Sun’s out, guns out — that’s the summer movie motto. While Jurassic World, Terminator: Genisys, and Magic Mike XXL have flaunted their junk to wide audiences, these five upcoming films, which don’t feature time travel, strippers, or dinosaurs, unclothe all exaggerations to tell grounded, human stories. Hiding in the shade of the summer blockbuster season, these are five hidden gems.
The Iranian director behind masterpieces like A Separation and The Past, Asgar Farhadi, made this film in 2009 before breaking out as one of cinema’s most powerful and complex filmmakers. Having never been released theatrically, About Elly is now being distributed across North America.
Like Farhadi’s other films, About Elly begins with mundane interactions that eventually lead to reflection on political status quos and complex moral situations. A group of friends go to a beach resort and Elly, an acquaintance who has been brought along for mysterious reasons, disappears. Farhadi is as concerned with exposing insidious and sexist moral traditions as he is with telling a compelling and grounded thriller. This is the best film I’ve seen this year.
In 2013 Joshua Oppenheimer’s nauseatingly powerful documentary The Act Of Killing was released to widespread critical acclaim and controversy. The film traced a few gangsters involved in the Indonesian genocide of 1965–1966 where one million people were killed for their alleged allegiance to communist ideology.
The Look of Silence, the follow-up documentary to The Act Of Killing, centers on an optometrist who interviews the gangsters who killed his brother. Oppenheimer’s debut created a discourse about this dark patch of Indonesian history as well as America’s involvement in the genocide. The Look Of Silence adds more fuel to the discussion on Indonesia’s nefarious past and dark present.
Irrational Man (July 24)
The general rule for Woody Allen is that every second film he makes is the good one. Midnight in Paris was solid, To Rome With Love was not; Blue Jasmine had widespread acclaim, Magic in the Moonlight wasn’t lauded. Irrational Man should be another return to form for the prolific director. The film, which debuted to mixed reviews at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is about a tormented philosophy professor who gets out of his existential crisis when he meets a young and attractive student. This movie couldn’t sound any more Woody Allen, so let’s just hope it’s the good kind.
Mia Hansen-Love’s film is about the rise of house music during the ‘90s, and a young DJ who navigates the scene. This film shares many similarities with last year’s Boyhood: the plotless structure, the deliberate pace, the epic sweep of time. Eden takes place over two decades and the film begins to find its thematic focus as the world around the protagonist continually changes while he stays the same. At about two and a half hours, Eden is quite long, but by the time it’s done you can’t help but want to start it all over again.
Along with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Dope emerged from this year’s Sundance as a favourite for both critics and audiences. The film has already had a wide release in the US and Toronto but no date has been set for Vancouver — however, it should make its way to the west coast before September. Dope tells the story of Malcolm, a nerdy high school student who lives in the ghetto of Los Angeles with dreams of attending Harvard.
