Wildlike is the talented director’s debut, about a vulnerable teenager’s trek through Alaska with a widower. This lyrical story about healing is modest in scale but big in unspoken emotions, and Green shoots the natural landscapes in 35mm and gets terrific performances. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NNNN
Pawn Sacrifice is ostensibly about the epic 1972 chess match between American showboat Bobby Fischer and calculating Soviet player Boris Spassky, but it’s really about Fischer’s psychology. Director Zwick presents Fischer as a mistrustful bag of tics who actively alienates everyone he can before self-destructing. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NN
Unbranded tells us that America has a wild horse problem, with over 50,000 mustangs awaiting adoption in holding pens. The doc’s central issue mostly takes a back seat to what might be classed as redneck porn. Four young ranchers adopt mustangs and set out on a self-serving adventure, riding from the Mexican border through John Wayne territory all the way to Canada. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NN
Goodnight Mommy is the stuff of nightmares. Writer/directors Fiala and Franz’s psychological chiller is told from the perspective of a young boy who becomes convinced (with some prodding from his twin brother) that their mother (Susanne Wuest, terrific in a very tricky role) is not their mother. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NNN
The Stanford Prison Experiment recreates the infamous 1971 experiment in which psychology professor Philip Zimbardo (played with ambiguous reserve by Billy Crudup) randomly assigned 24 college students the roles of prisoners and guards for a two-week study in prison dynamics – only to have to shut it down after six days when the sadism and violence became unmanageable. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating: NNNN
Listen To Me Marlon is far more personally revealing than any previous Marlon Brando biography. Constructed by director Riley from interviews, film clips and home movies, it’s narrated by the actor himself through previously unreleased audio recordings – including a series of self-hypnosis tapes in which he literally begs himself to abandon old resentments and embrace positive memories of his childhood. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NNNNN
Mississippi Grind stars Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn as a pair of gamblers working their way from Iowa to New Orleans. Writer/directors Boden and Fleck are more interested in environments and social structures than in exploring what drives their protagonists – or letting those characters do anything surprising. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NN
Sicario stars Emily Blunt as an Arizona FBI agent who volunteers for a Homeland Security task force bent on cutting off a tentacle of a vicious Mexican drug cartel, only to wind up neck deep in the mire of the war on drugs – which seems awfully personal for the men (Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro) leading the operation. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating: NNNN
Hellions follows small-town teenager Dora (Chloe Rose) who, having just found out she’s pregnant, is trapped in her home on Halloween night by pint-sized masked marauders bent on harvesting her unborn baby, which is gestating at an alarming rate. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating: NN
The Mend is one hell of a movie. Magary turns the grim trajectory of grown-up failure into a prismatic character study, zeroing in on two brothers who fall back into toxic co-dependence when they wind up sharing a Harlem apartment. (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating:NNNNN
Hotel Transylvania 2 picks up with Drac as a new grandfather to five-year-old Dennis (voiced by Asher Blinkoff), and the child’s identity is giving him anxiety. Will Dennis sprout fangs and be a bloodsucker like Grandpa, or will he settle for Slurpees as humans do? (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating: NNN
The Intern stars Robert De Niro as Ben, a retired widower with little to do. He signs up for a senior internship, an outreach program that makes very little sense for a crazy-successful online clothing website called About The Fit. (Why not reach out to disenfranchised youth, ya’ll?) (Read full review here)
Opens September 25. See listings.
Rating: NNN
