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).
  

Much like Inglorious Basterds, his revisionist take on Jewish revenge on the Nazis, Quentin Tarantino tackles the curious American institution of slavery in Django Unchained.  

Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) sure knows how to set the bar a notch or two higher, just to challenge himself. He follows up his Academy Award winning film by diving headlong into an adaptation of a beloved musical and pushes his all-star cast (featuring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway) to record their vocal performances live.  

Fluffy family friendly alert! Old school grandparents (Billy Crystal and Bette Midler) agree to take care of their three grandchildren when their daughter (Marisa Tomei) and her husband (Tom Everett Scott), a high-achieving new millennial working couple, are forced to jet off to high-pressure assignments.  

For fans of the live Cirque du Soleil experience, complete with example after example of grace and athleticism, it would seem to be a no-brainer to construct a narrative and capture the wonder as only film can  

Screenwriter Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love.) and director Anne Fletcher (The Proposal) team up behind the scenes of this tag-team road trip tracking an overbearing mother (Barbra Streisand) and her son (Seth Rogen) as they cross the country.