Eight films to watch

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160527-eight-films-to-watch-in-june?ocid=ww.social.link.email


The BBC has an article by Fiona Macdonald about some upcoming movies:

Free State of JonesIn 1862, Newt Knight, a farmer in the American South, launched an uprising against the Confederacy and led Jones County, Mississippi to secede. Matthew McConaughey (photo) plays the rebel farmer who banded with other farmers, as well as local slaves, to establish the Free State of Jones. Four-time Oscar nominee Gary Ross (Pleasantville, The Hunger Games) directs the epic action-drama that sees the Interstellar star continue a streak some have called ‘the McConaissance’. Co-starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sean Bridgers, Keri Russell, and McConaughey’s Mud co-star, Jacob Lofland, the film continues beyond the rebellion as Knight marries a former slave and sets up a mixed-race community.

Rico says that Free State of Jones is definitely on his list (and not just because he had a Jones grandmother)...

Also on McDonald's list:

The Neon DemonDanish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn follows Drive and Only God Forgives with what proved to one be the most divisive film screened at Cannes, provoking both applause and abuse after its premiere. The thriller was described by The Telegraph as “a glittering, etherized nightmare, drenched in cold sweat, with a dark, coiled-panther energy that springs at you in fitful, snarling bursts”. Following aspiring model Jesse (played by Elle Fanning) just after she has moved to Los Angeles, its initial A Star is Born premise slides into “a bloody-mawed catfight on hallucinogens”.

Finding DoryForgetful blue tang fish Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) takes centre stage in the sequel to Disney/Pixar’s 2003 hit Finding Nemo, and it’s all getting a bit political. A petition is asking Disney to add a public service announcement to the film calling for protection of the blue tang, after Finding Nemo’s popularity led to clownfish becoming extinct in areas of Thailand. (The fish were taken from the wild and sold for home aquariums.) Idris Elba and Dominic West provide the voices of two sea lions, while Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy voice Dory’s parents.

Independence Day: ResurgenceThe tagline for this long-awaited sequel claims “We had twenty years to prepare. So did they”. Judging by the film’s publicity, the aliens haven’t lost their thirst for destroying urban landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and the Statue of Liberty all appear to be targets. While many of the original cast return, including Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, but Will Smith is not among them: he said he had to choose between this and Suicide Squad because of scheduling conflicts. New cast members Liam Hemsworth, Jessie Usher, Maika Monroe, and Charlotte Gainsbourg take the baton in the sci-fi disaster film. Original writer and producer Dean Devlin has said that the idea for the sequel emerged after the 11 September 2001 attacks. “It was so frightening to see things that were fantasy in a movie look so much like these horrible images of reality,” he said. Yet “the more interesting parallel of Independence Day was how the world came together in the aftermath. How people who had been arguing stopped arguing and started working together. I think our world did the same thing.”

The BFGSteven Spielberg and Mark Rylance reunite after Bridge of Spies for another gentle drama. This time, Rylance stars as a Big Friendly Giant in a motion-capture adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic. The Guardian praises him for a “typically distinctive, eccentric, and seductive star performance”, his “trademark nuances and facial moues, generally so studied and small, magnified to the size of an Easter Island statue”. Newcomer Ruby Barnhill stars as Sophie, the orphan who befriends the BFG, and the screenplay was written by ET writer Melissa Mathison, who died at 65 in November of 2015.(Spielberg dedicated the film to her). According to Variety, “an all-digital Mark Rylance wins over audiences with his big heart in a forbidden-friendship story that serves as Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for a new generation.”

GeniusGenius is a quality production in every respect,” wrote Nicholas Barber in his review for BBC Culture from the Berlin Film Festival. “A handsome, intelligent and warm-hearted account… a platonic opposites-attract romantic comedy about a stuffed shirt being given a life-jolting taste of hedonism by his swaggering new pal, and about a defiant loner learning what it’s like to have a sensible, stalwart friend.” Colin Firth plays the stuffed shirt, editor Max Perkins, who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (who appear in cameos by Guy Pearce and Dominic West). Jude Law is the swaggering novelist Thomas Wolfe, whose lengthy tomes are cut down by Perkins in the feature debut of director Michael Grandage. “It’s lucky Tolstoy never met you,” cracks Wolfe. “War and Peace would have been War and.”

The ShallowsInitially titled In the Deep, this shark thriller stars Blake Lively as a young professional surfer who becomes stranded on a rock just off the shore, with a great white between her and land. With the tagline: “What was once in the deep… is now in the shallows”, it’s directed by Jaume Collet-Serra . The film featured in the 2014 Blacklist of most liked but un-produced screenplays.

From AfarVenezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’ debut feature about a forbidden gay love affair in Caracas, Venezuela was a surprise winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion in 2015. The storytelling takes a hands-off approach, according to Variety, “rarely taking the path of cheap exposition where convincing character psychology will do, this smart, unsensationalized examination of the slow-blossoming relationship between a middle-aged loner and a young street tough trusts audiences to make the necessary connections”. It’s a style that matches the film’s theme, as noted by The Skinny. “This is a film about the anguish of desire, as the title suggests, held at a remove.”