Weekend Movie Guide: The Owls Are Not What They Seem

Normally, a 3D family adventure isn't worth a hoot, but Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole may be a bonafide barn storm. The animated film's voice talent includes Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush, Helen Mirren and Sam Neill. Critics are middling, but cite director Zack Snyder's dark tones and violence as high-points, so your kids may grow some teeth in the process. If you'd prefer they grow their brain, grab a ticket and start Waiting For "Superman", the pro-charter school lottery documentary from Davis Guggenheim, who made global warming buzzworthy with An Inconvenient Truth. Speaking of which, global warming still needs solutions. If you can offset enough carbon to get to West Hills, Carbon Nation illustrates what people are already doing to move forward - and how we can go even further.

Of course, that optimism will take you nowhere when you're suffocating six feet under with a lighter, cell phone and rapidly dwindling oxygen. Thus begins Buried, a bold experiment starring the unsinkable Ryan Reynolds. Filmed with one camera and "natural" lighting, the claustrophobic mood will be even more stifling in a dark room. The entrapment continues with Enter The Void, booked exclusively for adults, exclusively at the Nuart. The hallucinogenic offering from the director of Irreversible is the music video "Smack My Bitch Up" on steroids, as a first-person camera embodies a junkie soul living, dying and flying free around the city of Tokyo. For a more spirited look at the big city, Laemmle's Sunset has docs Music Makes A City, about the Louisville Orchestra, and Let The Children Play, about our own symphonic superstar, Dudamel!

If you’d like to see something even further off the beaten path, check out our weekly Film Calendar of specialty theatres, revival houses and midnight movies. See you at the movies!

General Release