It’s a busy weekend for new releases due to the Labor Day holiday, and while I’d love to have seen someone schedule a special screening of On The Waterfront for the occasion, there are a couple of movies with worker tie-ins. Here are all of the weekend’s releases with our reviews:
Lawless (Wide Release) Go See It: Lawless is an uneven disappointment, especially in light of its intriguing story and deep cast:
When Hardy is on the screen, Lawless feels like it knows what it is, a powerful character drama that sets in motion a colorful world that orbits around a dynamic sun. But Lawless unravels as we pull away from Forrest, or linger for too long on the periphery. Pearce’s Charlie becomes hammish, Jack’s relationship with Bertha unessential, and the unfolding action that envelops the plot – as bootleggers and lawmen stand off on a bridge for a shootout – doesn’t possess the same sense of purpose that Hardy brings to the picture.
Cosmopolis (Angelika Dallas) Go See It: There’s a ton to chew on in David Cornenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s dense, scathing, and ambiguous high finance allegory:
The crisis, though, isn’t so much a financial one as it is a philosophic one, one that confounds the genius-investor’s ability to anticipate patterns in the market, and by extension, patterns in behavior and the natural world. It is a conflict between reason and the unexplainable, between the world of high finance – a construct created out of the rapid-fire exchange of information — and the natural dynamism of human life. Life’s rawness, this unpredictability is personified both in the protests and unrest that breakout and escalate throughout the day, swirling around the limo to Eric’s detached and speculative amusement, and in the character of Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti), a disgruntled former employee with a death wish. Or is it? Are these sideshows merely predicable entities, slag created by market mechanics?
Red Hook Summer (Texas Theatre) Go See It: Spike Lee hasn’t made a feature film in a while, and his latest movie, while sometimes scattered, feels like a return to the voice of his youth:
Red Hook Summer’s achievement as a dramatic piece comes through our shifting sense of sympathy towards the contradictory character of the Bishop, and it is just as we begin to love the man for his foible-ridden idealism that Lee throws the movie’s biggest curveball. Peters is magnanimous and infectious in the role, and he does most of the film’s heavy lifting. The script, too, is a kind of star, creating vignettes that seem to interrupt the action with long soliloquies or dialogues by the main players. In these speeches we encounter the source of tension that heats this world, from urban poverty to gentrification, from disillusioned politics to the powerfully transforming forces of pop culture. Lee is famous for his outspokenness, but there is nothing heavy handed in Red Hook Summer. Rather we approach ideas of faith, life, and love with a raw intensity and unfettered honesty.
Robot and Frank (Landmark Magnolia) Go See It: This is the week’s surprise. On the one hand you have to trust the taste of Frank Langella. On the other hand, it’s a film about a old guy befriending a robot. But it works:
As the human and humanoid begin to develop their partnership, Frank’s friends and family become concerned about his health, even though Frank hasn’t felt this good in years. Here we begin to recognize the familiar patterns of familial behavior, the way in which the young try to put-away — or program — the lives of the inconveniently elderly when they haven’t the time or the patience to devote themselves to cultivating dignifying relationships. Frank finds that kind of companionship, in an ironic and socially scathing twist, in his robot.
Sleepwalk With Me (Angelika Dallas) Worth A Shot: Comedian Mike Birbiglia’s directorial debut has heart and humor, but it is also slight and forgettable:
The best moments in Sleepwalk With Me happen on stage, when Matt is delivering the stand-up routine that pokes fun at his own emotional shortcomings and blubbering incapacities. But those jokes don’t find their way into the rest of the drama. And with little to say about life and love save the familiar angst of love reaching its natural dead end, we’re not left holding on to much by the film’s end. Still, it’s characters and situations ring true, particularly the dynamic created by Matt’s bickering parents.
The Day (Cinemark West Plano): Post-apocalyptic siege war film with a 22 percent tomato meter score and a review from The New York Times that calls it “static, hollow, and vague,” arriving just in time to officially blow the summer movie season into oblivion. Here’s a trailer.
Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (Wide Release): I saw someone Tweet the other day that a movie theater employee told them in two days, not a single person had bought a ticket for this odd in-theater dance party for the kiddos. Not terribly surprised, but from the look of the trailer, theaters may want to start marketing the film to teenagers on drugs.
For a Good Time Call (Angelika Dallas, Cinemark West Plano): Critical opinion is largely split on this phone sex girl comedy that offers up your weekly dose of 20-something-aimed crass sex and body wisecracks, that some find passably enjoyable, others grating and flat. Here’s a trailer.
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (AMC Northpark): This Jet-Li starring Asian action film from the man who brought you Detective Dee is worth seeing. Why? Check out the Dallas Observer’s Jamie Laughlin’s justifications. Here’s a trailer.
It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl (Highland ParkVillage): The biographical documentary about the life of the Jewish Austro-Hungarian writer/journalist who founded the Zionist movment gets a limited release at theHighland Park Village Theater. Critics seem to agree that it is non-fiction as glorification, burying troubling aspects of Herzl’s movement in its effort to praise the man and his legacy. Here’s a trailer.
The Possession (Wide Release): An end of the summer possession movie feels both obligatory and necessarily aweful. But Roger Ebert says The Possession is actually a good scare:
The Possession is a serious horror film about supernatural possession that depends on more than loud noises to scare us. Like The Exorcist, the best film in the genre, it is inspired by some degree of religious scholarship and creates believable characters in a real world. That religions take demonic possessions seriously makes them more fun for us, the unpossessed.
Sold? Here’s a trailer.
The Tall Man (AMC Grapevine Mills): And for another supernatural spook to send the kids back to school by, Jessica Biel stars in The Tall Man, in which weird circumstances surround the disappearance of a town’s children. Again, opinion is split, with some critics calling the film “cheesy,” others “novel” and “defiant.” Here’s a trailer.
Quadrophenia (The Texas Theatre): Sigh. I suppose this was bound to happen, The Texas Theatre digging up an old 35 mm print of Quadrophenia, the Mod v. Rockers film adaptation of The Who’s at the time sonically-groundbreaking album/rock opera. My 14-year-old self is so excited for this; I wish he was in town. There’s a party, natch. And here’s a taste:
