Music, Arts, & Culture
Best of SLO
New Times San Luis Obispo
Music, Arts & Culture » Movies
Film Listings, 8/22/19 – 8/29/19
What's it rated? R
Where's it showing? Downtown Centre, Galaxy, Park, Stadium 10
Photo Courtesy Of Campbell Grobman Films
FRAMED After being framed for attempting to assassinate the president, Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) must evade the FBI and his own agency as he works to find the real threat, in Angel Has Fallen.
After being framed for attempting to assassinate the president, Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) must evade the FBI and his own agency as he works to clear his name and find the true culprit, who aims to take out Air Force One. (120 min.)
—Glen Starkey
What's it rated? PG
What's it worth? Full price
Where's it showing? Galaxy, Park, Stadium 10
Thurop Van Orman directs this animated adventure comedy based on the mobile puzzle game. In this second installment, the feud between the flightless birds and green pigs reaches a détente as the two camps work together to save the home they share. Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom, Awkwafina, and others provide voice work.
Thanks to some great writing and voice work, this film delivers the laughs. Yes, it's obnoxious and chaotic, but it's fun for both the kids and their parents, which is a bit of a small miracle. (96 min.)
What's it worth? Matinee
Where's it showing? Stadium 10
Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn, Woman in Gold, Goodbye Christopher Robin) directs this screenplay by Mark Bomback based on Garth Stein's novel about a dog named Enzo (voiced by Kevin Costner), who learns from his aspiring Formula One race car driver/owner Denny Swift (Milo Ventimiglia) that racetrack techniques can also successfully guide us through life.
Yes, it's overly sentimental. Yes, it's contrived. But it's about the loyalty and companionship of a good dog! Cynics steer clear, but dog lovers, don't miss this one! (109 min.)
What's it rated? PG-13
Where's it showing? Downtown Centre, Galaxy
Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) directs Viveik Kalra as Javed, a British teen of Pakistani descent living in a working-class town in 1987 during difficult racial and economic times. Javed turns to poetry to make sense of his life, but then a classmate introduces him to Bruce Springsteen's music, which seems to offer parallels to his life and shows Javed another outlet for his pent-up dreams.
Like much of The Boss's music, Blinded by the Light is a life-affirming rock anthem. Sure, it hits a lot of familiar notes, and it's a bit cheesy, but you'll cheer its conclusion and love the ride along the way. Its message of inclusion is also the message we need. (96 min.)
Where's it showing? The Palm
Photo Courtesy Of Vinyl Films
ICON/PARIAH David Crosby—founding member of both The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash—is the subject of the new documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, which explores his life and music.
A.J. Eaton directs this documentary on David Crosby—famed founding member of both The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash—who over the years has been estranged from all the famous musicians he worked with, but who at 77-year-old is still focused on making music. (95 min.)
Where's it showing? Galaxy, Stadium 10
James Bobin (Alice Through the Looking Glass, Muppets Most Wanted, Muppets) directs this film based on Chris Gifford's book series about the titular teenage explorer (Isabela Moner), who leads her friends on a mission to rescue her parents and discover the mystery behind a lost Incan civilization.
Moner is terrific—funny, smart, and tenacious—as the can-do Latina explorer, and the film is faithful to its family-friendly source material. Think of this as a teenage female Indiana Jones-style adventure. The kids and the nerdy tween set will love it! (102 min.)
Photo Courtesy Of Greenwich Entertainment
SCHOOL OF ROCK Echo in the Canyon, a documentary that explores the 1960s Laurel Canyon music scene, features one of the last recorded interviews with Tom Petty before his death in 2017.
In his directorial debut, co-writer Andrew Slater (with co-writer Eric Barrett) helms this documentary examining the 1960s Laurel Canyon music scene and bands such as The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and The Mamas and the Papas. Through a mix of archival footage and contemporary interviews, we discover how this seminal time in music history has informed contemporary artists such as Fiona Apple, Beck, Norah Jones, and Jakob Dylan.
Both educational and entertaining, this doc is a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest in this fertile moment in rock history, when folk and rock were melded together. (82 min.)
Writer-director Lulu Wang (Posthumous) helms this semi-autobiographical dramedy about a Chinese family that discovers its matriarch has a terminal illness, so they decide to withhold her diagnosis and stage a wedding as a way to bring the family together before she dies.
Awkwafina plays Billi, a Chinese American woman who is conflicted about her family's decision to keep her grandmother's fatal medical diagnosis from the older woman.
The story is based on an "actual lie." In fact, it's built on a lie that Wang's family told her grandmother to prevent her from living in fear throughout the remaining days of her life. This story is presented in such a no-nonsense way that it sucks the audience right into the thick of the family's toughest deception. (98 min.)
—Karen Garcia
Photos Courtesy Of Universal Pictures
MISMATCHED Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), Deckard (Jason Statham), and Luke (Dwayne Johnson) reluctantly team up to stop a genetically enhanced super villain.
David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) directs this new installment into the Fast & Furious franchise. This time around, genetically enhanced villain, Brixton (Idris Elba), threatens humanity with a super-virus, leading lawman Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) to team-up with outcast Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) to stop him. When Shaw's sister, Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), is also drawn into the fray, things get personal.
Hobbs & Shaw is loud, obnoxious, over-the-top ... and entertaining and fun! The action is cartoonish, the story ridiculous, but as a summer blockbuster spectacle, it's a blast of male fantasy and fantastic-sarcastic buddy bromance. It largely works as well as it does thanks to Johnson and Statham's charisma and chemistry. Their characters are both "lone wolves," so when they're forced to team-up, the insults fly ... well, fast and furious. (145 min.)
Where's it showing? Friday, Aug. 23, in the Fremont (8 p.m.; all ages; $7.37 at fremontslo.com)
New/Pick
Photo Courtesy Of Paramount Pictures
DANKE SCHOEN High schooler Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick, right), with girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara, center) and dour bestie Cameron (Alan Ruck, left) is determined to skip school and have a great day, in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, screening Aug. 23, in the Fremont Theater.
Writer-director John Hughes (Sixteen Candles; The Breakfast Club; Planes, Trains & Automobiles) helms this 1986 classic comedy about high schooler Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), who with girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) and dour bestie Cameron (Alan Ruck) is determined to skip school and have a great day no matter what Principal Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) and Ferris's sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) think.
Broderick is great as the big-hearted but conniving Ferris, whose clever ruses seem to perpetually keep him out of trouble—much to the chagrin of his put-upon sister, Jeanie. He convinces Cameron into "borrowing" his dad's prized Ferrari and heading to Chicago for an adventure. The result is a pure, unmitigated joy of a film.
Admission is $5 at the door or free when you bring $10 worth of unwrapped new school supplies to benefit San Luis Coastal Unified School District. If you want to make sure you can get in, advanced tickets are available online for $7.37. (103 min.)
In this sequel to their 2017 film 47 Meters Down, co-writer and director Johannes Roberts (The Strangers: Prey at Night) helms this horror-drama written with Ernest Riera about four teenage girls—Corinne Foxx, Sistine Stallone, Sophie Nélisse, and Brianne Tju—who scuba dive an underwater city and encounter deadly sharks in the claustrophobic and labyrinth-like ruins.
As shark movies go, this is far from the best, but if you like the perilous thrills of one of nature's best killing machines, you could do worse! Think of its setting as an escape room from which our heroines must get out with their very lives. (89 min.)
Co-writer Gene Stupnitsky (Bad Teacher, The Office) directs this buddy adventure comedy, in which an invitation to a party with cool kids leads a group of goody-good sixth graders—Lucas (Keith L. Williams), Thor (Brady Noon), and Max (Jacob Tremblay)—to skip school, buy drugs, and sip beers.
There's one thing I've learned from the mainstream film industry: When nerds get invited to a party, they'll do some crazy shit to get there. That's apparently especially true if a crush is involved.
It's what we saw in Superbad (2007), when two longtime besties and obvious social outcasts spent their last few days of high school attempting to buy alcohol for a hot girl's party. It's what we saw in Booksmart (2019), when two inseparable and academically focused buds spent one of their last days of high school partying for the first time.
And it's what we see again in Good Boys, when three (plot twist) longtime best friends, who are, you guessed it, outcasts, spend their first few days of the sixth grade trying to prepare for their first ever "kissing party," which I guess is just a party where spin the bottle is a focal point.
