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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about the films he’s watched, the first official day of summer, and today being the 49th anniversary of the release of Jaws — the latter which, incidentally, coincided with a family health scare. Happily, Schulz’s mother wasn’t bitten by a shark. Also, The Goonies is playing this weekend at The Last Picture House, 39 years after the film’s release. If you wish to relive a bit of your childhood, then you might consider some other film for that. Anyhow. Onward.
The movies:
- Inside Out 2, a coming-of-age animation from Pixar, directed by Kelsey Mann and featuring the voice-work of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, and Kensington Tallman. A nice change from the relative humorlessness of recent Pixar releases. The film has made $438.9 million on a $200 million budget. Who could have seen that coming?
- Treasure, directed by Julia von Heinz and starring Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, and Zbigniew Zamachowski. Can you handle the idea of Dunham playing a Meghan McCain-type journalist huffing and puffing against the backdrop of Auschwitz for two hours? There’s two hours of that, you should know.
- Tuesday, a 2023 fantasy-drama directed by Daina O Pusić (in her feature directorial début) and starring a miscast Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, and Arinzé Kene. Death is inescapable — but not so scary compared to the idea of two hours of Lena Dunham swanning around without interruption.
- The Blue Angels, a documentary by Paul Crowder about the Navy’s Blue Angels pilots. Ninety minutes of a recruiting commercial for the Navy.
- Brats, the Andrew McCarthy documentary about the Brat Pack actors of the Eighties (excluding Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael-Hall, and Robert Downey Jr), and featuring conversations with Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Timothy Hutton, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Lea Thompson, and Jon Cryer. “Terrible in a fascinating way,” Schulz says. McCarthy clearly harbors a decades-long animus toward David Blum for his New York 1985 magazine article, which he says killed everyone’s career at the very moment their profile was raised. Everyone else who isn’t McCarthy, whether they’ve flourished or not, have moved on with their lives. It’s the kind of cringe that you cannot not watch. Streaming on Hulu.
Concerning previews:
- The Bikeriders, a circa-Sixties crime drama, directed by Jeff Nichols and starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, and Norman Reedus. We’re talking about Wild Ones-style bikers here, and not bicyclists. Imagine if they were bicyclists, but they still behaved like Marlon Brando. Now, that would be film to see!
- Thelma, directed by Josh Margolin and starring June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Malcolm McDowell. This film has a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes right now.
- The Exorcism — not The Exorcist, mind, even though Russell Crowe is in this one as well. Directed by Joshua John Miller and starring Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, and David Hyde Pierce. This sounds like a rare instance of a latter-day film being unintentionally meta.
“Inside Out 2,” “Treasure,” “Tuesday,” “The Blue Angels,” and “Brats”