Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate has two big ambitions: to save his parents' marriage via carefully plotted intervention and to lose his virginity before his next birthday. Worried that his mom is having an affair with New Age weirdo Graham, Oliver monitors his parents' sex life by charting the dimmer switch in their bedroom. He also forges suggestive love letters from his mom to dad. Meanwhile, Oliver attempts to woo his classmate, Jordana, a self-professed pyromaniac who supervises his journal writing - especially the bits about her. When necessary, she orders him to cross things out. Based on Joe Dunthorne's acclaimed novel, Submarine is a captivating coming-of-age story with an offbeat edge.

"That rare teen comedy where the kids aren't ,gorgeous, the hero isn't heroic and the object of desire has a lot of reasons why she isn't necessarily desirable."

"This is a rare thing: a British comedy debut that's surprising, witty, hugely accomplished and fully capable of finding an audience worldwide."

Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see. Sometimes, you will." So says Buck Brannaman, a true American cowboy and sage on horseback who travels the country for nine grueling months a year helping horses with people problems. BUCK follows Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. A real-life "horse-whisperer", he eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment. Buck possesses near magical abilities as he dramatically transforms horses - and people - with his understanding, compassion and respect. In this film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life. A truly American story about an unsung hero, BUCK is about an ordinary man who has made an extraordinary life despite tremendous odds.

From writer/director Mike Mills comes a comedy/drama about how deeply funny and transformative life can be, even at its most serious moments. -Beginners- imaginatively explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love through the evolving consciousness of Oliver (Golden Globe Award nominee Ewan McGregor). Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna (Melanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds) only months after his father Hal (Academy Award nominee Christopher Plummer) has passed away. This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father who - following 44 years of marriage - came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life. The upheavals of Hal's new honesty, by turns funny and moving, brought father and son closer than they'd ever been able to be. Now Oliver endeavors to love Anna with all the bravery, humor, and hope that his father taught him.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, a breathtaking new 3D documentary from the incomparable Werner Herzog (ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, GRIZZLY MAN) follows an exclusive expedition into the nearly inaccessible Chauvet Cave in France, home to the most ancient visual art known to have been created by man. A hit at this year's Toronto Film Festival, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is an unforgettable cinematic experience that provides a unique glimpse of pristine artwork dating back to human hands over 30,000 years ago -- almost twice as old as any previous discovery.

In this fanciful fable, writer/director Woody Allen ruminates on nostalgia: a bittersweet longing for idealized things, persons or situations of the past.

 Successful-but-dissatisfied Hollywood screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is in Paris, diligently working on his first novel, yet insecure about his serious literary ability.  His protagonist runs a memorabilia shop and, like Gil, wistfully yearns to have lived back in the 1920s, the unabashedly romantic era reflected in Cole Porter's music. One night, as Gil is walking back to the hotel by himself after dinner in a restaurant with his shrill fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her bourgeois parents (Mimi Kennedy, Kurt Fuller), an extraordinary thing happens. As the clock strikes midnight, a vintage yellow Peugeot pulls up and a festive young couple beckons him inside. To his amazement, it's Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, drinking Dom Perignon and inviting him to join them at a party.  Thanks to magical realism, it turns out to be the most amazing evening of Gil's life, as he hobnobs with the cultural and artistic giants of the Lost Generation, along with a lovely damsel (Marion Cotillard) who, in turn, yearns for the Belle Epoque. Eager to repeat the incredible experience, Gil returns to the same street at midnight, night after night. To tell you whom he meets, what they say to him and what happens would ruin the surprise.

Charming, shaggy Owen Wilson epitomizes Woody Allen's idealistic and self-absorbed sensibilities. The illusion-versus-reality concept evokes memories of "Purple Rose of Cairo," in which a mousy housewife (Mia Farrow) flees from the brutality of real life into the imaginary world of movies, along with the Americans-abroad ambiance of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." The acting ensemble is superb, particularly Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway and Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali. In a cameo, French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is a Rodin Museum tour guide.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Midnight in Paris" is an amusing, whimsical, time-traveling 10, an inventive cinematic celebration of the iconic City of Lights.

There are times I am afforded a little satisfaction by the gods of film. We brought in both BUCK and CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS after they played at the multiplexes. BUCK is doing well-much better than it did at the multiplexes. Why? Well, it's a documentary. Unless it's about penguins and narrated by Morgan Freeman, docs don't play well at the multiplexes. BUCK isn't about penguins. Regardless of how the movie poster looks, it's not completely about horses either. It's about people. Darkside fans look for films like that at the Darkside, and it will be Darkside fans attending those films-which means it did no business at the non-Darkside cinema. So, a big thanks from me to you for showing the folks in Hollywood that the Darkside would have been the correct first choice for a movie like BUCK. 

Then there is CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. This opened at the local multiplex in 3D. It died. We picked it up and it's doing well...in 2D. This might be why.

We are moving more and more toward digital presentation at the Darkside. Some of you may notice that if we get to the booth a little late, you can see the digital menu on the screen. With 35mm film there is a "sound" film makes when it goes to credits. (A magnetic cue is attached to the film and makes a noise when it goes through the projector.) Digital movies give no auditory hints when the credits hit the screen. I was 18 when I learned to operate a 35mm projector. Now at 50 I'm getting something most 18 year-olds have from the womb--digital competence. With digital presentations we actually have to pry ourselves away from our Facebook pages and texting and WALK into the booth and look at the monitor to know when the film is about to end. It's hell I tell you.

We're almost half way through our sixth year at the Darkside and it seems the more time the goes by the less the Darkside looks the way it was envisioned when it was planned. It seems as long as we stay committed to bringing quality movie choices for a night away from the living room, you keep coming back. Some of our movies may be getting delivered to us over the internet rather than from the back of the UPS truck, but the idea is still the same: We suck less. And every year, we suck even less. Thanks for coming along for the ride.