L
DIANE LANE
 NIGHTS
IN RODANTHE: Diane Lane, Richard
Gere, James Franco, Scott Glenn, Christopher Meloni, Mae Whitman,
Viola Davis, Pablo Schreiber, Charlie Tahan, Austin James (Directed
by George C. Wolfe; Written by Ann Peacock and John Romano; Warner
Bros.) In “Unfaithful,” Adrian Lyne’s tense, sexy
2002 thriller, Diane Lane and Richard Gere were suitably shocking
as a cheating wife and her murderously vengeful husband. Now, in
an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ novel, they’re reteamed
as a straying wife and a brooding stranger who meet and mate at
a quaint Southern inn. She cheats because her loser of a husband
doesn’t seem to want her to stick around; he broods because
his estranged son--with whom he hopes to reconnect--considers him
a jerk. Will this couple ever make it out of the inn? Opens
10/3/08
JESSICA
LANGE
 GREY
GARDENS: Drew Barrymore, Jessica
Lange, Olivia Waldriff (Directed by Michael Sucsy; Written by Patricia
Rozema and Michael Sucsy; HBO Films) Little Edith Bouvier Beale
was Jacqueline Kennedy's cousin, and her mother, Big Edith Bouvier
Beale, was the First Lady’s aunt. At one time, the two Edies
lived sumptuously on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, but they ended
up in a squalid, raccoon-infested estate on Long Island. Thanks
to the intervention of Jackie, the East Hampton health department
did not carry through with its plan to raid the dump. But that didn’t
keep the messy eccentrics out of the headlines, and eventually they
became the subjects of “Grey Gardens,” a memorable 1976
documentary made by David and Albert Maysles. Now an expanded version
of their story that includes material on the young Jackie Bouvier
(portrayed by 8-year-old Olivia Waldriff) and covers Little Edie’s
late-blooming career as a nightclub chanteuse is headed your way.
Let us hope that Jessica Lange has more luck playing Drew Barrymore’s
mom than she did playing Christina Ricci’s in the wretched
“Prozac Nation.” Opening
date to be announced
FRANK LANGELLA
 FROST/NIXON:
Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell,
Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Patty McCormack, Toby
Jones, Jenn Gotzon, Rebecca Hall (Directed by Ron Howard; Written
by Peter Morgan; Universal) Richard Nixon may be the second worst
president the American public ever had to endure. In 1977--three
years after bidding a mortifying adieu to the White House, thereby
avoiding impeachment because of the Watergate scandal--he agreed
to appear in a series of televised conversations with British media
giant David Frost. Nixon learned too late that he should have played
harder to get; as it turned out, Frost stripped him bare, exposing
his soul for anyone who owned a television set to see. Fortunately,
Peter Morgan, author of the screenplay for “The Queen,”
decided to explore the confrontation between these two strong-willed
men in dramatic terms. The resulting play was a triumph in London
and on Broadway. Best of all, director Ron Howard had the smarts
to nail Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, the duo who brought Nixon
and Frost to riveting life on stage (Langella won a Best Actor Tony
for his take on Tricky Dicky). An unexpected bonus: Patty McCormack,
the kid who received an Oscar nomination for her playing of the
title role in the 1956 flick "The Bad Seed," plays the
long-suffering Pat Nixon this time out. To
read about other new movies based on plays, click
here. Opening date
to be announced
ALL
GOOD THINGS: Ryan
Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Directed
by Andrew Jarecki; Written by Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, Marcus
Hinchey; The Weinstein Co.) Real estate is almost always a profitable
game to play in Manhattan, but sometimes it can be murder. Literally,
as it turns out in this thriller about a wealthy family that plays--and
perhaps slays--together. The movie marks the fictional-feature debut
of Andrew Jarecki, who directed “Capturing the Friedmans,”
the chilling documentary about a very different sort of family.
Opening
date to be announced
QUEEN LATIFAH
 MAD
MONEY: Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah,
Katie Holmes, Ted Danson, Adam Rothenberg (Directed by Callie Khouri;
Written by Glenn Gers; Overture Films) What’s Bridget Cardigan
(Diane Keaton), a cultured upper-class wife and mom, to do when
Don (Ted Danson), her corporate-executive husband, is shown the
door by his heartless firm? If she’s a flaky, latter-day Annie
Hall, she blithely gets the only kind of job available to a woman
of a certain age with no work history and a useless English degree.
