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Friday, June 3, 2016
Movie Reviews: The Lobster, Me Before You, Popstar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Weiner
Posted By Scott Renshaw on June 3, 2016, 1:59 PM
A quieter week at the multiplexes offers ninja turtles, popstars and romantic dramedy, while politics and surrealism (not necessarily exclusive of one another) come into the art houses.
Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island cohorts create the lively faux documentary/music industry parody Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (pictured), with hilarious original songs providing the biggest laughs in this goof on social-media-era celebrity. Director Yorgos Lanthimos offers a deadpan dystopian study in forced conformity in The Lobster, the bizarre tale of a society in which being part of a couple is mandatory.
MaryAnn Johanson laments the simplistic and superficial approach to the complicated issue of assisted suicide in the adaptation of Jojo Moyes' tragic romance Me Before You. CGI reptiles return in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, which borrows from other, better blockbusters in a confusing story that plays like a child's vision of adulthood.
Also opening this week, but not reviewed: a re-release of Belladonna of Sadness, the bizarre 1973 Japanese animated story of rape and revenge.
In this week's feature review, the endlessly fascinating documentary Weiner uses the case study of a disgraced politician's attempt to revive his career to explore both the art of spin and the psychology of this particular man.
Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island cohorts create the lively faux documentary/music industry parody Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (pictured), with hilarious original songs providing the biggest laughs in this goof on social-media-era celebrity. Director Yorgos Lanthimos offers a deadpan dystopian study in forced conformity in The Lobster, the bizarre tale of a society in which being part of a couple is mandatory.
MaryAnn Johanson laments the simplistic and superficial approach to the complicated issue of assisted suicide in the adaptation of Jojo Moyes' tragic romance Me Before You. CGI reptiles return in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, which borrows from other, better blockbusters in a confusing story that plays like a child's vision of adulthood.
Also opening this week, but not reviewed: a re-release of Belladonna of Sadness, the bizarre 1973 Japanese animated story of rape and revenge.
In this week's feature review, the endlessly fascinating documentary Weiner uses the case study of a disgraced politician's attempt to revive his career to explore both the art of spin and the psychology of this particular man.
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