With just a few weeks left in the summer, studios are rolling out all sorts of things. Thrillers! Horror movies! Animated … sequels … to movies no one saw the first time around?
I dunno, I guess people like cartoon squirrels. Let’s dig in.
Annabelle: Creation: If I have this right, this movie is the prequel to the prequel to the third-act sting in The Conjuring … and Glenn went to see it anyway. Poor Glenn.
The Glass Castle: Jeannette Walls’ memoir about escaping her horrific childhood becomes an Oscar-bait lookbook in Destin Daniel Cretton’s follow-up to Short Term 12. I suspect there’s a longer cut that better serves both the source material and Brie Larson’s performance.
Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait: Pappi Corsicato’s profile of the painter and filmmaker arrives at the Hot Docs Cinema fresh from its Tribeca premiere. I haven’t seen it, but people seemed to like it.
Menashe: Shot clandestinely in Brooklyn, and performed almost entirely in Yiddish, Joshua Z Weinstein’s domestic drama is otherwise entirely rote, following a widower (Menashe Lustig) struggling to retain custody of his young son. You’ve seen this movie before, just maybe not in this language.
The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature: Yup, they made another one. I would just like to point out that Rad goes to see these movies because he has small children.
Step: See, Rad gets to see good stuff too! And he really liked Amanda Lipitz’ documentary about team spirit forming amongst the Baltimore teens in an African-American step dance team.
Wind River: Taylor Sheridan’s thriller about missing and murdered indigenous women stars Jeremy Renner and Elisabeth Olsen as outsiders investigating a murder on a Wyoming reservation. And if either (or both) of their roles had been cast with a Native American actor, this would be a much more satisfying movie.
Also I wrote a thing about the end of Orphan Black in which I deal with my love of the show despite its many, many storytelling issues — and, ultimately, why those issues are irrelevant. Get on it, Clone Club.
It sounds like The Glass Castle at least kept a little of the deprivation from the book in the movie but put an oh-so-shiny patina of wanderlust and artistic creativity on it instead of narcissism and neglect. The commercials seem to have focussed too much on the, “Hey cool, what a non-traditional and inspiring childhood,” but I can see that from a purely marketing point of view. The anecdotes that stuck with me from the book wouldn’t be ones that would get butts in theatre seats. I was so glad for my normal, boring upbringing after reading the book.