New Releases for the Week of August 13, 2021

FREE GUY

(20th Century) Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Channing Tatum, Camille Kostek, Alex Trebek, Lil Rel Howley. Directed by Shawn Levy

A bank employee who is happy in his job and his life? Despite the fact that he is surrounded by violence, mayhem and odd happnings, he is content. However, it turns out he is a non-player character in a video game whose world is about to be shattered. He decides to be the hero he knows he can be – and change everything.

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Genre: Action Comedy
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: PG-13 (for strong fantasy violence throughout, language and crude/suggestive references)

About Us

(Self-Released) Ross McCall, Allison Miller, Alessandra Mastronardi. A young couple whose marriage is in peril decide to return to the bucolic place where they spent their honeymoon eight years earlier in a last-ditch effort to save their relationship.

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Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grill Sunset Walk
Rating: NR

Buckley’s Chance

(Greenwich) Bill Nighy, Victoria Hill, Martin Sacks, Milan Burch. After his father passes away, Ridley and his mom move from New York City to Western Australia to live with his estranged grandfather. Ridley promptly gets lost and while his grandfather and mother desperately search for him in the outback, Ridley befriends a dingo he released from a leg trap and the two will rely on each other to survive.

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Genre: Family
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grill Sunset Walk
Rating: NR

Charming the Hearts of Men

(Gravitas) Sean Astin, Anna Friel, Kelsey Grammer, Diane Ladd. A sophisticated woman returns to her Southern hometown in the Sixties to discover her options limited but discrimination is plentiful. With the help of a friend in Congress, she inspires historic legislation which gives women protection and freedom they hadn’t had up to then.

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Genre: Drama
Now Playing: CMX Merritt Square
Rating: NR

Crime Story

(Saban) Mira Sorvino, Richard Dreyfuss, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Cress Williams. An elderly man suffering from cancer decides to spend his remaining days exacting revenge on the criminals who destroyed his family.

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Genre: Crime Drama
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grill Sunset Walk
Rating: R (for violence, language and some sexual content)

Don’t Breathe 2

(Screen Gems) Stephen Lang, Brendan Sexton III, Madelyn Grace, Rocci Williams. Set years after the events of the first film, blind Norman Nordstrom lives a quiet life, keeping to himself until his past sins inevitably catch up with him.

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Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gruesome images, and language)

The Meaning of Hitler

(IFC) Matilda Tucker, Martin Amis, David Irving, Deborah Lipstadt. With white supremacy, anti-Semitism, fascism and authoritarianism on the rise globally, this film traces the roots of Nazism and traces the path that led directly from Hitler to Charlottesville and beyond.

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Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: CMX Plaza Orlando
Rating: NR

Naked Singularity

(Screen Media) John Boyega, Olivia Cooke, Bill Skarsgård, Ed Skrein. An idealistic young public defender in New York City is becoming burned out and beaten down by the system. With his universe collapsing around him, he decides to take part in a daring robbery of a drug deal by one of his clients.

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Genre: Crime Comedy
Now Playing: Cinemark Universal Citywalk
Rating: R (for language throughout, some violence, sexual references and drug use)

Never Gonna Snow Again

(Kino Lorber) Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostraszewska, Agata Kulesza, Weronika Rosati. A charming but mysterious masseuse comes to work in a toney upper class neighborhood in a Polish suburb and changes the lives of his mostly middle aged female clients.

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Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Enzian On-Demand
Rating: NR

Respect

(MGM) Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Marc Maron. A biography of Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul whose music changed popular culture forever.

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Genre: Musical Biography
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic content, strong language including racial epithets, violence, suggestive material, and smoking)

Searching for Mr. Rugoff

(Self-Released) Robert Downey Sr., Costa-Gravas, Lina Wertmuller, Ira Deutchmann. Donald Rugoff was one of the most important figures in art and foreign cinema in the mid-60s to 70s. His Cinema 5 chain distributed films from Europe and independent directors that remain, to this day, essential cinema. A man who was equally reviled for his temperament and self-destructive personality, he eventually left the scene and disappeared. One of his former employees, Ira Deutchmann, sets out to discover what became of him and why he withdrew so completely. This kicks off a new Meet the Filmmaker series for the Enzian in which Deutchmann will conduct a Q&A session after the film via Zoom.

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Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian (Sunday only)
Rating: NR

Sublet

(Greenwich) John Benjamin Hickey, Lev Nissim, Lihi Kornowski, Mickey Kam. A New York Times writer, who is recovering from tragic events, is sent to Tel Aviv for coverage of the Middle East. There, the city’s youthful energy – and the presence of an intriguing, much younger man – serve to bring him back to life.

