Martha Marcy May Marlene

J. Edgar

Leonardo DiCaprio takes on the trying role of the FBI's first director J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's biopic. The film follows Hoover's life and career, including his oft-questioned relationship with his right hand man, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). While DiCaprio's performance is inspired and the cast is chock full of star power, the story itself proves to be pretty dull. If you're interested in the DVD, you can look forward to the extra "J. Edgar: The Most Powerful Man in the World," where DiCaprio and Eastwood sit down to discuss the complicated life of Hoover.

44%

Tower Heist
In this Bret Ratner flick, luxury apartment manager Josh (Ben Stiller) puts together a rag-tag team — including Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, and Eddie Murphy as a petty criminal named Slide — to take revenge on a swindling mogul Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) who has robbed the apartment's staff of their savings. While the heist seems pretty convoluted, there are some funny moments that make it an entertaining watch. The DVD extras include deleted scenes, two alternate endings, bloopers, a making-of featurette, and audio commentary with Ratner and two of the film's writers.

68%

See one more new release after the jump.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a film that's extremely confusing, but in a brilliant, deliberate way. It would be the greatest asset if not for the actress at the center, rising star Elizabeth Olsen, the film's real revelation. She plays Martha, a girl who gets sucked into an abusive cult that's masquerading as a farm community in the Catskills. The charismatic leader Patrick (John Hawkes) preaches his doctrines to Martha, and she's pulled in by his ideals and the sense of family on the farm. Patrick's sinister intentions are revealed as he slowly introduces Martha into a cycle of exploitation and violence, and his methods include stripping Martha of her identity, like calling her "Marcy May." Amid a seductive process of indoctrination, Martha starts to lose her grip on who she is.

Eventually, Martha's survival skills kick in as she becomes aware that she's in a dangerous environment, and she escapes one morning. Though she's unstable and delusional, she's able to contact her estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) who's staying at a Summer home nearby with her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). Martha is so damaged that she's unable to articulate her ordeal, though we slowly get glimpses at what happened to her on the farm. From there, the movie concurrently shows the two paths of Martha's story: flashbacks of her life on the farm mixed with her recovery at her sister's house. The nonlinear structure confuses the viewer in the same way Martha is confused, and it makes for a unique, immersing movie experience. To find out why else I appreciated the film, just keep reading.

Elizabeth Olsen, younger sibling to twins Mary-Kate and Ashley, stars in this week's release of Martha Marcy May Marlene, a psychological drama about a young woman who gets caught up in a cult-like atmosphere. It's a breakout role for Olsen, who has a challenging job as the complicated title character. I had a chance to ask Olsen if she researched cults or spoke to victims of them for the film, and Olsen said she hadn't, and was pleased that she didn't.

She explained, "I definitely might have done research if there was more time, but within two to three weeks before shooting, I was cast, and all I had was the script. I'm actually lucky there wasn't more time, because then I would probably have psyched myself out. I'd do all this research, and then I might feel this sort of reverence to something, this idea to depict something really important and I'd just rather approach it from a really human perspective of what could happen to the everyman. I just dealt with how I could relate to her situation."

• Elizabeth Olsen, sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley, has been cast in an indie drama — PopWatch
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• Proceed at your own risk: The Hobo With a Shotgun trailer — The AV Club
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