Movies Opening This Week

San Jose Mercury News

1) "American Gangster." Denzel Washington rules the inner-city drug trade, flooding the streets with a purer product at a better price. But he meets his match in an outcast cop played by Russell Crowe.

2) "Bee Movie." Jerry Seinfeld plays Barry B. Benson, a bee who wants more out of life than making honey. When Barry ventures out of the hive, he meets a woman, Renée Zellweger, and discovers that all the honey is going to humans. He realizes that his true calling is to stop this injustice and set the world right.

3) "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." Two brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke) plot the seemingly perfect, victimless crime, robbing their parents' store.

4) "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains." A documentary that follows former President Carter as he goes on tour for his book, "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid." As he delivers that message, his credibility and judgment are called into question.

5) "Martian Child." John Cusack plays a recently widowed science fiction writer who forms an unlikely family with a close friend (Amanda Peet) and a young boy he adopts who claims to be from Mars. The new couple ignore some sage parenting advice from the widower's sister (Joan Cusack) and get more than they bargained for when a series of strange occurrences lead them to believe that the child's claim may be true.

6) "Sharkwater." A documentary that travels into the most shark-rich waters of the world, exposing the exploitation and corruption surrounding the world's shark populations and the marine reserves of Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

7) "Wristcutters: A Love Story." Zia (Patrick Fugit), an aimless but amiable young man, is so distraught over his recent breakup with a girlfriend that he decides to end it all. He slashes his wrists expecting to find solace but discovers an afterlife that is not so different from his previous life, just a bit worse.

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