OPENING FRIDAY
Antarctica: A Year on Ice » Firsttime feature documentarian Anthony Powell, a year- round denizen of Antarctica for many years, presents a film featuring some of the most rapturous footage of calving glaciers and ice floes — alternately freezing and thawing — that you’re likely to see. But it is the simple glimpses of ordinary life in an extraordinary place that are the most stirring moments in the film.
The Babadook » Director Jennifer Kent runs her finger along the jagged edges of psychological horror with this familiar story of a kid who sees a monster under his bed. The big twist here is the monster seems to be real, ensuring mother and son are bound to the same dangerous, potentially delusional, entity. Smart and suspenseful, Kent gets extra credit for making the daylight feel just as cold and alien as the darkness.
Corner Gas: The Movie » The folks of Dog River discover the town is flat broke and cook up a scheme to save it, lest they end up as a warehouse for national doughnut chain CoffNuts. Things go awry, but only in the ambling, aw- shucks manner of Brent Leroy ( Brent Butt). Quaint Corner Gas it is not, but stiflingly pleasant is in its DNA.
Gemma Bovery » Gemma Arterton stars in this disturbingly funny update of Gustav Flaubert’s classic about a bored wife who starts screwing around to make life more exciting. Equal part social satire about our naive nostalgia for simple country living as well as clever commentary on male desire, and its ability to turn even smart men into bumbling idiots, Gemma Bovery proves Flaubert wasn’t just a brilliant observer of his own day — he captured timeless human truths.
Serena » Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are as attractive as ever, but this movie about a timber baron trying to make his fortune in the Great Smoky Mountains rots from the inside. Academy- Award winning director Susanne Bier does her best to bring romantic urgency to this adaptation of Ron Rash’s novel, but the plot never pulls together and leaves good wood on the ground.