Arts & Entertainment

Weekend brings new films after Oscars

By Daniel Huron 
The Daily Cougar

The weekend following the Academy Awards is always a great time to hit the theaters and check out what all the hoopla was about, but for those of you who arenit interested, a handful of new movies are starting this Friday.

Rob Mc Ewan/Paramount Pictures

In Basic, John Travolta plays a Drug Enforcement Administration agent investigating the disappearance of an Army drill sergeant (Samuel L. Jackson) and several of his cadets. This is the first film Travolta and Jackson have worked on together since Quentin Tarantinois Pulp Fiction, but there has been very little hype for the film.

Director John McTiernan is in need of hit. His last film was Rollerball in 2002 ­ a far cry from his early hits The Hunt for Red October and Die Hard.

Chris Rock directs another new release, Head of State. Mays Gilliam (Rock) is a low-level nobody recruited by the Democratic Party to run for president when the previous candidate dies. Bernie Mac joins the fun as Gilliamis brother and vice president nominee.

Rockis previous efforts at heading up a film (Bad Company and Pootie Tang) have fallen short. Will Head of State suffer from the amateurish look of its television promos, or will it be the hit Rock has been looking for to get his name in the same sentence as Eddie Murphy?

Hollywood producer to the Hollywood executive: "Itis like Armageddon ... backwards!"

That basically sums up the premise of The Core. A group of scientists are recruited to drill to the center of the Earth to detonate a nuclear device. If they donit succeed, the Earth will stop spinning and humanity is doomed.

Jon Amiel (Entrapment,) directs an interesting cast of Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank (Didnit she win an Oscar?) and Stanley Tucci.

Two new films are debuting at the Landmark Greenway 3 theater for special one-week runs.

Samantha Morton (Minority Report) stars in Morvern Callar. Morton plays the title character, a Scottish supermarket clerk who discovers her boyfriend dead under her Christmas tree. Instead of mourning, she steals his unpublished novel, goes to Ibiza to collect an advance for the manuscript and hits the clubs.

The Way Home tells the story of a young Korean boy who is left with his grandmother. The boy, who has spent his life in the big city, has trouble dealing with the remote village he is now living in. Heis stubborn. Heis selfish. Heis disrespectful. Can his grandmother show him what it truly means to be part of a family?

River Oaks Theatre will begin showing Susanne Bieris Open Hearts. This Danish film, which follows the strict rules of the Dogme 95 manifesto, tells the story of Cecilie as she tries to comfort her lover Joachim after he is paralyzed in a car accident. He, however, just wants to be left alone. Cecilie seeks and finds comfort in the arms of an unlikely source.

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