Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, NEW JERSEY: Arthouse Film Festival

The Oscar's may be just weeks away, but The Movies are so often on people's minds. This past October I helped sponsor the Northeast Film Festival in partnership with Words, so you know I have a love for the movies. This festival looks amazing!

The Arthouse Film Festival will run starting March 3 for 10 weeks with local Northern NJ residents able to see them at AMC Loews Mountainside.

To register: Click Here

HERE IS AN EARLY LOOK AT FILMS AND GUESTS UNDER CONSIDERATION, SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND AVAILABILITY:

BELLE
with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, director Misan Sagay
Belle is inspired by the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral. Raised by her aristocratic great-uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson), Belle’s lineage affords her certain privileges, yet the color of her skin prevents her from fully participating in the traditions of her social standing. Left to wonder if she will ever find love, Belle falls for an idealistic young vicar’s son bent on change who, with her help, shapes Lord Mansfield’s role as Lord Chief Justice to end slavery in England.

BIRDMAN
with Michael Keaton, Naomi Watts, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Based on a Raymond Chandler short story, the comedy is the latest project from 21 Grams and Biutiful director Alejandro González Iñárritu. In the movie, Keaton will play a former actor, famous for playing an iconic superhero, who puts on a Broadway play to regain his former glory. Stone plays his fresh-out-of-rehab daughter/assistant. Watts is his co-star and Galifianakis is the play's producer.

CHEF
with Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, director Jon Favreau
A chef who loses his restaurant job starts up a food truck in an effort to reclaim his creative promise, while piecing back together his estranged family.

DOM HEMINGWAY
with Jude Law, Richard E. Grant, director Richard Shepard
Jude Law plays Dom Hemingway, a larger-than-life safecracker with a loose fuse who is funny, profane, and dangerous. After twelve years in prison, he sets off with his partner in crime Dickie (Richard E. Grant) looking to collect what he’s owed for keeping his mouth shut and protecting his boss Mr. Fontaine (Demian Birchir). After a near death experience, Dom tries to re-connect with his estranged daughter (Emilia Clarke), but is soon drawn back into the only world he knows, looking to settle the ultimate debt.

FAR FROM THE MADDENING CROWD
with Carey Mulligan, Juno Temple, director Thomas Vinterberg
Thomas Hardy’s novel follows the changing fortunes of several characters, including Bathsheba Everdene, who attracts the attention of several men and finds her life filled with wealth, heartache and tragedy.

FOUR DOGS
with Oliver Cooper, Dan Bakkedahl, director Joe Burke
Working from the bitingly funny, sharply observed script he wrote with actor Oliver Cooper, director Joe Burke edits Four Dogs for maximum comic effect. Jump cuts turn Oliver’s interactions into a veritable tilt-a-whirl of social awkwardness. Meanwhile other scenes are allowed to linger until they reveal surprising emotional depth. Be advised: this cutting, close-quarters chamber piece will hit awfully close to home for many viewers.

GRACE OF MONACO
with Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, director Olivier Dahan
The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kelly's crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monaco's Prince Rainier III and France's Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
with Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, director Wes Anderson
The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune -- all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent.

IDA
with Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, director Pawel Pawlikowski
18-year old Anna (stunning newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska), a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, is preparing to become a nun when the Mother Superior insists she first visit her sole living relative. Naïve, innocent Anna soon finds herself in the presence of her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a worldly and cynical Communist Party insider, who shocks her with the declaration that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation. This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past, evoking the haunting legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism.

LE WEEKEND
with Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, director Roger Michell
Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan play a long-married middle-class British couple who attempt to reinvigorate their marriage by visiting Paris for the first time since their honeymoon. While there, they run into an old friend (Jeff Goldblum) who acts as a catalyst for them to recapture their youthful fearlessness, lack of responsibility and idealism.

NOAH
with Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, director Darren Aronofsky
The Biblical Noah suffers visions of an apocalyptic deluge and takes measures to protect his family from the coming flood.

THE RETRIEVAL
with Tishuan Scott, Ashton Sanders, director Chris Eska
Eska has crafted an eloquently insightful narrative distilling the lesser recognized conflicts of the Civil War into an intense historical drama. Cinematographer Yasu Tanida’s capably captured visuals and counterintuitive musical compositions by Matt Wiedemann and Jon Attwood put a keen edge on Eska’s distinctive filmmaking.

ST. VINCENT
with Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, Melissa McCarthy, director Theodore Melfi
A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

WILD
with Reese Witherspoon, Gaby Hoffmann, director Jean-Marc Vallee
With the dissolution of her marriage and the death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed has lost all hope. After years of reckless, destructive behavior, she makes a rash decision. With absolutely no experience, driven only by sheer determination, Cheryl hikes more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her.

THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS SPIVET
Helena Bonham Carter, Kathy Bates, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet
A 12-year-old cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.