drugstore june
You can’t blame anyone for not seeing “Drugstore June” in theaters. Considering it had a scattered and ultra-limited run of only a few weeks. (I saw the movie on a whim on a weekday afternoon in a mostly empty theater the day after I belatedly saw the trailer online.) But now that it’s streaming on Hulu in the US, it’s the most talked-about movie. You can check out one of them. The funniest mainstream comedy in years. Built around comedian Esther Povitsky’s stand-up persona, Drugstore June takes us to a time when up-and-coming comic figures might be given a vehicle for their own shallow ideas. It’s a reversal. It wasn’t a great trend – Nikolaus Goossen, the director of Drugstore June, made Grandma’s Boys, to name just one of many examples – but here it was, attracting the attention of big studios. It wasn’t (or maybe just a special love for the game) , a quirky town detective comedy about reclusive, self-centered, snack-obsessed June (Povitsky) trying to figure out who trashed the pharmacy where she (barely) works. Unlike many of Sandler and staff’s previous films, Drugstore June has a genuine sense of place, a playful sense of cross-generational self-satire, and a unique character at its center. This is even more miraculous now that studios, large and small, have little interest in making comedies. jesse hassenger
honorable shine
Prince Shine is the subject of a shocking documentary that reacts to recent allegations that Diddy actually admitted responsibility for the New York nightclub shooting that resulted in a former Bad Boy escapee serving more than eight years in prison. It opened with a trailer. People really got into pull quotes — “He destroyed my life,” Shine said. But if they had watched all the Hulu documentaries, they would have learned that life is full of events. It’s a keyboard-like immigrant story, his tough-guy phase, his brutal conversion to Orthodox Judaism that leads him to live in Israel, and his political redemption at the end. Home country of Belize. Director Marcus Clark timed the film to be about two hours long, and without getting into all the details of the 1999 club shooting, he carefully explored Shine’s past while also looking at Diddy’s fall and some of the aftershocks. It’s being distributed. The final effect is a sumptuous fable of rugged individualism that belongs in the library of great American originals. They could have called it “The Book of Shine.” andrew lawrence
show forgiveness
In a strange and unfortunate year for the Oscars, where the Best Actor category is particularly unclear and anemic, the crime that Forgiven and its star Andre Holland have kept under the radar is a crime. Artist-turned-director Titus Kaphar’s intimate and intricate drama, which premiered at Sundance to polite acclaim and now has word of its release this fall, revolves around a commonplace subject: father and son. took the tearing trauma of , and turned it into something real, and sometimes even made it real. , is quite radical. Kaphar plays a painter who has struggled with his drug-addicted father, who has stepped out of his own life, and where Holland is also absent, and faces the daunting challenge of knowing when and how to forgive. Holland is a complete knockout and is rarely given this much time as a lead. And the scenes with him and his character’s parents (John Earl Jelks and Aunjanue Ellis Taylor) are so thrilling and authentically performed that it feels as if we were starring in them. I can feel it. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat watching it live in a small off-Broadway theater. This is a tough situation, especially for those of us who have known similar pain, but Kaphar’s non-emotional insights are worth persevering and, as someone who has been there himself, we too can survive. says the rest of us. benjamin lee
mother’s instinct
How did a fine period drama featuring two of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars sit on a shelf for more than a year, have its world premiere in Lithuania, play in European theaters for months, and then play on a handful of American screens? Will it be released quietly and then dragged into theaters? Bring about $3 million? Neither viewers nor distributor Neon knew what to make of this extravagant genre layer cake. It’s the pathos of an honest woman’s picture, topped with the intrigue of a well-mannered psychological thriller, and iced with a stroke of camp. Benoît Delhomme, a rare cinematographer turned director, dares to take seriously the grief of Anne Hathaway, a housewife in her 60s who lost her son under the watchful eye of her friend Jessica Chastain. A delicate negotiation of tone is required as the story shifts to cock-like revenge. Projection driving scene. But does Hathaway’s mother-turned-murderer just want to kill her neglectful neighbor, or is there a whiff of perverse attraction in these quiet moments filled with homoerotic tension? Is there even a possibility? As with all movies about the difference between brunettes and blondes, the answer here is a perfectly accurate “Yes!” Charles Bramesco
Girls Will Be Girls
Set in a conservative boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas in the 1990s – the same first sign of picking the forbidden fruit as Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus – Shuchi Talati’s coming-of-age drama is a familiar tale of good-natured A complete change from a young girl. -Bad premise to social conventions and certain stories about sexual awakening. The good girl here is Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), who is the first woman ever to be chosen as the school’s principal. The bad boy is Suri (Kesab Binoy Kiron), a worldly rebel who tries to force a reconsideration of the rules he has been elected to enforce. . Girls Will Be Girls is a satisfying, culturally specific, star-crossed love story, but it’s also notable for its frank tackling of Mila’s newly rekindled libido. A true scholar, she studies sexual mechanics online. scott tobias
