This week’s movie releases
Director Jim Jarmusch sinks his teeth into the vampire genre in 'Only Lovers Left Alive'
The Twilight Saga, Byzantium, Let the Right One In, Daybreakers, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ... – do we really need another vampire movie right now? Hell yes, if it comes from king of indie cool Jim Jarmusch, whose inimitably laid-back take on the genre, Only Lovers Left Alive, arrives this week. Here bloodsucking takes second place to the more practical and philosophical implications of immortality as vampire lovers Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) renew their centuries-old relationship after time apart in Detroit and Tangiers, respectively. Having acquired untold knowledge and wealth over the years while surviving off blood bags procured from unscrupulous doctors, world-weary musician Adam is buoyed by the rekindled romance, until Eve’s wild-child sister (Mia Wasikowska) arrives to upset the pair’s reclusive existence. With John Hurt, Anton Yelchin and Jeffrey Wright.
An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Talented Mr Ripley author Patricia Highsmith, The Two Faces of January is a 1960s-set psychological thriller starring Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst as an American couple whose lives get tangled up with expat tour guide/con man Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) after an unfortunate incident in their Athens hotel room. The film marks the directorial debut of Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini, while the score is by Spain’s Alberto Iglesias.
Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton team up to wreak revenge on their cheating husband/lover (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones) who’s been playing them all off against each other in comedy The Other Woman, directed by Nick Cassavetes.
The latest big-screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ apeman saga, Tarzan is a German CGI motion-capture animation directed by Reinhard Klooss. After falling for cute conservationist Jane in the Africa jungle, gorilla-raised Tarzan finds the relationship threatened by a villainous businessman on the hunt for a new energy source connected to an ancient meteorite.
Trying to be funny
Star of hit TV comedies Arrested Development and Veep, Tony Hale plays a serious guy trying to develop a sense of humor to win the girl of his dreams in Lauralee Farrer’s Not that Funny.
Last, we have Violette, the latest from French director Martin Provost, which examines writer Violette Leduc’s (Emannuelle Devos) attraction towards her mentor, the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain), during and after World War II.