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Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Cinematique
Rating: NR

Swan Song

(Magnolia) Udo Kier, Jennifer Coolidge, Linda Evans, Michael Urie. It is the last wish of a dying elderly woman that her now-retired hairdresser style her hair for her funeral. For the hairdresser, it is a chance to confront the ghosts of his past as he collects the supplies he needs to do the job properly.

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Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Enzian
Rating: NR

What We Left Unfinished

(Dekanalog) Lasif Ahmadi, Sherindad Dakkoi, Said Miran Farhad, Wall Latafi. During the communist era in Afghanistan (1978-1991), five filmmakers risked censure, imprisonment and even death to make five films which were left uncompleted and unreleased, either due to the State pulling the plug or the filmmakers abandoning the projects. With the footage recently discovered and newly restored, the filmmakers take a look back at a pre-Taliban era and at the energy of a filmmaking community that believed they could effect change through art.

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Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian On-Demand
Rating: NR

Witch: We Intend to Cause Havoc

(Utopia) Jagari, Emmanuel Chanda, Jacco Gardner, Nic Mauskoviç. Witch was the name of the biggest rock band in Zambia – and one of the most popular in Africa during the 1970s. Largely forgotten and mostly unheard of in the West, the group is enjoying a resurgence of popularity as Western tastemakers are discovering their powerful music.

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Genre: Music Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian (Monday only)
Rating: NR

COMING TO VIRTUAL CINEMA/VOD:

After the End (Tuesday)
Beckett
CODA
Curiosa
Evangelion: Thrice Upon a Time
The Land of Owls (Tuesday)
Overrun (Tuesday)
The Smartest Kids in the World (Monday)

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Beckett
CODA
Don’t Breathe
Free Guy
Naked Singularity
Never Gonna Snow Again
Respect
The Smartest Kids in the World

The Extra Man

Kevin Kline wants you to know this is a PRIVATE phone conversation and listening in on your part is very rude.

(2010) Romance (Magnolia) Kevin Kline, Paul Dano, John C. Reilly, Marian Seldes, Celia Weston, Patti D’Arbanville, Dan Hedaya, Jason Butler Harner, Alex Burns, Katie Holmes, Alicia Goranson, Lynn Cohen, John Pankow, Lewis Payton, Marisa Ryan, Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, Jackie Hoffman, Justis Bolding, Beth Fowler, Victoria Barabas. Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini

The world needs extra men, men who radiate charm and elegance. Men who are gentlemen, refined raconteurs of taste and breeding. Men who escort wealthy old ladies to the opera and to art gallery openings with aplomb. Men like Henry Harrison (Kline).

Louis Ives (Dano) is a substitute teacher who is courtly and sweet-natured but likes to cross-dress when nobody’s looking. He comes to the Big Apple looking to make something of himself but can’t afford the sky-high rents for apartments in the city. He comes across a listing that Harrison has posted subletting his apartment and Louis, lacking much in the way of choice, takes it despite Harrison’s somewhat eccentric behavior.

Like Harrison himself, the apartment has seen better days and as Louis gets work in an office where he develops a shy romance with co-worker Mary (Holmes), Harrison is training Louis in the fine art of being an extra man. He also falls into the man’s orbit where his circle of quirky friends, including the shaggy Gershon Gruen (Reilly) speaks in an ear-shattering falsetto.

Like a lot of independent movies, The Extra Man places a heavy reliance on characters who are just a little bit out there – or in some cases here, a lot out there. If you watch a lot of indie films, you might get the idea the New York is bursting at the seams with oddballs and eccentrics, kooky sorts who are tolerated with warmth and affection and make the fruits and nuts of Southern California look positively Midwestern.

This is Kline’s movie although ostensibly Dano is the lead. It is Kline whose Henry will capture your imagination and attention from the first moment he steps onscreen until well after the closing credits have run. I have always had a great deal of affection for Kline in such movies as A Fish Called Wanda and The January Man and it has not diminished over time.

Dano is one of those actors who seem better served taking outside the mainstream roles. He’s at his best when his characters are just a bit off-beat. That is certainly the case here and he pounds out a solid performance that allows his natural charm and sweetness to show through. While he doesn’t quite distract enough attention from Kline (and honestly, there are few actors today who can hold their own with him) he certainly can point to this entry on his resume with pride.

I enjoyed this enough to recommend it although not effusively; this is a movie that will occupy your imagination for a short while but probably not too long before something else gets your attention. While I find myself cringing whenever I see a New York eccentric indie film, at least once the initial knee-jerk twitch passed I found myself consumed. You can’t ask much more of any film than that.

WHY RENT THIS: Kevin Kline. Oddball charm.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Extra-high quirkiness quotient. Sometimes seems more like a series of scenes in search of a plot.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of sexual content and some adult themes.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There is an HDNet feature on the film as well as a look at the animated voiceover trials and tribulations of becoming ducks.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $457,867 on a $7M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: American Gigolo

FINAL RATING: 6/10

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