New At The Movies: ‘Nacho Libre’ & Much More

“Nacho Libre”

Starring: Jack Black

Ignacio, a.k.a. Nacho, a cook in a Mexican orphanage, moonlights as a masked Lucha Libre wrestler to raise money for the orphans. After growing up in a Mexican monastery, Nacho cares deeply for the orphans he feeds, but he is a terrible cook. He comes up with an idea to buy better ingredients to make tastier meals for the kids. Nacho finds he has a talent for wrestling. Nacho teams with an unconventional partner, Esqueleto (the Skeleton), and feels for the first time in his life that he has something to fight for and a place where he belongs. As Lucha is strictly forbidden by the church elders at the monastery, Nacho is forced to lead a double life. Disguised by a mask, Nacho conceals his true identity as he takes on Mexico’s most famous wrestlers.

The Lake House

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Christopher Plummer

A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging love letters with its newest resident, a frustrated architect. When they discover that they’re actually living two years apart, they must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it’s too late.

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Starring: Lucas Black, Bow Wow

Although street racing provides an escape from an unhappy home and the superficial world around him, for outsider Sean Boswell, his reckless involvement in the sport has made him very unpopular with the local authorities. After one crash too many — and to avoid jail time — Sean is sent to live with his gruff, estranged father, a career military man stationed in Tokyo. Now officially a gaijin (outsider), Sean feels even more shut out in a land of foreign customers and codes of honor. But after a fellow American buddy, Twinkie, introduces him to the underground world of drift racing — an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a heart-stopping course of hairpin turns and switchbacks — he’s hooked again and back in trouble. Simple drag racing is replaced by a new, rubber-burning automotive art form — just bad enough to fit Sean’s rebel style. On his first time out drifting, Sean unknowingly takes on D.K., the “Drift King,” a local champ with ties to the Japanese crime syndicate,Yakuza. Sean’s loss comes with a high price tag when he’s forced to work off the debt under the thumb of another ex-pat named Han. Han soon welcomes Sean into his family of misfits and introduces him to the real principles of drifting. Whether for pink slips, wads of cash or bragging rights, the stakes remain high for Sean and his competition — as they learn to elevate the race itself to an art form. They will take cutting-edge, modified racers to the densely populated streets of Tokyo’s urban landscape at neck-snapping speeds then smoothly glide through tight hairpin turns punctuated by screeches and the acrid smell of smoking rubber. But when Sean falls for D.K.‘s girlfriend, Neela, an explosive series of events is set into motion, climaxing with an ultimate high-stakes face off against his nemesis. Punishment for the loser? Banishment from Tokyo forever by Yakuza crime boss — and D.K.‘s uncle ? Kamata — if they survive the race at all. Honor will be challenged and racing skills will be pushed to the extreme, with only one winner standing as champion.

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties

Starring: Bill Murray, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Breckin Meyer, Lucy Davis, Billy Connolly

Garfield, the world’s favorite cat, has begun his very own British Invasion, wreaking havoc on the entire Kingdom. He’s traveled across the pond (with canine sidekick Odie) to surprise his master, Jon Arbuckle, who is in London to propose to his girlfriend, veterinarian Liz Wilson. Garfield came…he saw?he conquered: Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Scotland Yard and his new favorite dish: minced pie (okay, it’s not lasagna, but you can’t have everything). As befitting an adventure worthy of a feline phenomenon, Garfield has switched places with Prince, a royal cat who has just inherited a castle. Now the castle is Garfield’s — and who’s more deserving? In the grand estate Garfield now calls home, he’s receiving the royal treatment, including a butler and an international array of four-legged servants and followers. It’s a life fit for a king — even though Garfield is only a prince; in fact, he’s the real “Prince and the Paw-purr.” Uneasy is the head, however, that wears the crown. Lord Dargis, who is next in line to inherit the estate, wants Prince/Garfield out of the picture. And Garfield finds his bigger, better, more purr-fect world turned upside down in this tale of two kitties.