SUMMER MOVIES FOR KIDS!
a&e | film & TV CONT’D FrOm p. 53 O The Shallows
(86 mins., PG-13)
From the same director who gave us the ridiculously beautiful gangster film Run All Night comes this movie, which from the previews seems to be mere Shark Week fodder, yet feels more like Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity than Spielberg’s Jaws. Nearly every scene has some tricky revelation, gorgeous view, or stunning set piece like the race between Nancy (Blake Lively) and the big, bad shark through an illuminated field of jellyfish. The movie is suspenseful and intelligently crafted, and even its final credits are stunning. (DJP) Fairview/Paseo Nuevo
Swiss Army Man (95 mins., R) Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe star in this adventure/comedy about a man who becomes stranded on a deserted island and contemplates suicide until a corpse washes up onshore, which he befriends and which helps him get home. Paseo Nuevo
lude in which Patrick Wilson as real-life ghost-chaser Ed Warren strums “Love Me Tender.” This time Ed and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) travel to the U.K. and get caught up in the politics of official skepticism, even after they watch girls levitate, furniture slide, and kids talking with a host of male demons in their mouths. Parts of the film are corny, but Wan is keeping faith in his pursuit of bloodless horror. (DJP) Fairview/Metro 4
despite mixed reviews. This movie has all the same corny beats — action, emotion, and spectacle overload— overload and features Santa Barbara star and former kiteboarder Maika Monroe (It Follows), who steals the show. You will not learn anything about yourself or the nature of reality. You will see a gigantic alien queen chase a busload of kids across the Salt Flats. (DJP)
O Finding Dory
O Love & Friendship
(103 mins., PG)
Maybe it isn’t one of those sequels that turn out better than the original, but it won’t invite disgrace on the Pixar brand either. The first half of Finding Dory isn’t funny and goes pretty much where you expect it to — Dory remembers her parents, invites Nemo and Marlin on an adventure, and then gets waylaid. But the second half is all preposterous problems and crazy solutions. An insecure octopus and the voice of Sigourney Weaver help the forgetful blue tang negotiate a fable about trusting her own heart’s ways. (DJP) Arlington (2D)/Camino Real (2D)/ Fiesta 5 (2D and 3D)
ScREEningS See p. 30 of The Week for more screenings.
O Despicable Me 2
(98 mins.; PG)
Paseo Nuevo
(92 mins.; R)
Spoiler alert: If you can resist all temptation to Google the details behind this fascinating film, a sensation at Sundance, the more you will be entranced by the tale and the telling. What begins as a human-interest curio pursued by New Zealand blogger/filmmaker David Farrier, following up his discovery of a “tickling competition,” grows less and less amusing as he and partner Dylan Reeve encounter aspects of Internet terrorism and fringe zones of the porn world (the “tickle torture” fetish). Beyond the titillating and repugnant aspects of the unfolding story, Farrier and Reeve have created an investigative guerilla doc project whose plot thickens in startling ways, similar to Errol Morris’s spider’s strategy to filmmaking and exploring the everyday oddity and perversity of the known world. (JW) Sun.-Wed., July 3-6, Riviera
nOW SHOWing Central Intelligence (114 mins., PG-13) Former classmates Bob Stone (Dwayne Johnson) and Calvin Joyner (Kevin Hart) brave shoot-outs, espionage, and betrayal on a CIA mission after reconnecting at a high school reunion. Camino Real/Metro 4
The Conjuring 2 (133 mins., R) James Wan’s sequel is impressive in unexpected ways. It’s epic long, and it’s got great rock songs, too. Of course it will tingle you a number of times. But it also includes a scary strange inter-
Paseo Nuevo Cinemas Tuesdays & Wednesdays This Summer
10am | All SeATS – $2.00
(92 mins., PG)
Writer/director Whit Stillman’s long obsession with the leisured elite just happens to fit snugly into Jane Austen’s principled ambivalence for the same class, different epoch. In Austen, the dishonorable pursuit of a man with an income is also a raw matter of survival — it’s funny and tragic. Here, in a brilliant hard-edged portrayal, Kate Beckinsale plays the widowed Lady Susan Vernon, a famous flirt who lives on the edge of respectability with a mighty streak of pragmatism driving her toward security. Stillman knows exactly when to be comic and how to expose the dread that haunts a drawing room. (DJP) Fiesta 5
JUlY JUlY JUlY JUlY AUgUST 2/3: AUgUST 9/10:
Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is recruited to help deal with a powerful new super criminal. Despicable Me 2 isn’t supermemorable, and the 3D effects only dazzle in spurts, but it’s also clearly the most excellent of the cartoon epics of summer 2013. It shows for $2 per ticket as part of the Summer Kids Movies series. (DJP) Tue.-Wed., July 5-6, 10am,
O Tickled
Camino Real (2D)/Metro 4 (2D)
Free State of Jones (139 mins., R) Not everything works, dramatically, or achieves its desired state of artfulnessversus-showbiz slickness and smugness in director Gary Ross’s true-life-based film about a group of rebels and escaped slaves courageously creating a Mississippi outpost during the Civil War. But the film succeeds in expanding the current sociocultural conversation about slavery— slavery and its lingering post-“emancipation” horrors. Self-determined and self-appointed commanderin-chief of his own free zone in the Deep South, Matthew McConaughey puts in one of his now routinely fine performances (since his apparent talentreplacement surgery) and wears his shaggy heroics well. (JW) Fairview/Paseo Nuevo
Genius (104 mins., PG-13) Based on A. Scott Berg’s award-winning book, this film follows the relationship between writer Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) and publisher Max Perkins (Colin Firth), who oversaw the now legendary writers Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Wolfe, among others. Nicole Kidman, Guy Pearce, Laura Linney, and Dominic West also star. Plaza de Oro
O Independence Day: Resurgence (120 mins., PG-13) Expect a big-budget B movie. You will not be disappointed. The first Independence Day— released way back in 1996 — was ridiculously derivative and yet inexplicably enjoyable, a cult film
Me Before You (110 mins., PG-13) In this shamelessly romantic but somehow affecting British romantic yarn, adapted by Jojo Moyes from her novel, plucky, rainbow-wardrobed twentysomething (an ebullient Emilia Clarke) takes a gig as aide to an affluent quadriplegic man (Sam Claflin, with chiseled good looks and cynical-turned-endearing charm). She also takes on a rollercoaster narrative, with love, castles (really), and fatalistic end games in the offing. A melodrama that mostly dodges the genre’s more groansome shallows, the flick is a fine tear-duct-cleansing agent. (JW) Fiesta 5 The Music of Strangers (96 mins., PG-13)
Celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other artists from around the word discuss their philosophies on music and culture in this documentary by director Morgan Neville. Plaza De Oro
AUgUST 16/17:
5/6: 12/13: 19/20: 26/27:
DeSPICABle Me 2 KUNg FU PANDA 2 MINIoNS The PeANUTS MovIe
The SPoNgeBoB MovIe: SPoNge oUT oF WATer AlvIN & The ChIPMUNKS: The roAD ChIP hoTel TrANSYlvANIA 2
Paseo Nuevo Cinemas | Santa Barbara Paseo Nuevo Shopping Center | State Street www.metrotheatres.com
“CAPTIVATING AND JAW-DROPPING” - The Hollywood Reporter
The Neon Demon (117 mins., R) Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) directs this thriller about a girl named Jesse (Elle Fanning) who moves to L.A. to become a model. What she finds there are women obsessed with youth and beauty who will do anything to get ahead— even commit murder. Fiesta 5 ahead Now You See Me 2 (129 mins., PG-13)
It’s fair to say that this sequel is an improvement over the first installment, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Something smarmy underlies this supposed thriller, using idealistic magicians as protagonists as if magic were more than a flashy con. It wants you to believe this is a more amazing version of Mission Impossible. But the movie is far too smug and flabby. Magic is fake, but magic made for a movie is doubly faked and achieved without any real discipline. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and the others are flashy, but it’s all spectacle without a point— point just another Hollywood franchise. (DJP) Metro 4
The above films are playing in Santa Barbara FRIDAY, July 1, through THURSDAY, July 7. Descriptions followed by initials — DJP (D.J. Palladino) and JW (Josef Woodard) — have been taken from our critics’ reviews, which can be read in full at independent.com. The symbol O indicates the film is recommended. The symbol indicates a new review.
SBIFF’s THE SHOWCASE PRESENTS
TICKLED
Official Selection at Sundance Sunday July 3 @ 2:00pm Monday July 4 @ 7:30pm Tuesday July 5 @ 5:00pm W ednesday July 6 @ 7:30pm at the Rivier a T heatr e 2044 Alameda Padr e Ser r a UPCOMING FILMS THE WAVE FILM FESTIVAL ~ FRANCE Seven days of French Films at the Riviera ZERO DAYS From Oscar Winner Alex Gibney
WWW.SBIFF.ORG independent.com
JUNE 30, 2016
THE INDEPENDENT
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