Tetro
directed by Francis Ford Coppola
In 2007, the Godfather of moviemaking returned to the director’s chair after 10 years with the unheralded Youth Without Youth. Luckily, film fans haven’t had to wait nearly as long for his follow-up. Tetro (which marks Coppola’s first original screenplay since his 1974 classic The Conversation) follows 17-year-old Bennie (Aiden Ehrenrich) as he journeys to Buenos Aires in search of the title character (Vincent Gallo), his long-lost older brother. Featuring a truly international cast (which also includes Maribel Verdu of Pan’s Labyrinth and Klaus Maria Brandauer of Out of Africa), will Tetro be able to reestablish Coppola as a relevant moviemaking force?

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
directed by Tony Scott
This remake of the classic 1974 action-thriller pits an everyday subway dispatcher (Denzel Washington) against a criminal mastermind (John Travolta) who hijacks a New York City subway train. The original movie starred Walter Matthau as the unlikely hero and Robert Shaw as the vicious thief, and is perhaps best known today for being one of the many inspirations of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (the group of anonymous robbers in both films identify each other by colors: Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, etc.). Here’s hoping the remake (which marks Washington’s fourth collaboration with director Scott) retains at least a modicum of the original’s gritty New York sensibility.

Moon
directed by Duncan Jones
This quirky, low-budget sci-fi parable stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut living in isolation on the Moon. For three years his only companion has been a supercomputer, GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Before he makes his journey back home, however, Rockwell makes an earth-shattering discovery that could change his life. Moon, which marks the feature directorial debut of Jones (son of “Space Oddity” David Bowie), earned a lot of buzz when it premiered at Sundance this year. It will be interesting to see how the rookie director will handle the ever-intriguing subject of space isolation, which has spawned such sci-fi classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running.

Imagine That
directed by Karey Kirkpatrick
Eddie Murphy makes a daring career choice by starring in yet another family comedy! In Imagine That, the formerly bold comic plays a flailing businessman (perhaps the first post-recession comedy?) whose career woes and problems are solved when he enters into his daughter’s imaginary world. While Murphy seemed to be on top of the world a couple years ago when he received an Oscar nom for Dreamgirls, his follow-up project, Norbit, was perhaps emblematic of his downward career spiral (with a strong correlation to his character’s situation in the movie.) At the very least, Imagine That has got to be better than Meet Dave. Right?

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