The Shallow End

With Transformers: Cough Up Twenty Bucks opening earlier in the week, today’s just about counterprogramming. And I’ve seen ’em all.

The Bad Batch: Ana Lily Amirpour follows A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night with this fever-dream wasteland picture about a young woman (Suki Waterhouse) who gets kicked out of Texas and falls in with cannibals. It’s wobbly and overlong, but it has its moments.

The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography: Errol Morris’ latest feels like a minor work compared to the historical value of The Thin Red Line or Standard Operating Procedure or the gripping immediacy of The Fog of War or The Unknown Known. But it’s a deeply enjoyable minor work, with Morris and his dear friend Dorfman mourning the death of analog photography in the most entertaining manner imaginable.

The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship: Two years after what felt like a vanity screening at the Italian Contemporary Film Festival, Sergio Navarretta’s romantic farce — featuring a fun turn from Enrico Colantoni, at least — shambles into commercial release.

47 Meters Down: Mandy Moore and Claire Holt try very hard not to be eaten by sharks in this simple, effective survival thriller, which would be a lot better if it didn’t do one really stupid thing at the very end.

The Hero: Sam Elliott makes the most of an increasingly rare leading role as an aging Western star sent spinning out by a cancer diagnosis, but Brett Haley — who cast Elliott as Blythe Danner’s love interest in I’ll See You in My Dreams — doesn’t give us anything new.

That’s everything! Enjoy your weekend! And I know I say this every time, but please don’t bother with the Transformers movie.

Leave a Reply