Show Times: Mon., Jan. 5 - Thurs., Jan. 15, 2009
Milk - Showing in the Rose Theatre
Jan. 5, 6.......................4:30, 7:20
Jan. 7............................4:00 only
Jan. 8-15............................4:00, 7:00 - Showing in the Rosebud
Seven Pounds - Showing in the Rosebud
Jan. 5, 6..........................4:00, 7:00
Jan. 7, 8..........................4:30, 7:20
The Reader - Showing in the Rose - starts Fri. 1/9
Daily............................... 4:30, 7:20
General Admission: $8 - Seniors: $7 (62 and over) and Students (middle & high school with ASB card or student ID) - Children: $6 (12 and under) - Matinees: $1 less
Milk
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Cast: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco, Alison Pill
Rated R profanity, brief violence and a few discreet sex scenes. 128 min.
View the Trailer: www.milkthemovie.com
 One of the first scenes in Milk is of a pick-up in a New York subway station. It's 1970, and an insurance executive in a suit and tie catches sight of a beautiful, scruffy younger man. The mood of the moment is casual and sexy, and its flirtatious playfulness is somewhat disarming, given our expectation of a serious and important movie grounded in historical events. Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant is certainly such a film, but it manages to evade many of the traps of the period biopic with a grace and tenacity worthy of its title character.
That would be Harvey Milk, a neighborhood activist elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and murdered along with the city's mayor, George Moscone, by a former supervisor named Dan White. Notwithstanding the modesty of his office and the tragic foreshortening of his tenure, Milk, among the the first openly gay elected officials in the country, had a profound impact on national politics, and his rich afterlife in American culture has affirmed his status as pioneer and martyr. His brief career has inspired an opera, an excellent documentary, and now Milk, which is the best live-action mainstream American movie that I have seen this year. This is not faint praise. Mr. Penn, an actor of unmatched emotional intensity and physical discipline, outdoes himself here, playing a character different from any he has portrayed before.
Dan White, Milk's erstwhile colleague and eventual assassin, haunts the edges of the movie, representing both the banality and the enigma of evil. Mr. Brolin makes him at once pitiable and scary without making him look like a monster or a clown. Motives for White's crime are suggested in the film, but too neat an accounting of them would distort the awful truth of the story and undermine the power of the movie.
That power lies in its uncanny balancing of nuance and scale, its ability to be about nearly everything - love, death, politics, sex, modernity - without losing sight of the intimate particulars of its story. Harvey Milk was an intriguing, inspiring figure. Milk is a marvel. (Excerpted from A.O. Scott's New York Times review)
"Vibrantly entertaining!"-The New Yorker
"A total triumph. Brimming with humor and heart. An American Classic."-Rolling Stone
"Easily one of the year's best, most affecting films."-Playboy
"An absolute must. The right picture at the right time. Extremely affecting and moving. Come prepared to be inspired."-New York Post
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Seven Pounds
Directed by Gabriele Muccino
Cast: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Barry Pepper
Rated PG-13 for thematic material and sensuality.
View the Trailer: www.sevenpounds.com
 Will Smith is the Barack Obama of movie stars. He exudes a charm, competence, intelligence, personal eloquence, self-deprecating wit, fundamental decency and visionary willingness to do the right thing, which have made him the world's most popular actor.
And this comfortable persona carries us smoothly through the paces of Seven Pounds, his re-teaming with director Gabriele Muccino of his 2006 hit, Pursuit of Happyness. This follow-up actually is a considerably better movie than its predecessor: less obviously sentimental, more daringly nonlinear, very European in its determination to reveal itself slowly. And it pays off with a more powerful emotional punch.
The movie chronicles the redemptive odyssey of an affable but traumatized IRS agent named Ben Thomas. From here, the script is a series of non-chronological flashbacks to his recent past. What's going on? We don't know. It's clear that the guy is suffering from guilt and out to make amends for something he's done. But beyond that, the movie keeps us in the dark until its final moments.
Somehow, it works. The force of Smith's likability, an ensemble of intriguing supporting performances and Muccino's editing pace and storytelling skill keeps us hooked throughout. And it all comes together with a shattering effect and a tough-love romantic glow. (Excerpted from William Arnold's Seattle Post-Intelligencer review)
"...the year's most unexpected and profoundly moving love story."-Hollywood.com
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The Reader
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Cast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin, Bruno Ganz
Rated R for sexuality and nudity. 122 min.
View the Trailer: www.TheReader-Movie.com
 It is Kate Winslet's face and Kate Winslet's face alone that looks out from the cover of the new "now a major motion picture" paperback edition of Bernhard Schlink's exceptional novel, "The Reader," and that's as it should be.
For though The Reader costars the gifted Ralph Fiennes and gives a lot of screen time to a young actor named David Kross, it is Winslet's haunting performance that gives the film what success it has.
Delicate business is being transacted here concerning the nature of guilt, legal and moral. Director Stephen Daldry and playwright David Hare, collaborators on The Hours, have done something profoundly right in bringing Bernhard Schlink's controversial German novel to the screen: They've made it personal.
What if the person you love turns out to be a monster? That question arises when 15-year-old Michael Berg starts a summer affair with tram conductor Hanna Schmitz. After sex, Michael reads to her from the works of literary giants, and then this woman who called him Kid disappears.
Eight years later, Michael, now a law student finds Hanna again, revealed as a former Nazi guard, on trial for war crimes. Ralph Fiennes hauntingly plays the older Michael, a divoreced father given to isolation. Michael reads books on tape to send to Hanna in jail, and wrestles with his conscience like many second-generation Germans trying to cope with complicit guilt.
Fiennes shares a scene with the mesmerizing Lena Olin that cuts to the core of survivor guilt. These are weighty issues that the film sometimes trips over. Winslet doesn't. Her fearce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights. (Excerpted from Rolling Stone and Los Angeles Times)
"Kate Winslet gives the best performance of the year."-Time
"Kate Winslet is sexy, cruel, heartwarming and absolutely mesmerizing."-Ben Lyons, At The Movies
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*Schedule subject to change.
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