In Movie Theaters the Week of
December 23rd, 1996

5 films are being released this week

<< Previous Week

Next Week >>

This Week's Releases

Wednesday, December 25th

Hamlet

Rated: PG-13

Murder and violence, revenge and intrigue, sex and desire, paranoia and madness - the heady brew of passion and emotion that makes up Shakespeare's tragedy HAMLET has intoxicated audiences of all the ages. The story of the Prince of Denmark, who seeks revenge for his father's murder at the hands of his perfidious uncle, delves into fundamental issues about humanity and the nature of being. What, it asks, does it take to be a human being?

Michael

Rated: PG

William Hurt, Andie MacDowell and Robert Pastorelli co-star as three inquiring minds who have seen it all - ghosts, UFOs, even Elvis. But nothing has jolted them like Michael, who has appeared in Iowa complete with razor stubble and wings. With his heavenly philosophy about life and beyond, Michael turns naysayers into lovers and makes believers out of cynics.

The Portrait of a Lady

Rated: PG-13

Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) has just rejected a most lucrative marriage proposal in favor of her hunger to experience the world. Her defiant refusal stuns those around her. However, an admiring male cousin, Ralph Touchett (Martin Donovan), secretly lends his support to Isabel by convincing his dying father to leave her a generous share of his fortune. Yet Isabel's large inheritance does not bring her the freedom she so desires. Her headstrong innocence proves no match against the manipulations of a duplicitous friend, Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey), who leads Isabel into an unfortunate marriage to a self-serving and devious dilettante, Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich). Isabel suffers gravely as a result of her impulsive choice that ends in disaster. But after the dark truth behind Madame Merle and Osmond's web of deception and betrayal is revealed, Isabel awakens to a curious freedom. In emerging from the darkness of her folly, Isabel discovers her one true love in an epiphany that sends her forth in hopeful triumph, stronger and more selfless than she had ever imagined.

The Evening Star

Friday, December 27th

The People vs. Larry Flynt

Rated: R

It was the early 1970s, the twilight of the sexual revolution in America, when a sex industry entrepreneur named Larry Flynt leveraged a small string of Ohio strip-clubs into the beginnings of a publishing empire. Hustler was a raw and raunchy magazine that pushed the limits of American tolerance. Its publisher, a grade-school dropout and Kentucky redneck, was nobody's hero, but circumstance would cast him as the era's last crusader. It was a role that brought Larry Flynt both ruin and glory. Flynt faced his greatest public challenge when Jerry Falwell, the leader of America's self-proclaimed "Moral Majority," sued over a scandalous Hustler parody presenting a satirical account of Falwell's first sexual experience -- with his mother in a backwoods outhouse. Though cleared of libel charges but told to pay restitution for emotional distress, Flynt chose to appeal his right to free speech to the Supreme Court, which led to a unanimous, precedent-setting decision in Flynt's favor. As Flynt's permanent contribution to American jurisprudence, it was his greatest victory.