Nominated for an Oscar, Lucy Walker’s Waste Land looks at a Brazilian artist who recruited garbage pickers from the giant Jardim Gramacho landfill in Rio de Janeiro to help create his epic trash collages. The movie made its local debut last year at the Chicago International Film Festival and returns this week for a Music Box run that’s the subject of our Critic’s Choice.
More new movies reviewed this week: Cedar Rapids, a comedy with Ed Helms and John C. Reilly as wacky insurance agents; The Eagle, a period drama about a Roman soldier and his antagonistic British slave; The Exploding Girl, an indie drama starring Zoe Kazan; Gnomeo & Juliet, a feature-length animation about terra-cotta garden gnomes pursuing a forbidden love; Inspector Bellamy, the last feature by the late, great Claude Chabrol; Loveless, an indie comedy about an aspiring filmmaker who cuts a deal with the devil in order to finance his next project; The Roommate, a thriller about a college freshman sharing her dorm room with a lunatic; and The Woodmans, a documentary about the brilliant but suicidal photographer Francesa Woodman.