August has been hot and busy with other activities like bike riding, hiking, camping and napping, but here are a few I managed to see this month, and a couple that I saw at SIFF that made brief appearances at theatres nation wide.
Top of any list this year is the new thriller WIND RIVER which was directed by the writer of last year's diamond HELL OR HIGH WATER. Jeremy Renner plays an animal big game tracker who is enlisted by novice FBI agent Elizabeth Olsen to find out what happened to a young girl found murdered in the snows of a Colorado Indian reservation. The tense murder mystery has intriguing characters that keep you intrigued to the very end, and includes some clever scenes, one of which is borrowed from his film HELL OR HIGH WATER from last year, but it works just as well here.
GRADE---------------A-
Viewed at SIFF last June, BRIGSBY BEAR is a quirky, delightful comedy about a man child who was kidnapped as a young boy, and has been living in a fantasy world all his life--a life that featured the make believe world of a giant fuzzy bear's adventures. With the help of his new friends, he is determined to recreate this fantasy world in order to make a movie to complete the adventures. The film works surprisingly well as it deals with issues of kidnapping, readjusting to society, reality vs fantasy and friendship. It is also an adult film, aiming above the heads of only the most mature older children. Featured actors include Kyle Mooney (SNL), Claire Danes and Mark Hamill. GRADE-----------B+
If there is one film this year with a lot of style, it would be ATOMIC BLONDE, with trendy (from the 1980's) costumes, vivid looking set designs (in Berlin and East Germany) and expert camera work that keeps you very interested without shaking the camera around. And there is the lead actor who can really kick butt in a brutal, tough manner--Charlize Theron makes her bruises very believable, and some of the extended fight scenes made me wince in a very uncomfortable manner. The plot may not be the most sophisticated, but this spy drama delivers most of the thrills that we expect in a cold war story. GRADE----------B
A modest, character driven story, MENASHE tells of a single father living in a Jewish slum in New York City who struggles to work full time while raising his young teen son---and he's not very good at either. He has one week to prove that his son should be living with him and not his brother's family, who are more well to do. GRADE---------B
Here's a film nearly ruined by shaking hand held camera work: this is a timely and true story called DETROIT which tells of three black men murdered during the Detroit riots of 1967, by a white, bigoted policeman. When filmmakers (Katherine Bigelow who won Oscars for directing and producing THE HURT LOCKER 2010) are filming with a shaking camera and most of the film's scenes are held at night or in a dimly lit hotel room or hall way it is nearly impossible to discern who is who and what is happening to some of the main characters. This is a powerful story that deserves to be told, but it was difficult to watch (for a number of reasons) and I look forward to a better telling of this tragedy. GRADE----C+
The documentary about black lives matter issues is a hodgepodge that starts with the Ferguson Mo. killing and includes other incidents that cause much anger on the streets. Unfortunately, for all the passion demonstrated, WHOSE STREETS? is not in any particular order, the facts are not often presented clearly and the film becomes a frustrating, unsatisfying experience. GRADE-----------C+
This animated film THE GIRL WITHOUT HANDS, based on a Brothers Grimm story, certainly has an unusual look--the animation is very sparse, almost an avant garde look that is not easy to watch, with much of the drawings having a bare minimum look of the brush stroke used by Japanese masters. Whether or not this suits the story may be debated. I didn't care much for it, except if each image was framed. The story is odd, violent, tragic, with very little humor or emotional pull. GRADE-----------------C+
The very quirky comedy LEMON took a while to grow on me, but by 2/3 mark there is a splendid scene where a dysfunctional family sings a song about a million matzoh balls and I was finally hooked. Still, noting the number of walk outs during the first half, this film is not for everyone. GRADE-------------C
Seems like these days every R rated comedy tries to out gross the last one, and GIRL'S TRIP includes some very vulgar activities, indeed. In fact, I kept thinking that these women were out grossing Trump's bus episode with descriptions of sexual activities they were hoping would happen on their long weekend trip to New Orleans for the Essence weekend. This was actually filmed during last year's Essence weekend, and they did a good job of capturing the musical excitement of that event, complete with short shots of singers being integrated into the slim story line. But for me the sex jokes became tiresome, and drinking became predictable and the story was boring. This film was for me the epitome of a "chick flick" with a lot of sexual innuendo thrown in, and I just couldn't get that interested. The cast was fine, with Queen Latifah, Jada Pinket Smith, Regina Hall well cast as college best friends reuniting after many years, but Tiffany Haddish seems so completely immature and silly that I found it hard to believe she was part of their social circle. I ended looking each actress up and found that she was 10 years younger than the other three, and she wasn't able to hide that fact very well. If there is a sequel, I will not being seeing it. GRADE--------C
REVIVAL--------
IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD 1963--Seen on a giant Cinerama screen with a decent print in 70 MM with several hundred obvious fans, this giant film, mediocre for some, amusing for others, flew by (over 3 hours with intermission) and I had a giant grin on my face the whole time, even though I've seen this half a dozen times on TV in the last 50 years. Spencer Tracey was drool, Ethel Merman was appropriately shrewish, Milton Berle was dryly amusing, and Jonathan Winters nearly manages to steal the show (if he had had more to do)--in fact all the dozens of comedians have their great lines and good scenes. There is an unofficial remake called RAT RACE 2001 which I recently saw and thought it was very funny--better than MAD WORLD in many ways. GRADE-----B
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