High Kicks From Both a Chorus Line and Jason Statham

"Chev Chelios" gets competition for coolest name from Rip Torn and Hiam Abbass this week.

“Is Anybody There?”
Following his acclaimed breakout in last year’s sleeper hit “Son of Rambow,” pint-sized thesp Bill Milner continues to showcase his considerable ability, this time holding his own opposite Sir Michael Caine. Set in early ‘80s coastal England and based on writer Peter Harness’ own childhood, this deceptively dark offering from “Boy A” director John Crowley sees Caine as Clarence, a bitter, Fagin-esque former magician in the early stages of dementia. Dragged kicking and screaming into a rest home run by an overburdened Anne-Marie Duff, Clarence finds himself relentlessly pestered by Edward (Milner), a morbid young boy who channels the constant presence of death at the rest home into his hobby of amateur ghost hunting.
Opens in New York and Los Angeles.

“Lemon Tree”
With so many intricately constructed allegories of the Middle East conflict floating around (“Battlestar Galactica” anyone?), the idea of a Palestinian widow forced to live next door to the Israeli Defense Minister is a shockingly on-the-nose mutation of “The Odd Couple.” Yet early reports indicate that Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, who co-scripts with a former Palestinian Journalist, sidesteps the political minefield by distilling the story down to where all that’s left is simple, striking humanity with just a hint of populism. Hiam Abbass stars as the resilient widow who, together with a crusading young lawyer (Ali Suliman), and the minister’s domestically dissatisfied wife (Rona Lipaz-Michael), defies a state decree to uproot her age-old lemon grove that security forces claim is a threat to the minister’s safety. In English and Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles.
Opens in New York.

“Oblivion”
Having spent time in the company of the Belgian lovers (1995’s fictional “Goodbye”), Brazilian poets (1996’s “O Amor Natural”), and Parisian immigrants (1997’s “The Underground Orchestra”), acclaimed documentary filmmaker Heddy Honigmann returns to her native Peru for the first time since 1994’s “Metal and Melancholy.” Within sight of the presidential palace, Honigmann finds a sea of scattered street folk struggling to survive in a country where the halls of power are rotten to the girders with corruption and a revolving door of presidents ride the wave of populist desperation to the country’s highest office and then deliver nothing of their promises. In Spanish with subtitles.
Opens in New York.

“Perestroika”
Despite being best known for 1982’s kitschy, cyberpunk “aliens on a quest for heroin” movie “Liquid Sky,” former Soviet exile Slava Tsukerman has spent much of the last 15 years scrabbling around his former homeland highlighting the chinks in the Iron Curtain. Based in no small part on his own experience, the chameleonic director’s latest blends farce into what could be seen as confessional allegory about an astrophysicist returning to Moscow 17 years after his defection. After being invited to speak at a conference, Sasha Greenberg (Sam Robards) lands in Russia and finds himself surrounded by delighted friends, suspicious enemies and a gallery of former lovers complete with potentially illegitimate children. Ally Sheedy and F. Murray Abraham co-star.
Opens in New York.

“17 Again”
Much like a new generation of video game consoles — or a Sean Penn Oscar vehicle — the body swap comedy pops up roughly every five years to reap a new audience of teenagers unaware that they typically turn out to be a load of be-thankful-for-what-you’ve-got bollocks. Matthew Perry plays Mike O’Donnell, a mopey pharmaceutical rep on the verge of middle age, reconsidering his glory days on the high school basketball court and his decision to turn down a scholarship to marry his high school sweetheart. After falling through a rift in the space-time continuum (seriously!), the younger Michael (Zac Efron) comes to the realization that high school wasn’t all about three-pointers. Burr Steers, still known to some as “Flock of Seagulls” Roger from “Pulp Fiction,” delivers this as his follow-up to “Igby Goes Down.”
Opens wide.

“Sleep Dealer”
Impressing on the festival circuit, director Alex Rivera’s low-budget, high-concept feature debut is a thinly veiled parable on the one-sided nature of current globalization efforts, In a not-too-distant future, outsourcing consists of workers on the other side of a sealed U.S. border virtually “plugging in” and offering their skills remotely without ever setting foot on our soil. When the government mistakes his homemade receiver for an unauthorized hack and destroys his home, Memo (Luis Fernando Peña) journeys to the city seeking node implants, finding a journalist (Leonor Varela) who offers to download his memories and do an online digital exposé on his tragic circumstances.
Opens in limited release.

“State of Play”
Originally a 2003 BBC miniseries, “State of Play” was enthusiastically lauded as one of the finest pieces of post-9/11 television drama to emerge, so it was inevitable that Paul Abbott’s murky portrayal of the symbiotic relationship between politics, journalism and big business duly has gotten an American remake, complete with a star-studded injection of megawatt charisma. No stranger to the dark side of human nature, “The Last King of Scotland” director Kevin Macdonald takes the helm of this big screen adaptation that sees Russell Crowe’s cynical reporter probing the death of rising congressman Ben Affleck’s aide/mistress, and in the process stumbling across links to a series of seemingly unrelated killings. Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, Helen Mirren and Robin Wright Penn are amongst the co-stars.
Opens wide.

“Vienna’s Lost Daughters”
Austrian broadcaster-turned-filmmaker Mirjam Unger paints a satisfying feel-good portrait of those who escaped the war only to find themselves with nothing as they fought to build again. Unger’s film follows the story of eight Austrian women forced to flee their homes on the eve of WWII and their ultimate journey to America’s shores where, bereft of their worldly possessions, they found solace in the only thing they had left, the culture they brought with them. 50 years later, Unger finds the women still celebrating their heritage in their adopted home of New York.
Opens in New York.

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