It Takes a Village

Well, that didn't take long.

Two months after the Regal/Edwards chain closed their South Coast Village theater after deciding against renewing its lease with landlords C.J. Segerstrom and Sons, the three-screen movie house has reopened under the Regency Theatres banner.

Regency South Coast Village opened March 23 with a lineup that included the "true-ish" false-identity story Color Me Kubrick starring John Malkovich; Karen Moncrieff's critically acclaimed flip side to torture porn The Dead Girl; Philip Gröning's painstaking look at the monk life Into Great Silence(Die Grosse Stille); and the documentary that explores whether Ralph Nader is a hero or heel, An Unreasonable Man.

Those films made their Orange County debut; all but Color Me Kubrick had previously opened in Los Angeles.

This Friday's openings include the heist flick The Lookout, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Brick and Third Rock From the Sun fame (see Robert Wilonsky's review in this section), and the gripping look on the early days of the Irish Republican Army The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which Scott Foundas reviewed for us two weeks ago when it opened at the Regency Lido in Newport Beach. Also at South Coast Saturday night is a special sneak preview of Lasse Hallström's The Hoax, which stars Richard Gere as Clifford Irving, who almost convinced the world he'd written a Howard Hughes' autobiography based on in-person interviews with the reclusive billionaire that never really happened.

The Village's return is Orange County moviegoers' gain, but it remains unclear how the competition for titles will affect other area theaters vying for the same types of non-mainstream titles, including the Lido, Mann's Rancho Niguel in Laguna Niguel, and Regal's Edwards University and Edwards Westpark 8 in Irvine.

—Matt Coker