Flick Picks 8/12/14: Muppets Most Wanted, The Railway Man, Locke, Hateship Loveship

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: Continuing their massive comeback, America's favorite movie star puppets find themselves embroiled in an international crime caper in Muppets Most Wanted. Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey and Ray Liotta take second billing behind Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the team. Based on the lead character's autobiography, The Railway Man tells the story of a man imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese during World War II. Years later, he and his lover (Nicole Kidman) discover that the lead tormenter is still alive and set out to confront him. The intense Locke is literally a one-man show that follows Tom Hardy during a single car ride during which he attempts to make potentially life-changing decisions about work and family.

Based on the appropriately named book by Irvine Welsh, Filth's James McAvoy portrays a corrupt, drug-addicted policeman who sets his colleagues against each other in order to pursue his own ambitions. Kristen Wiig takes a different kind of role in the drama Hateship Loveship, in which she plays a shy woman who is hired by Nick Nolte as a housekeeper. The household's granddaughter attempts to manipulate their relationship with unforeseen conequences. Fans of picturesque British soaps such as Downton Abbey won't want to miss Summer in February, about lovers in a pre-war art colony on England's coast. Finally, Felicity Jones is an exchange student who moves stays (and becomes romantically involved) with Guy Pearce in Breathe In.

SERIES: James Spader's new series The Blacklist arrives this week and it's a good one. Spader is a criminal on the FBI's Most Wanted list who turns himself in in order to partner with a profiler on terrorist cases.

DOCUMENTARIES: Dancing in Jaffa introduces us to a ballroom dancing instructor who moves back to the city of his birth in order to teach Palestinian-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli students his art.

You can find all of our new and upcoming documentaries in Bibliocommons.

Monday Night at the Movies
DUE TO THE DEMOLITION OF THE WOMEN'S LIBRARY CLUB BUILDING, ALL MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES FILMS WILL NOW SCREEN IN THE HAMMOND ROOM OF THE LIBRARY. Finding Vivian Maier, which we will screen on Monday, August 18th at 1:00 and 7:00,  is a portrait of the long-time nanny whose posthumous reputation continues to move her towards consideration among the best American street photographers of the 20th century. "More connect-the-dots detective thriller than traditional doc, John Maloof and Charlie Siskel's revelatory riddle of a film unmasks a brilliant photographer who hid in plain sight for decades." - Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly. The film runs 84 minutes and is not rated.

Quirky Lives, Interesting Documentaries

Some of our favorite documentaries focus on fascinating, quirky people who you may have not heard of. Give one of these a shot and you may find that truth is stranger (and sometimes more interesting) than fiction!

• The Queen of Versailles looks at the changes that a billionaire family must go through following the popping of the real estate bubble.
• A man builds a miniature World War II town and is accepted into the world of artists in Marwencol.
• Stanley Kubrick's The Shining has spawned all kinds of crazy theories. Learn about a number of them in Room 237.
• I'm Carolyn Parker tells the story of a woman who was the last to leave her Hurricane Katrina-threatened New Orleans neighborhood, as well as the first to return.
• If you're not familiar with eccentric Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Beware of Mr. Baker takes a look at his career and inspired lunacy.
• Errol Morris's Tabloid tells the strange story of the crazy world of a woman who pursued her man around the world and became a newspaper headline.
• Learn about five bizarre homes and the people who inhabit them in Home Movie.
• The Woodmans looks at artist Francesca's Woodman's whose photographs live on despite her tragic young death.
• The various denizens of Southern California's Salton Sea are the profile of the dreamlike Bombay Beach.