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Let’s start this weekend with actors directing themselves. Philip Seymour Hoffman makes his directorial debut in Jack Goes Boating, a very quirky romance based on the Off-Broadway play which also starred Hoffman. I can’t swim either, so I’m totally into it. Then Ben Affleck returns to Beantown with The Town, a bank robbery thriller starring him and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as bank robbers pursued by Don Draper.
Thankfully, Emma Stone stays in front of the camera for Easy A. As her track record and theater stand-ins show, that’s where she works her charm best. Even more thankfully, "method actor" M. Night Shyamalan stays completely away from his latest, Devil. Except it's not really his: as much as the trailer and snickering trolls would have you believe otherwise, he neither wrote nor directed the first of the “Night Chronicles”. Which means it may turn out to be a decent movie, provided there’s no gimmicky twist. Speaking of which, indie documentary Catfish opens wide, and while I’m sure it has its own merits as a social networking critique, it’d be much easier to get behind if it weren’t trying so hard to play itself off as a shocking, your-life-is-over-if-you-know-the-ending-ahead-of-time thriller.
And if you’d like to see something off the beaten path, check out our weekly Film Calendar of specialty theatres, revival houses and midnight movies. See you at the movies!
Showtimes
Alpha and Omega
Catfish
Devil
Easy A
Jack Goes Boating
Last Train Home (Nuart Exclusive)
Never Let Me Go
The Town
Trailers
Jack Goes Boating
The Town
Easy A
Devil
Catfish
That's all for this week. My schedule never lets me go, but what tickles your fancy this weekend?