Tuesday, August 18: Annie (2014)
8 p.m./seating at 7 p.m. @ Hart Park (7300 W. Chestnut St.) (FREE!)
Wednesday, August 19: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Dusk @ LaFollette Park in West Allis (9418 W. Washington St.) (FREE!)
Wednesday, August 19: Rudy
7 p.m. @ select local Marcus Theaters (Purchase tickets here)
***CRITIC’S CHOICE***
Wednesday, August 19: My Favorite Wife
7:30 p.m. @ Charles Allis Art Museum ($7/$5/free for seniors/students/museum members)
A lovely companion piece to their screening of the screwball classic The Awful Truth a couple weeks ago, the second comedy collaboration between Cary Grant and Irene Dunne screens this week at the Charles Allis Art Museum. After spending seven years hoping for the best, Grant’s Nick Arden finally succumbs to the notion that his wife is now dead after having disappeared. But on the day he’s to be remarried, Dunne’s Ellen shows back up – and to further throw a wrench in the works, the hunky man she was stranded on an island with (Randolph Scott, great) wants her for himself. While maybe not an all-timer like their first work together, My Favorite Wife is a very solid contribution to the screwball comedy genre nonetheless.
Friday, August 21: American Ultra, Sinister 2 & Hitman: Agent 47 open in wide release
Check local listings for showtimes/pricing
Friday, August 21: Jimmy’s Hall, The End of the Tour & ***CRITIC’S CHOICE*** Diary of a Teenage Girl open in limited release locally
Check local listings for showtimes/pricing
I think Ken Loach is a very fine filmmaker and I’m certain that Jimmy’s Hall will be an emotionally astute and cinematically sound motion picture. But the two other releases overshadow this for me, this week. I fear that one of these films will make plenty of ‘Best Of’ lists at year’s end and the other will be forgotten, but in the wrong configuration – The End of the Tour is merely good, while Diary of a Teenage Girl is revelatory and easily one of the year’s finest films.
There really isn’t anything derogatory to be said about The End of the Tour, either. It is an exquisitely performed chamber piece between Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel as David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace, respectively. And director James Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) brings the warmth and intimacy of his previous work to the fore here. But the entire enterprise feels like it was reverse-engineered from Wallace’s death and that his actions were a fait accompli darkly intimated throughout their time together, instead of the tete-a-tete between two writers at starkly different places in their lives that it actually is. When the movie is happy just to have the two hold conversation on a wealth of subjects (such as Die Hard, Alanis Morissette, having children) it soars, but when it attempts this strange sort of pre-destined profundity, it stumbles. It’s certainly worthy of your time, but I don’t think it should be counted among the year’s finest efforts.
I don’t feel like Diary of a Teenage Girl has any such misstep. A brazen, visually delightful and wonderfully performed coming of age tale about a 15-year old girl engaged in a sexual relationship with her mother’s 30-something boyfriend, it’s easy to imagine a version of the movie that either moralizes or completely bungles its tone and leaves you feeling saddened and/or sickened by the events that transpire. But Marielle Heller is so assured in her rooting of this film in the young girl’s perspective, and proves so magnificently adept at respecting a young woman’s sexuality without needlessly judging her actions that you never once feel out of step with the film. Bel Powley is absolutely astonishing in the lead role, giving the performance everything body and soul, and Alexander Skarsgard’s weak-willed man somehow manages to remain understandable if not exactly empathetic throughout. This is a movie about a child trying to come of age when surrounded by adults who would prefer to act like children, and it is triumphant. It is without a doubt one of 2015’s finest films, and an important one – girls are taught to be ashamed about their urges from a young age, and the simple fact that this film deals bluntly and explicitly with nascent sexuality in a way that never condescends or panders makes it a minor miracle.
Friday, August 21: Guardians of the Galaxy
Dusk @ Veterans Park (1010 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive) (FREE!)
Friday, August 21: Big Hero 6
Dusk @ South Milwaukee Downtown (Intersection of 11th & Madison) (FREE)
Friday, August 21: Field of Dreams
7:15 p.m. (seating begins at 6) @ Peck Pavilion (929 N. Water St.) (FREE)
Friday, August 21: The Big Lebowski
5 p.m. – 11:30 p.m. (movie will screen at dusk) @ Cathedral Square Park (Kilbourn Ave. & N. Jefferson St.) (FREE Though special seating is available with Lebowski Fest ticket purchase here)
***CRITIC’S CHOICE***
Friday, August 21: RoboCop
8 p.m. @ The Holton St. Swing Park (FREE)
If for no other reason than to further banish the recent absolutely banal remake from our memory, I highly recommend checking out RoboCop to kick off your weekend. Paul Verhoven made some of the most riotous and slyly subversive sci-fi/action entertainment in Hollywood for nearly three decades (I’d include Total Recall and Starship Troopers in this conversation) and this might be the most triumphant of them all. Pitched at a crazed tone throughout and yet not without something to say, it realizes the value of a spoonful of ultraviolence to help the allegorical medicine go down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbCbwP6ibR4
Saturday, August 22: Labyrinth
Dusk @ Humboldt Park bandshell (3000 S. Howell Ave.) (FREE!)
Monday, August 23: Friday Night Lights
7 p.m. @ Select local Marcus Theaters (Click here to purchase tickets)
