June was a busy month at the theater and July promises to be the same. As usual, the stories traversed a bell curve but a few are outstanding and well worth the time and money.
I use a 5-finger rating system, with a high-five going to those rare films that are a true treat to watch. Films rated four fingers are excellent and well worth paying to see. Three is mediocre, two is not good, and a film that would rate one finger — a visual image too grim to mention — is instead awarded a zero, The Dreaded Fist of Badness.
Feel free to let me know if you have an opinion on any of these. While half the fun of seeing a movie is disappearing within its story, the better half is swapping opinions afterward and I am always happy to hear from fellow cinephiles.
Here are 17 films from June — studio, indy, and foreign — including the overhyped box office smash Jurassic World and The Apu Trilogy, which is truly an extraordinary viewer experience.
San Andreas – 3 fingers. The Rock delivers the action hero goods in this well made disaster film blockbuster, while San Francisco gets blown to smithereens on screen for the tenth time in the last three years.
Love & Mercy – 4 fingers. Love & Mercy is a deftly made biographical film directed by Bill Pohlad about emotionally fragile musician and songwriter Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, the psychologist who drugs and manipulates him, and the woman (played wonderfully by Elizabeth Banks) who comes to love him.
Iris – 3 fingers. This fun documentary celebrates the life and style of flamboyant New York 93-year-old fashion icon Iris Apfel, whose infectious personality and persona lights up the screen from start to finish.
Saint Laurent – O fingers, The Dreaded Fist of Badness. This awful, disorganized biopic about French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s inability to manage the accelerating downward spiral of his life after dark is a complete and horrible mess—a total waste of time and money.
A Known Secret – 3 fingers. This grim documentary about predatory managers, photographers, and others in Hollywood who prey on pre-teen and young teens for sexual gratification pulls no punches about the widespread risks of breaking into show business for clueless, gullible dreamers.
Insidious, Chapter 3 – 3 fingers. A fun and entertaining horror film pays off thanks to a good story, decent script, moving pace, and a couple of very compelling performances.
Spy – 3 fingers. If you can weather an overabundance of gratuitous f-bombs, this fun spy spoof carried by strong performances from Melissa McCarthy and (especially) Jason Statham will entertain you and make you laugh out loud throughout.
Avengers: Age of Ultron – 4 fingers. If you enjoy computer-effects, explosions, and briskly paced action films, this is a good one thanks to its “it takes a village” approach with a hustling cast, legitimate story, appropriate script, and excellent sound.
Jurassic World – 3 fingers. Exhausted of fresh contextual ideas, this eroding franchise manages to entertain at times but leaves the viewers exiting the theater thinking that, despite every hopeful benefit of the doubt, this fourth effort is simply another painted scar on an original Mona Lisa.
5 Floors Up – 3 fingers. Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman carry this gentle film as an elderly married couple faced with selling their lifelong Brooklyn apartment at the foot of the bridge, but suddenly find themselves forced to deal with a variety of unexpected problems and doubt.
Results – 3 fingers. This quaint low-budget relationship film about two personal trainers and a slacker millionaire who decides to get fit by eating pizza and smoking weed is better than its name and trailers, thanks primarily to a fine performance by ripped British star Guy Pearce as a fitness studio’s passionate and ambitious owner.
The Wolfpack – 4 fingers. This visceral documentary about six brothers and a special needs sister—raised in virtual confinement for seventeen years in a small public housing flat on the lower east side of Manhattan—makes you wonder two things: how such a thing could possibly happen, and how quickly you can call your parents and tell them you love them.
Jaws [40th anniversary re-release] – 5 fingers. Still a classic movie in every sense of the definition, this powerful summer blockbuster changed both our nation’s summertime movie-going and beach-going habits thanks to fantastic performances and storytelling about a massive great white shark that terrorizes a small, remote beach town.
Dope – 4 fingers. Perhaps the best film too many will not see this year, Dope tells the fresh, creative, and thoroughly entertaining story about a high school senior and his two oddball friends trying to navigate the many potholes of life in urban Inglewood, a tough and impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood.
The Apu Trilogy – 5 fingers. This extraordinary and remarkable linkage of three brilliant feature films — Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1958), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959) – was five years in the making and reveals life in impoverished rural India 100 years ago as seen through the eyes of Apu, a young boy, as he grows through childhood, his late teens, and into manhood.
July accelerates the summer movie season and good films await, both large and small. Until then, I’ll see you at the theater.