my week at the movies: ‘Whiteout,’ ‘Crude,’ ‘Bright Star,’ ‘The Other Man’

In Antarctica, no one can hear you scream. Or maybe it’s that they can see you screaming because of all the snow blowing around. I forget. Anyway, I’m sure Kate Beckinsale will do some screaming in Whiteout (opens in the U.S. and the U.K. on September 11), so maybe we’ll find out. Doesn’t she look pretty all cold and icicled over and freezing her ass of? Maybe she’d like a hot, steamy shower...

Is there anything more evil than oil companies? Probably not. Documentarian Joe Berlinger looks at the people who took on the polluting bastards at Chevron in Crude (opens in the U.S. on September 9; no U.K. release date has been announced), which looks to be as intriguing as his other films have been.

Bright Star (opening in the U.S. on September 18, and in the U.K. on November 6) is Jane Campion’s new movie, about the poet John Keats and his romance with Fanny Brawne, who inspired all his poetry, or something. Oh, and then he dies tragically at a young age. Oops, hope I didn’t spoil it for you.

Director and screenwriter Richard Eyre gave us Notes on a Scandal. He based his latest film on a short story by Bernhard Schlink, who wrote the novel that The Reader was based on. Are we looking at a potential Oscar nominee, then, in The Other Man (opens in the U.S. on September 11; no U.K. release date has been announced)? I dunno. All I know is that it stars Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, and Antonio Banderas, and that’s good enough to get me interested.