It's a tried-and-true comedy formula, and as much as I want to be annoyed that Good Boys is just the little boy version of Booksmart, and that Booksmart is just the girl version of Superbad, I loved it. I loved them all, OK?! Sue me! (Just kidding, please don't.)
PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES
IN OVER THEIR HEADS Three sixth graders—Lucas (Keith L.Williams), Thor (Brady Noon), and Max (Jacob Tremblay)—skip school and go on an incredible adventure involving stolen drugs, teenage girls, and thepromise of an epic party, in Good Boys.
Sure, Good Boys is just like every other classic buddy adventure comedy out there. We've got three adorably nerdy boys. One gets invited to a party with cool kids. His crush will be there. There will be kissing.
These dweebs have obviously never kissed anyone, so they hurriedly attempt to research the topic. A plan to spy on a neighbor girl and her boyfriend using a parent's wildly expensive drone goes awry when the drone is destroyed in oncoming traffic—an event that will certainly lead to a grounding, which means no party, which means no crush kissing.
So the boys ditch school to buy a replacement drone before any parents are the wiser. This does not go as planned, and eventually the scheme devolves into our three cherubs selling a parent's sex doll for drone money, crossing a busy freeway on foot, accidentally getting ahold of drugs, and then fighting drug dealing frat boys. And if you were wondering, there is in fact a fight and pouring out of emotions between the friends near the climax.
We've seen it all before, but the good boys in Good Boys add something truly special to this particular bud movie. They're so young, naive, and generally confused, and watching these 11-year-olds attempt to navigate the adult world is reminiscent of everyone's experience as tweens. I still feel that way as an adult most of the time.
These kids also do a lot of screaming the F-word, and I don't care who you are, watching really cute children curse is funny. (89 min.)
—Kasey Bubnash
Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov direct this documentary/drama about a female bee hunter whose livelihood is threatened by a family of nomadic beekeepers. (87 min.)
What's it worth? Rent it
Jon Favreau (Elf, Iron Man, Cowboys & Aliens, Chef, The Jungle Book (2016)) helms this photorealistic-animated remake of Disney's 1994 animated classic of the same name about lion prince Simba (voiced by JD McCrary as a cub and Donald Glover as an adult), who's driven from his kingdom as a cub after his king father, Mufasa (voiced by James Earl Jones), is murdered by his jealous brother, Scar (voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor).
It's both a faithful adaptation of the original and a visually astounding spectacle in its own right—so what else could I have possibly asked for? Maybe my hopes were just too high. I went in ready to love it but left the theater feeling meh. Most of the original's charm just didn't carry over for me. (118 min.)
—Caleb Wiseblood
Where's it showing? Downtown Centre
Julius Onah directs this film based on J.C. Lee's play about a white couple's adopted black son, Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a star high school athlete whose reputation is in jeopardy after his teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer), discovers something shocking in his locker. (109 min.)
Alex Holmes (Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story) directs the true story of Tracy Edwards, a young cook on a boat who formed the first all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989.
This documentary stands out from the rest as Holmes puts you in the thick of sailing at sea alongside these women rather than just telling you their already compelling story. With every challenge in the water and objection of being told "girls" can't win, let alone make it through the first stretch of the race, the audience is with the women in their triumph. (97 min.)
Where's it showing? Saturday, Aug. 24, in the Fremont (8 p.m.; all ages; $7.37 at fremontslo.com)
Photo Courtesy Of Constantin Film
TO FANTASIA! Bastian (Berret Oliver) escapes his schoolmates' bullying through an ancient storybook, in The Neverending Story, screening Aug. 24, in the Fremont Theater.
Co-writer/director Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot) helms this classic 1984 family fantasy about Bastian (Berret Oliver), a troubled young boy who's perpetually bullied by his classmates. One day he escapes their torment by ducking into a bookshop, and the proprietor shows him an ancient storybook, warning him it can be dangerous. Bastian "borrows" the book and soon enters a magic realm called Fantasia, which is in need of hero to save it from destruction.
Where's it showing? Bay, Downtown Centre, Stadium 10
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight) helms this story set in 1969 Hollywood about fading TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as they struggle to remain relevant in the changing entertainment industry. Tarantino's ninth film features an ensemble cast and multiple storylines.
