really happening – and more importantly, why.

Four soldiers from the army's Negro 92nd Division find themselves separated from their unit and behind enemy lines. Risking their lives for a country in which they are treated with less respect than the enemy they are fighting, they discover humanity in the small Tuscan village of St. Anna di Stazzema.

A talented-but-troubled rugby player must play against the team his father coaches at the national championship.