She picks up a bucket of water and starts mopping away at the Federal
Reserve Bank. Not only does she rapidly become a first-rate janitor,
but (with the help of a couple of sticky-fingered sister-employees
played by Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes), a breadwinner to make
her downsized hubby drool with envy. Now
Playing
JUDE LAW
 THE
REPOSSESSION MAMBO: Jude Law,
Liev Schreiber, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga (Directed by Miguel
Sapochnik; Written by Eric Garcia and Garret Lerner; Universal)
Would you buy an artificial organ on an installment plan from a
company that reserved the right to terminate you if you default
on payment? That’s the decision facing somebody--perhaps Jude
Law and/or Forest Whitaker--in this sci-fi thriller set in the near
future. If things go as planned, “The Repossession Mambo”
will take possession of your local theater before “Repo! The
Genetic Opera,” a similarly themed musical directed by Darren
Lynn Bousman, whose previous assaults on our sanity include "Saw
II," "Saw III" and "Saw IV." Opening
date to be announced
JENNIFER JASON
LEIGH
 MARGOT
AT THE WEDDING: Nicole Kidman,
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, Zane Pais, John Turturro, Ciaran
Hinds, Halley Feiffer (Written and directed by Noah Baumbach; Paramount
Classics) “The Squid and the Whale” was one of the sharpest,
funniest and most moving films of 2005, and it should have won at
least one Oscar--maybe the Best Original Screenplay award, for which
writer/director Noah Baumbach was nominated. In Baumbach's follow-up
film, the Margot who goes to the wedding of her pregnant sister
Pauline is played by Nicole Kidman; Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Pauline,
and Jack Black is Malcolm, the blushing, bungling groom-to-be.
Now Playing
LAURA LINNEY
 THE
SAVAGES: Laura Linney, Philip
Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe,
Cara Seymour, Debra Monk, Margo Martindale, Salem Ludwig (Written
and directed by Tamara Jenkins; Fox Searchlight) Wendy and Jon Savage
(Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) are siblings who loathe
one another with an intensity that does indeed border on the savage.
Fortunately, they now live in different cities and are never ever
tempted to turn back the clock and replay traumatic scenes from
their dysfunctional-family past. Wendy, a wannabe playwright who
dabbles in meds and steady-dates a guy she hopes to marry (the chief
obstacle being his claim that he is madly in love with his current
wife), resides in New York’s East Village. Brother Jon, on
the other hand, has shuffled off to Buffalo, where his twin obsessions
are the writing of perversely esoteric books and dodging conversations
about commitment and marriage with his natural-born-homemaker girlfriend.
What could possibly derail Wendy and Jon from their individual pursuits
of non-familial happiness? Phone calls informing them that their
dear old dad (Philip Bosco) is more demented than usual and in urgent
need of hands-on caretaking. Sounds like a family reunion to remember.
Now Playing
LINDSAY LOHAN
 A
WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE: Annette
Bening, Lindsay Lohan, Sean Bean (Directed by Janusz Kaminski; Written
by Howard Himelstein; Myriad Pictures) Suppose you were a proper
young lady who had the misfortune of being seduced and abandoned
by a wealthy, unscrupulous gentleman. What would you do if, years
later, your grown-up son proudly introduced you to his powerful
new mentor, a man who--unbeknownst to the poor bastard--is his own
father, the very same creep who decided to cut and run decades ago?
That’s the question Oscar Wilde wanted Victorian theater-goers
to ponder when he turned out “A Woman of No Importance”
in 1893, and that’s the question screenwriter Howard Himelstein
hopes we’ll struggle with in his update of the play. The question
I’m truly struggling with is, do I really want to sit through
a revamping of Wilde by the man who gave us “A Good Woman,”
the terminally tame version of the witty playwright’s “Lady
Windermere’s Fan”? Quick, somebody stop this man before
he goes completely Wilde! Opening date
to be announced
JENNIFER LOPEZ
 AMERICAN
DARLINGS:
Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez (New Regency Films) Nicole and J.
Lo were obviously born to play a couple of music-mad chicks determined
to make it in the all-male, pre-World War II club scene. Lucky for
the girls, Pearl Harbor happens along and things begin to open up
for women musicians. But even then, Nicole and J. Lo are forced
to depend on the kindness of numerous male strangers who've played
in bands. Even though Kidman is so keen on this project that she
agreed to serve as its producer (along with "Chicago"
producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron), she definitely faces a challenge
in selling it to Joe Public. I figure the only way she and J. Lo
can make it fly is to sign up Ben Affleck, B. Diddy, Marc Anthony,
Tom Cruise, Ewan McGregor and Keith Urban to play some of the boys
in the band. Opening date to be announced
BRIDGE
AND TUNNEL: Jennifer Lopez (Directed
by Greg Berlanti; Written by Greg Berlanti and Michael Green; New
Line) You’ve got to hand it to J. Lo--she’ll try anything.
In this movie--optimistically categorized as a romantic comedy--she
plays an enterprising Manhattan stock trader who hires a suburban
teenager to make her look smart by researching promising trades
for her on his own little home PC. Well, why shouldn’t
she? Opening date to be announced
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