This is an entertaining albeit meandering ride through 1969 Hollywood, where Tarantino has mixed real-life characters like Charlie Manson (Damon Herriman) and his "family," rising starlet Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her director husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucher), martial arts star Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), and actor Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), with fictional ones like our protagonists Rick and Cliff.
It's classic excessive Tarantino, so if you like his filmmaking, you'll love this. I did. (161 min.)
Where's it showing? Downtown Centre, Park, Stadium 10
Photo Courtesy Of Affirm Films
WE SHALL OVERCOME Former basketball coach John Harrison (Alex Kendrick) takes on the challenge of his life when he coaches an underdog cross-country runner, in the faith-based film, Overcomer.
Former basketball coach John Harrison (Alex Kendrick, who also co-writes and directs) takes on the challenge of his life when he coaches determined underdog cross-country runner Hannah Scott (Aryn Wright-Thompson), in this faith-based film. (119 min.)
Photo Courtesy Of Armory Films
ODYSSEY Small-time outlaw, Tyler (Shia LeBeouf, left), helps Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down syndrome, pursue his dream of becoming a pro wrestler, in The Peanut Butter Falcon.
Writers-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz helm this adventure dramedy about Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down syndrome, who runs away from a nursing home to pursue his dream of becoming a professional wrestler. With the help of small-time outlaw, Tyler (Shia LeBeouf), and kind nursing home employee, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), the trio embarks on a Mark Twain-like odyssey. (93 min.)
Where's it showing? Downtown Centre, Fair Oaks, Galaxy, Park, Stadium 10, Sunset Drive-in
Photo Courtesy Of Mythology Entertainment
WELCOME TO THE FAMILY? New bride, Grace (Samara Weaving), finds herself fighting for her life in a time-honored tradition of her new husband's rich, eccentric family, in Ready or Not.
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, this horror thriller witnesses Grace's (Samara Weaving) wedding night take an evil turn when she's forced to participate in a time-honored tradition of her new husband's rich, eccentric family to play a terrifying and deadly game. (105 min.)
Where's it showing? Park, Sunset Drive-in
André Øvredal (Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, The Shape of Water) join forces to bring everyone's favorite trilogy of haunting children's books to the big screen for a new generation.
Everyone knows the basic rules of avoiding an unfortunate fate with the supernatural: Don't go into the abandoned house where a long-dead family supposedly held their daughter hostage in a dark dungeon. Nope. Don't steal that book that's allegedly written in children's blood by said daughter who was kept in said dungeon. Do not, for the love of God, split up to search for the medical records of said dungeon daughter in the clearly haunted insane asylum she was forced into so many years ago.
Everyone knows the rules, and yet time after time, curious teens in horror movies mock the rules and then break them, and then face the inevitable consequences. (111 min.)
STAR WARS IV: A NEW HOPE
Where's it showing? Saturday, Aug. 24, in the Clark Center (6 p.m.; all ages; $10 adult; $7 children; $15 early entry; $35 VIP at clarkcenter.org)
Photo Courtesy Of Lucasfilm
HEROES (Left to right) Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) team up to save the universe, in Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope, screening Aug. 24, in the Clark Center.
This 1977 blockbuster written and directed by George Lucas arrives just in time to set up the forthcoming Star Wars addition, The Rise of Skywalker, being released in December. In this first-released Star Wars film, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) joins forces with Jedi Knight Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), cocky pilot Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and towering Wookie Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) to save Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) from Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) and Darth Vader (David Prowse), who are trying to control the universe.
Presented by Central Coast Film Society, the event will feature special guest, author, and Arroyo Grande native, Ken Napzok (Why We Love Star Wars: The Great Moments That Built A Galaxy Far, Far Away), who will participate in a post-screening Q&A.
VIP ticket holders ($35) have reserved seating and a pre-screening meet-and-greet with Napzok, including a signed copy of his book. Food from Country Garden Catering will be available for purchase for all ticket holders from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in front of the Clark Center lobby entrance. Early admission ticket holders ($15) will have access to theater seating an hour before the screening. Adult general admission tickets are $10, children $7, at clarkcenter.org.
See Split Screen. Δ
New Times movie reviews were compiled by Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey. Contact him at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
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