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Have you seen Don McKellar?

New in Theatres: April 27th, 2012

Judd Apatow explores the bumpy road to matrimony in ‘The Five-Year Engagement’ (R), starring Emily Blunt and Jason Segel as a couple whose intended year-long engagement is derailed by a series of life events and mishaps. Apatow mostly succeeds in making it funny and relatable, whether his characters are putting up with the antics of the wedding party or fending off unhelpful future in-laws as they bicker over the wedding planning. Like ‘Bridesmaids’, this will probably hit a high note for anyone who’s ever been involved with the madness of wedding planning.

Breaking up an otherwise hard-R week at the cinema is the family-friendly animated film ‘The Pirates! Band of Misfits’ (PG). Hugh Grant voices the Pirate Captain in this delightful tale of pirates competing on the open ocean for the Pirate of the Year Award; the super-talented voice cast also includes Martin Freeman, Salma Hayek, Anton Yelchin, and Brendan Gleeson. If you liked ‘Arthur Christmas’, also produced by Aardman Animations, then give this stop-motion animated adventure a try; it brings the same sense of humor and creativity to the screen in a season otherwise largely bereft of family films.

Things have not looked good for ‘The Raven’ (R) for so very long: the revisionist take on the life of Edgar Allan Poe has been bumped from one release date to another for months. However, under the direction of James McTeigue (‘V for Vendetta’) and with John Cusack perfectly cast as the aging poet, it looks like it could be a goth, creepy film full of chills. When a madmen begins committing murders based on the literary works of Mr. Poe, he’s called in to help the police solve the crimes before they happen; things turn personal when the killer begins to target Poe and his young love, Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve).

If ‘Safe’ (R) doesn’t satisfy your appetite for hyper-violent action, then I don’t know what will. Jason Statham is back in ‘Transporter’ mode as an ex-fighter who witnesses a group of thugs pursuing a young girl in a subway and saves her life. When he learns her secret—she can memorize ridiculously long codes—he goes on the run to protect her from battling gangs and corrupt cops who will stop at nothing to kill her. If it seems slightly indistinguishable from most of Statham’s other projects—his characters tend to bleed together after awhile—at least it promises plenty of fist-to-face combat and car chases. And really, what else do you want from a Statham movie?

On the limited-engagement circuit, try to catch Morten Tyldum’s ‘Headhunters’ (R); the Norwegian crime thriller is slated to be remade in the U.S., so it’s worth seeing the original first if at all possible. A headhunter risks it all to obtain a prized painting owned by a former mercenary; ‘Game of Thrones’ fans, watch for Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) as the mercenary in question. Here’s a small bet that he won’t take kindly to the theft of his painting.

Scene Creek

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