Tuesday, July 21 and Thursday, July 23: How to Train Your Dragon
10 a.m. & 1 p.m. @ The Times Cinema and Avalon Theater ($2!)
Yet another solid family viewing option from the Times and Avalon’s Summer Film Camp series. It’s an exciting, funny, emotional movie for kids and adults alike, visually striking in a way that modern animation strives to be (but often falls short of) and led to an equally great sequel. If for some reason you haven’t been roped into (or roped your dragon-disinclined children) into seeing it, this is the perfect opportunity to do so.
***CRITIC’S CHOICE***
Wednesday, July 22: Show Boat (1936)
7:30 p.m. @ Charles Allis Art Museum ($7/$5/free for seniors/students/museum members)
Charles Allis’ summer tribute to Irene Dunne continues with the 1936 vintage of Show Boat, one of many cinematic adaptations of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical and to my mind the finest version available (no offense to the Howard Keel/Kathryn Grayson/Ava Gardner version). Paul Robeson’s rendition of “Ol’ Man River” is rightfully legendary, and director James Whale is unfortunately not well known any longer, despite having made both Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. This is a screening worth going to.
Friday, July 24: Pixels, Paper Towns, Southpaw and The Wolfpack open locally
Check local listings for showtimes/pricing
Let’s run the week’s major releases in order of my personal interest in them from least to greatest. Pixels looks like a dumpster fire from my perspective, but the nostalgia-drenched storyline should prove irresistible at the box office. It’s been too long since Adam Sandler has made a movie that didn’t seem to be dripping with contempt for his own audience, so I’d happily eat crow if this turned out to be that movie. Slightly more exciting for me is Paper Towns. Last year’s The Fault in Our Stars was a very good movie with a very strong central performance from Shailene Woodley, and this being another adaptation of current young adult literature rock star John Green’s oeuvre, I will hold out hope it is as good as Fault was. Nat Wolff was profoundly insufferable in Palo Alto, but by design, no small feat for a young actor so I’m interested to see what he does in a leading role.
I feel like the awards season success of Training Day forever altered the way Antoine Fuqua’s work has been disseminated. He makes silly action movie thrillers that just so happen to be made starring some of our finest working actors. And although the preview appears to have shown me the entire movie in sequence, I must admit I’m still reasonably excited to check out Southpaw. Jake Gyllenhaal has pretty much always been a reliable source of strong performance, so his anchoring of a sports drama is music to my ears. His transformation into a ripped boxing monstrosity from the lithe creeper of Nightcrawler is testament to his commitment to his characters.
But the most exciting Friday release by far has to be The Wolfpack, which is surprisingly not a documentary about Kevin Nash, Lex Luger and Konnan forming a super-cool wrestling stable. Instead, it’s the remarkable story of a group of brothers who were kept out of society, locked away in their family apartment in Manhattan only for one of the brothers to break loose and change their lives forever. The brothers’ knowledge of the outside world was gleaned pretty much entirely from the movies they watched, and they spent much of their time creating reenactments of their favorite films. This has been a darling of critics since it debuted at this year’s Sundance. I can’t wait to see it.
