Talking with fellow Boston Online Film Critics Association members Bob Chipman, Steve Head and Megan Kearns about this month’s repertory offerings. The discussion covers children in peril, how much we miss Bernie Mac, the decline of shopping malls in youth culture, and once again I push for a Men of BOFCA calendar. – BOFCA, 08/31/2015
“It’s a crude scene, and damned effective. The rest of No Escape is just plain crude. It’s also a piece of stupid xenophobic trash, released at a time when another piece of stupid xenophobic trash is surging in the polls for the Republican Presidential nomination, so The Weinstein Company might have a hit on their hands.” – Movie Mezzanine, 08/28/2015
“Of interest perhaps only as a glossy bit of Eliot Spitzer fan-fiction, this tawdry tale is presented by co-writer/director Mora Stephens with a cautionary seriousness bordering on hysteria. It feels like one of those alarmist anti-drug films shown in high school classrooms: Just Say No to two-thousand-dollar-an-hour escorts.” – Movie Mezzanine, 08/28/2015
THE MEND * * * *
Starring Josh Lucas, Stephen Plunkett, Lucy Owen, Mickey Sumner and Austin Pendelton. Written and directed by John Magary.
“For about half the movie, it’s a wild ride. Then it becomes something else altogether; a journey of healing and advocacy, about coming to terms with a horror almost impossible to imagine, trying to take all that pain and turn it into something positive. Being from Boston I was familiar with Crimmins’ story, but I still wasn’t ready for how deep the film cut.” – Movie Mezzanine, 08/21/2015
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON * * *
Starring Jason Mitchell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, R. Marcos Taylor and Paul Giamatti. Screenplay by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff. Directed by F. Gary Gray.
“Wickedly amusing in its depiction of just how helpless and ineffectual these kids are from the moment they step out of their bubble, Fort Tilden is like a darkly comic adaptation of those hand-wringing articles about how millennials are so coddled they can’t hack it in the real world. These two can’t even get themselves to the beach, for Chrissakes.” – Movie Mezzanine, 08/14/2015
