After a brief postponement from the fall — to edit a violent sequence in a movie theater — Gangster Squad, the 1940s and ’50s crime thriller from Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less) seeks a hostile takeover of the weekend box office.   

Yet another horror parody makes an appearance at the box office, this time featuring the return of Marlon Wayans (of Scary Movie and the Wayans family comedy troupe fame).   

Zero Dark Thirty begins in darkness, not the pitch of night or space; rather simply, it starts with the black frame and voices. Instantly, we recognize the voices as those belonging to desperate callers on Sept. 11, 2001.  

I met Father Bollman in 2001, immediately after the April riots, at a community forum. He was among a small group of concerned citizens who, during those troubled times, came to talk, to share grief and anger, to take the first tentative steps toward building a united city-wide coalition to address the escalating problems between the black community and the Cincinnati police.
  

The arrival of the New Year marks the return of the Cincinnati Film Society (a non-profit founded in 1979 and devoted, through various incarnations, to encouraging the appreciation of film as an  

The story of a family, with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts as the parents, that ends up separated during a tsunami. Their struggle to survive and reunite gets a thrillingly dramatic treatment in the hands of Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage).  

David Chase, executive producer of The Sopranos, staves off fading away from the spotlight, serving as writer and director of Not Fade Away, a love letter of sorts to a bygone musical era.  

Fracking, the controversial process to used to release natural gas for collection, drives the narrative of the new Gus Van Sant film, written by co-stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski, but the issue, which widens the already cavernous divide between Democrats and Republicans, never truly takes center stage.  

I’m not sure what to make of this latest edition in the annals of Texas Chainsaw lore.   

The “story” of Roger Michell’s new film, Hyde Park on Hudson, derives from the personal letters of Daisy (Laura Linney), the nominal protagonist who happens to have been a distant cousin of President Franklin Roosevelt (Bill Murray).