The Cine File

With three Thursdays to go, and Oscar season really starting to pick up, it’s time for a quick look at the most exciting films to hit the screens in January.

Jan. 12

• The American remake of the hit Swedish film, based on the book that was a worldwide phenomenon, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. David Fincher is the director, it promises to be stylish and cut very close to the bone.
• Marc Foster’s Machine Gun Preacher, based on the real story of Sam Childers, a former drug addict and alcoholic who finds salvation and helps protect the children of South Sudan against one of the most brutal gangs in the world, the Lord’s Resistance Army.
• The classic 1962 musical, West Side Story, an update of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet in ’60s New York, is being re-released in the Czech Republic by AČFK.

Jan. 19

• Happy Feet 2 is the sequel to the very successful animated film from 2006.
• Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, Sideways, Election) releases his first film in five years and it stars George Clooney as a man wh o reconnects with his children after his wife falls into a coma as a result of a boating accident. We can expect Payne’s trademark tongue-in-cheek humor with serious themes. The film is called The Descendants.
• Underworld: Awakening is part four of the Underworld series. It’s about vampires and even worse than Twilight.

Jan. 26

• Roman Polanski’s new film, Carnage, is a theater piece: Based on a play, it sees two Oscar nominated players and two Oscar winners take on a battle of wits in an 80-minute long scene inside one apartment. Tension rises.
• Contraband is Marky Mark’s (Mark Wahlberg) latest vehicle, filled with drugs and secret operations at night. Expect him to appear all dirtied up in a vest at some point.
• The Help is a film set in 1960s Mississippi and focuses on the stories of black maids in white households. With Emma Stone and Viola Davis.
• A Dangerous Method is the story of the two major psychologists of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and their very intimate relationship. By David Cronenberg, with Viggo Mortenson and Michael Fassbender.