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Friday, August 12, 2016
Movie Reviews: Sausage Party, Florence Foster Jenkins, Pete's Dragon, Anthropoid
Gleason, Indignation, Microbe and Gasoline
Posted By Scott Renshaw on August 12, 2016, 7:59 AM
A jam-packed weekend of new releases offers family-friendly entertainment, animation that is decidedly not family-friendly, historical drama and one human epic of a documentary.
The raunchy animated feature Sausage Party (pictured) is better when it's just providing broad laughs than when it's reaching for religious allegory. Gleason's documentary story of an ex-NFL player and his family dealing with his ALS diagnosis makes for an unfiltered, beautifully devastating portrait of love and pain. Anthropoid combines suspense and a potent look at the cost of being a patriot in a little-known story of the World War II anti-Nazi Czech resistance. James Schamus does an impressive job of adapting Philip Roth's Indignation into a story of fate and the futility of trying to buck a system that doesn't want you in it.
MaryAnn Johanson enjoys the farcical elements of the fact-based Florence Foster Jenkins before the story gets too maudlin. Director Michel Gondry applies his fanciful talents to some pretty familiar teen-boy coming-of-age tropes in Microbe and Gasoline.
In this week's feature review, Pete's Dragon delivers a charming re-make that justifies the idea of re-makes.
Also opening this week, but not screened for critics: Blood Father, with Mel Gibson as an ex-con dad trying to protect his teen daughter from drug dealers; and The Fight Within, a faith-based drama set in the world of mixed martial arts.
The raunchy animated feature Sausage Party (pictured) is better when it's just providing broad laughs than when it's reaching for religious allegory. Gleason's documentary story of an ex-NFL player and his family dealing with his ALS diagnosis makes for an unfiltered, beautifully devastating portrait of love and pain. Anthropoid combines suspense and a potent look at the cost of being a patriot in a little-known story of the World War II anti-Nazi Czech resistance. James Schamus does an impressive job of adapting Philip Roth's Indignation into a story of fate and the futility of trying to buck a system that doesn't want you in it.
MaryAnn Johanson enjoys the farcical elements of the fact-based Florence Foster Jenkins before the story gets too maudlin. Director Michel Gondry applies his fanciful talents to some pretty familiar teen-boy coming-of-age tropes in Microbe and Gasoline.
In this week's feature review, Pete's Dragon delivers a charming re-make that justifies the idea of re-makes.
Also opening this week, but not screened for critics: Blood Father, with Mel Gibson as an ex-con dad trying to protect his teen daughter from drug dealers; and The Fight Within, a faith-based drama set in the world of mixed martial arts.
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