(Please note: films and dates are sometimes tentative and subject to change!)

EMILIO (opened 06/12) – Emilio is the soulful tale of a young man (19 years) who leaves his village in Mexico looking for his kidnapped sister. His journey leads him to Los Angeles, where we see the city through the eyes of a penniless illegal immigrant on a desperate quest. The City of Angels itself becomes in a sense the second character of this movie as Emilio’s needle-in-a-haystack search takes him through the gritty contasts of Skid Row, East L.A., Echo Park, Watts, Torrance, Venice Beach, Beverly Hills, and the West Hollywood hills. The panorama of characters he encounters include Mexican day laborers, drug dealers, transients, skateboarders, disco queens, actors, and upwardly mobile socialites constituting at once a searing social criticism and celebration of a city. As it moves towards its inexorable conclusion, this coming of age story comes into its own above all as an heroic portrait of determination. www.emiliothemovie.com – 103 minutes. – Not Rated. – HILLCREST CINEMA

HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29 (opened 06/12) – An extraordinary retelling of one of the most famous college football games in history, filmmaker Kevin Rafferty’s (The Atomic Café) documentary combines rare footage of the wildly unpredictable 1968 game with unguarded, politically-charged recollections from the original players. The two squads, both of which entered the contest undefeated, included a Vietnam vet as well as members of both paramilitary and antiwar groups; at Harvard, the team also included actor Tommy Lee Jones (who reminisces about his roommate Al Gore), while Yale’s star quarterback Brian Dowling became the inspiration for B.D., the jock character in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip. As Jones puts it, “ideas were flying around like bullets”—as becomes clear by the end of the film, this was a social experience that resonated well beyond one Saturday afternoon on the playing field. www.kino.com/harvardbeatsyale/ – 105 minutes. – Not Rated. – KEN CINEMA

FOOD, INC. (opens 06/19) – Filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, the USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of e. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms’ Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms’ Joe Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here. www.foodincmovie.com – 94 minutes. – Rated PG. – HILLCREST CINEMA

MOON (opens 06/19) – In the near future, astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. He will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty” (voice of Kevin Spacey), the base’s well-intentioned but rather uncomplicated computer. Suddenly, Sam’s health starts to deteriorate. Painful headaches, hallucinations and a lack of focus lead to an almost fatal accident on a routine drive on the moon in a lunar rover. While recuperating back at the base (with no memory of how he got there), Sam meets a younger, angrier version of himself, who claims to be there to fulfill the same three year contract Sam started all those years ago. Confined with what appears to be a clone of his earlier self, and with a “support crew” on its way to help put the base back into productive order, Sam is fighting the clock to discover what’s going on and where he fits into company plans. www.sonyclassics.com/moon/ – 97 minutes. – Rated R. – HILLCREST CINEMA

REVANCHE (opens 06/19) – In writer/director Götz Spielmann’s powerful drama two seemingly divergent storylines intersect and become inextricably linked in unexpected ways. Alex (Johannes Krisch), an ex-con dreaming of a better life, and his girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko), a Ukrainian prostitute, both work in a Vienna brothel, hiding their relationship from the boss. In a country village a few hours away Susanne (Ursula Strauss) and her police officer husband Robert (Andreas Lust) lead a tranquil life, lacking only a child. Desperate to rescue Tamara from her job at the brothel, Alex robs the bank in Robert’s village; Robert stumbles across them and a stray bullet leads to accidental murder. Featuring superlative acting in a character-driven story about moral choices and their consequences, Revanche (Revenge) reveals a profound understanding of human nature. Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. (Fully subtitled) – 121 minutes. – Not Rated. – KEN CINEMA – Exclusive Engagement

THE MUPPET MOVIE (plays 06/20 at 12:00 Midnight) – Fried-frogs-legs franchisers follow Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and company to Hollywood. – 95 minutes. – Rated G. – KEN CINEMA – Midnight Show

CHERI (opens 06/26) – It is turn of the century in Belle Epoque Paris and a scandalous romp is underfoot. The sensational tale begins as the ravishing Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer) contemplates retirement from her renowned stature as Paris’s most envied seductress to the rich and famous. Her plans are cut short when she is approached by a former courtesan and arch rival, the barb-throwing gossip Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), who encourages Lea to teach her disaffected 19-year-old son—a bon vivant nicknamed “Chéri” (Rupert Friend)—a thing or two about women. The resulting escapades involve power struggles over sex, money, age and society—and, unexpectedly, love itself—as a boy who refuses to grow up collides with a woman who realizes she cannot stay young forever. Director Stephen Frears (The Queen) and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Atonement) reunite (Dangerous Liaisons) to playfully bring Colette’s unconventional romance to the screen. www.miramax.com/cheri.html – 92 minutes. – Rated R. – HILLCREST CINEMA

WHATEVER WORKS (opens 06/26) – Writer/director Woody Allen returns to New York with an offbeat comedy about a crotchety misanthrope (Larry David, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and a naïve, impressionable young runaway from the south (Evan Rachel Wood). When her uptight parents (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr.) arrive to rescue her, they are quickly drawn into wildly unexpected romantic entanglements. Everyone discovers that finding love is just a combination of lucky chance and appreciating the value of “whatever works.” Co-starring Michael McKean and Conleth Hill. www.sonyclassics.com/whateverworks/ – 92 minutes. – Rated PG-13. – HILLCREST CINEMA

IL DIVO (opens 06/26) – Giulio Andreotti (Toni Servillo), variously nicknamed The Divine Giulio, Little Caesar, Beelezebub, and Mr. Italy, was the uncrowned king of postwar Italian politics. Between 1972 and 1992 he was Prime Minister seven times and eventually named Senator for Life—but he was also famously accused of and tried for collusion with the mafia. Writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s rip-roaring biopic is chockfull of colorful characters and sinister deaths: machine-gun ambushes, poisoned coffee in a “safe” jail cell, a plastic bag over the head, and more. Andreotti—witty, diminutive, hunched-over, a martyr to headaches—seems an unlikely figure to fear, yet he is at the center of a whirlwind of violence. Familiarity with Italian politics is not essential to enjoy the sheer entertainment and panache of this no-holds-barred portrait of the Machiavellian enigma of Andreotti. Jury Prize winner at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. (Fully subtitled) http://musicboxfilms.com/ildivo/ – 110 minutes. – Not Rated. – KEN CINEMA – Exclusive Engagement

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER (plays 06/27 at 12:00 Midnight) – 97 minutes. – Rated R. – KEN CINEMA – Midnight Show

THE GIRL FROM MONACO (opens 07/03) – A bodyguard tries to protect his stuffy boss from the flirtations of a beautiful meteorologist. – 95 minutes. – Rated R. – HILLCREST CINEMA

EASY RIDER (opens 07/03) – A landmark road film, Easy Rider chronicles the search for freedom by two motorcycle-riding drifters (Peter Fonda and director Dennis Hopper). After closing a big-time coke deal in Los Angeles, the two bikers “head out on the highway,” trying to discover the real America on the way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. They cruise Monument Valley, spend some time at a commune and try to deal with the negative vibes their hippie regalia provokes in most of the citizenry. Thrown into a southern jail, they meet up with an alcoholic lawyer (Jack Nicholson) who gets them out and then joins them on their liberating journey. Includes cameos by Karen Black and record producer Phil Spector, as well as a legendary soundtrack featuring “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf, plus songs by The Byrds, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, The Electric Prunes and more. An Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Nicholson) and Best Original Screenplay (Fonda, Hopper and novelist Terry Southern). – 94 minutes. – Rated R. – KEN CINEMA – Exclusive Engagement

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