There’s No Escape from the Diary of a Teenage Girl… U.N.C.L.E., please!
Greetings and salutations dear readers!
This is Professor Kaufmann doing the honors for the Monthly Reel this month. We have a rather odd but interesting array of movies for your consideration.
This month I reviewed the highly regarded but remarkably intense psychological character study The Gift. Writer-producer-director Joel Edgerton somehow found the time to act in this as well and does a masterful job in all four departments. Then there’s Guy Ritchie’s stylish reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Finally, my personal pick of the month is the not highly regarded but remarkably intense Owen Wilson actioner, No Escape. My DVD pick, Java Heat, was inspired by this film.
Michelle tackles the very controversial and no-holds-barred Diary of a Teenage Girl, the German post World War II film, Phoenix, and the fascinating End of the Tour, about a Rolling Stone interview with American writer David Foster Wallace. Her DVD pick is Noah Baumbach’s midlife crisis comedy-drama While We’re Young. His new movie, Mistress America just opened.
The HFS lineup this month will feature the George Burns comedy-drama Going in Style, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in The Long, Hot Summer, The Devil & Daniel Webster, and Merchant-Ivory’s The White Countess. AFS has just shown Nickelodeon and has scheduled Bliss, the original 1934 Imitation of Life, the original The Front Page from 1931, and The Bank Dick with W.C. Fields. The Budget Big Screen feature at the end of the month is The Third Man
It looks like a good month ahead regarding new movies as the summer blockbuster fare gives way to more thoughtful fare, which is appropriate, as autumn is just around the corner.
Among the anticipated releases are A Walk in the Woods with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte (September 4), a return to his roots for M. Night Shyamalyn in The Visit (September 11), Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, and the harrowing 3-D/IMAX adventure epic Everest (September 18). Finally there is Roland Emmerich’s take on the birth of the Gay Rights movement with Stonewall (September 25).
That’s it for this month. Even in this age of the stream and the download, nothing beats seeing a film up on the big screen, so get out there and experience a movie the way it was meant to be experienced.
Until next month, enjoy the show!