The Grab
I hate conspiracy theories in general. Characters and plots are usually neither complex nor contained. And while it deals with low-profile multinational efforts to buy up natural resources, thankfully so does The Grab. This stunning documentary is a multi-year joint reporting effort between the Center for Investigative Reporting and Blackfish filmmaker Gabriella Cowperthwaite, and explores the details of an international conspiracy, including offshore accounts, shady private security companies and secret Chinese nationals. Built on unknown, brain-melting elements. Government documents literally mark it as “Not for Distribution in the United States.” But facile conspiracy theory thinking is eschewed at every turn, and instead a new 21st century narrative of public and private efforts to hoard food and water resources threatened by population growth and the climate crisis. Connecting the dots about. From dried up aquifers in Arizona to stolen land in Zambia, imported cowboys in Russia and the takeover of a major food conglomerate by a Chinese state-backed company, The Grab is your guide to how I view the news and my daily needs. I changed my way of thinking. This story deserves more attention because it is so vast, so diffuse, so mind-boggling in scale, so hard to understand, so much harder to sit through and watch. Adrian Houghton
people’s joker
Just when you think you’ve seen enough Batman movies, along comes a heartfelt movie that’s irreverent to the intellectual property while also dispelling the arrogance and commodification ties packed into the series. That said, Bella Drew’s queer coming-of-age story mapped onto a sleazy mixed-media re-imagining of Gotham is so quirky and ultimately charming, who wouldn’t want to buy a T-shirt? Or? Harlequin Joker, played by Drew, is Harlequin, a young trans woman and aspiring stand-up comedian from Smallville who comes to big, bad Gotham to make all her dreams come true, but there are villains in town, among them Including the predatory Bruce Wayne. Characters from the DC Universe, especially Nathan Faustin as the good friend Penguin, appear in unfamiliar appearances, but once you forget their lore, it all makes some kind of strange sense. As you might expect, The People’s Joker faced some legal issues when it was released in theaters, but it’s now available to stream. Pamela Hutchinson
War of the Roses, aka Baltimore
Baltimore, which was called Rose’s War when it was released in the U.S. (probably to avoid confusion with Murder on the Street or John Waters’ work), is based on British-Irish duo Christine. -This cool intellectual thriller by Molloy and Joe Lawler (aka). Desperate Optimist) actually refers to the remote hamlet in the south-west of Ireland where heiress-turned-Irish republican Rose Dugdale later holed up. Molloy and Lawler have been art film stalwarts since the mid-2000s with their quietly fascinating studies of identity and self-actualization. Why they aren’t better known than they are now is a bit of a mystery. But this production, anchored by Imogen Poots’ impressive central performance, could be a breakthrough of sorts. The film, which charts Dugdale’s transformation from fat man to radical student to dedicated IRA soldier, is essentially a character study, depicting Doña Antonia Zarate, the subject of her beloved Goya paintings. suggests that Dugdale is playing the role as much as he does. It’s a smart and thoughtful film, and well worth seeking out. andrew pulver
sugar cane
Sugar Cane seemed to have everything it needed to attract a large audience – a new investigation that breaks down the story of horrific acts against Native American children, and a history of discrimination dating back centuries. Deep storytelling, top-notch on-the-ground reporting, stories that two charismatic and compelling journalists have to tell, and even a Sundance blessing. It’s amazing how this movie has been so underrated. Sugarcane delves into the barbarity of Canadian and American residential school programs. The program essentially sought to strip Native American children of their culture, language, and history, while also subjecting them to mental and physical abuse. It wasn’t until 1978 that Native American parents living in the United States had the legal right to refuse to enroll their children in these schools, and Sugar Cane was a major contributor to Native American communities that exist to this day. reveals the continuing damage caused by This is an important documentary that provides important facts about these evils and provides a rich and valuable perspective on the emotional, familial, and community toll inflicted on Native Americans. With so many vulnerable people now at risk of similar treatment under the second Trump administration, this documentary is a must-see. veronica esposito
red rooms
French-Canadian director Pascal Plante directs Hitchcock into a sociopathic world with this unnerving psychological thriller about a model who, for reasons unknown, has a strange obsession with the high-profile trial of a terrifying serial killer. We are making fine adjustments towards this. Like Psycho and Rear Window, Red Rooms is all about who’s looking where, and for the most part, the film keeps us firmly glued to Juliette Gariepy’s cold gaze. do. The still look on her face makes you wonder if Kelly Anne is up to something or is dead inside. It’s also a perfect evocation of the empty, soulless space that its characters inhabit, both mentally and physically, and the space that Plante scavenges. It’s a deeply in-depth film that, although I’m not sure what it’s all about, depicts glass tower apartments, stark white courtrooms, and the browser windows where Kelly-Anne books gigs and bets cryptocurrencies. Cameras are often scanning like machines. No one will ever see that killer poker face at a virtual Texas Hold’em table. It certainly seems soulless, but it’s also soul-crushing. Radyan Simon Pillai
