The Hot Sheet

Movies

Life as We Know It — Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel star as an unlikely pair forced to move in together to raise the baby daughter of their deceased friends in director Greg Berlanti’s glossy first feature since 2000’s The Broken Hearts Club. Berlanti, among the most LGBT-inclusive writer-directors working today, unobtrusively includes a gay couple among the neighbors who lend support to the unexpected parents.

Nowhere Boy — The complicated, pre-Beatles years of angry teenager John Lennon and the influential women in his life is the subject of this finely rendered feature debut by director Sam Taylor-Wood. Gorgeous cinematography (by The Hours’ Seamus McGarvey) and exceptional performances (Aaron Johnson as a swaggering, handsome young Lennon, Anne-Marie Duff as his often-unhinged mother, Julia, and especially Kristin Scott-Thomas as his determined Aunt Mimi) highlight this insightful look into the future icon. 

My Soul to Take — Wes Craven hasn’t directed a film since 2005’s Red Eye (and he hasn’t written one since Wes Craven’s New Nightmare). But the horror master is in fine form with My Soul to Take, which is reminiscent of the great horror films of the ’80s. An attractive cast will surely help pack bodies in the theater, and it’s the perfect appetizer for Scream 4, which hits screens next April.

Tamara Drewe — Director Stephen Frears’s résumé reads like a master class in art films — Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen. But with Tamara Drewe he gets decidedly less serious for a fun romp through the English countryside. In the story of a newspaper writer (Gemma Arterton, charming) who returns to her hometown just as her family home is being put up for sale, the colorful ensemble cast makes this an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon at the movies.