“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
*** 1/2 RATING | They are best friends and in matters of the heart like night and day. And Woody Allen teases their contrasts when he sends sensible Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and yearning Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) to Barcelona for a summer, where they flirt with pleasure and minor disaster. Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are vibrant as a painter and his volatile and talented ex-wife. They are catalysts in the women’s deeper if confounded appreciation of “Catalan Identity” (Vicky’s master’s thesis). Agile and warmly sexy, Allen’s romp is a study in how a place and its denizens upend what one knows about oneself. PG-13. 1 hour, 37 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
“The Lucky Ones”
** RATING | Everyone deserves a shot at an American road movie. Three Iraq war soldiers get theirs on a drive from New York to Vegas in “The Lucky Ones,” directed by Neil Burger. His tour over, reservist Fred Cheever is headed home for good. Only he arrives to find his wife wants out. T.K. Poole worries his fiancee won’t want to get hitched because of an injury he suffered. Coolee Dunn has a limp from a gunshot wound and a guitar from the guy who lost his life saving hers. She’s headed to see his parents. She’s estranged from her mother. Tim Robbins is the depressed but elder Cheever. Michael Peña and Rachel McAdams (“Red Eye”) play the younger soldiers on leave. They’re a gifted trio. But that doesn’t save the film from making heavy-handed points about soldiers’ mind-sets being different from those of the citizens they fight for. PG-13. 1 hour, 55 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
“Lakeview Terrace”
** 1/2 RATING | Samuel L. Jackson’s once-good cop makes for a very bad neighbor in this drama about an interracial couple moving next door to a 30-year LAPD veteran. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington are the young couple excited about their new home. But all is not right and as the distant hills burn with California brush fires, the story smolders. Washington is especially interesting as the sort of character we haven’t seen onscreen: a quasi-bohemian African-American woman. Neil LaBute directs David Loughery and Howard Korder’s screenplay that challenges generation attitudes about race by flipping the script on whether this is or isn’t a film about interracial relationships, black bigotry, abuse of authority, or all of the above. PG-13. 1 hour, 46 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
More Releases
Available today
onvideo.org
