Too late to salvage a summer movie season wiped out by coronavirus, but boldly hoping to bring audiences back to cinemas (or drive-ins at least), a handful of movies are opening widely this weekend — or as widely as they can in a country where many communities are still restricting public gatherings.
If time travel were a real thing, one might hope that air-guitar aces Bill and Ted would have warned the world this pandemic were coming. Instead, their reunion sequel “Bill and Ted Face the Music” find the duo still trying to unite humanity with a song. After multiple delays for reasons that had nothing to do with the coronavirus, X-Men spinoff “The New Mutants” finally sees the light of day. And indie champions Searchlight Pictures try a 2020 variation on their limited-release strategy with “The Personal Life of David Copperfield,” skipping New York and Los Angeles (where such films typically open first) to begin in markets where they can find screens.
Meanwhile, all of these movies are dwarfed by the massive overseas success of Chinese war epic “The Eight Hundred,” which earned more than $100 million in its home country last week, and which opens on nearly 100 North American screens. Of course, there’s plenty more for audiences to watch from the safety of their own homes, including comedies (like “The Binge” and “Ged Duked!”) from various subscription platforms.
Here’s a rundown of those films opening this week that Variety has covered, along with links to where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.
New Releases on Demand and in Select Theaters
Benjamin (Simon Amstell)Distributor: Artsploitation FilmsWhere to Find It: Available on DVD and VOD platforms, including Amazon
Appealingly restrained and perfectly shaped at under 90 minutes, “Benjamin” maintains its softly barbed wit and sweet-and-sour intimacy to the end, bringing its shambolic eponymous hero to the brink of self-realization, minus any pat platitudes or learning of lessons. The film might be termed a romantic comedy, though the will-they-won’t-they dynamic that usually powers the genre feels beside the point here. It’s Benjamin’s volatile relationship with himself that gives Amstell’s script its subtle tension. — Guy LodgeRead the full review
Bill & Ted Face the Music (Dean Parisot)Distributor: Orion PicturesWhere to Find It: Available in theaters and on demand
This most excellent sequel has a high-fluff effervescence. It’s about how Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) have just 77 minutes to travel through time and get the song that will unite humanity and save reality as we know it. As they trip further and further into the future, they keep meeting older versions of themselves, a variation on the doubling-up-of-identity-through-space-time stunt that the first two “Bill and Ted” films played with, only here it gets a major metaphysical stoned workout. — Owen GleibermanRead the full review
The Eight Hundred (Guan Hu) CRITIC’S PICKDistributor: CMCWhere to Find It: Available in theaters
Four days feels like an eternity in “The Eight Hundred,” mainland Chinese writer-director Guan Hu’s monumental, if sometimes unwieldy epic interpretation of the courageous defense of a warehouse by the Chinese Nationalist Army in October 1937. For those with little knowledge of the Sino-Japanese War, the bombardment of facts, action and characters in the 147-minute film can be too much to take in at one go. But the spirit of the mission, like that of “The Alamo,” should be easy for any audience to root for. — Maggie LeeRead the full review
Epicentro (Hupert Sauper)Distributor: Kino MarqueeWhere to Find It: Select a virtual cinema to support
A leisurely, somewhat hazy travelogue compared to the piercing political indictments of his acclaimed prior “We Come as Friends” and Oscar-nominated “Darwin’s Nightmare,” Sauper’s new doc looks at Cuba on the brink of colossal transition, as the old Communist system is in its apparent death throes, and free-market capitalism waits in the wings. It’s a fascinating moment for cultural stock-taking. Yet despite the filmmaker’s evident fondness for the people and nation, this impressionistic feature feels frustratingly obtuse, unfocused and unstructured. — Dennis HarveyRead the full review
Fatima (Marco Pontecorvo)Distributor: PicturehouseWhere to Find It: Available in theaters and video-on-demand services
In this superficially suspicious, yet ultimately accepting historical drama, three Portuguese shepherd children experienced several visits by the Virgin Mary, who bestowed certain insights upon them before unleashing a spectacular solar light show so as to convince all those assembled. The film arrives amid a global crisis — not just the pandemic, but a steady, numbing attack on any form of belief that doesn’t support one’s political agendas. While not especially artful, “Fatima” honors those who stand by their convictions. — Peter DebrugeRead the full review
House of Cardin (P. David Ebersole, Todd Hughes)Distributor: IFC MidnightWhere to Find It: Available in select theaters and via video-on-demand services
Among the words use to describe Pierre Cardin in this doc, “genius” is the overriding one, uttered by multiple luminaries in his thrall, with other flattering variations (“creator,” “chic,” “modern,” “innovator”) rounding it out. Buried in the mix, however, with no identified source, is a somewhat contrasting statement: “a little bit of a sellout.” It portends a note of critical balance in this portrait of the Paris couturier turned global one-man brand, though the ensuing film — bright and glitzily entertaining as it is — never quite bears out that promise. — Guy LodgeRead the full review
Lingua Franca (Isabel Sandoval)Distributor: Array ReleasingWhere to Find It: Available in select theaters and on Netflix
There’s a simultaneous delicacy and straightforwardness to “Lingua Franca” that stamps Sandoval’s third feature with a distinctive directorial sensibility — even if her script eventually muffles some of the film’s early promise. This low-key drama about a trans Filipina looking for love (and a green card) while working as a domestic in Brooklyn is low-key in the right ways, utilizing subtlety and suggestion in place of spelled-out backstories or case pleading. After a while, however, we need more emotional payoff than Sandoval is willing to provide. — Dennis HarveyRead the full review
Matthias & Maxime (Xavier Dolan)Distributor: MubiWhere to Find It: Available exclusively to Mubi subscribers
A wistful, low-key love-and-friendship study, and something of a back-to-basics reset after his elaborate English-language misfire “The Death and Life of John P. Donovan,” it feels at once younger and older, sweeter and more seasoned, than Dolan’s last few films. Most of all, in its relaxed assemblage of themes and cinematic motifs from previous Dolan joints, “Matthias & Maxime” feels comfortable: not out to scout new stylistic territory, but confident in the turf it covers, often gorgeously so. — Guy LodgeRead the full review
The New Mutants (Josh Boone)Distributor: Twentieth Century StudiosWhere to Find It: Available exclusively in theaters and drive-ins
Boone, who directed the hit adaptation of YA weepie “The Fault in Our Stars,” saw in the X-Men-adjacent “New Mutants” comics series a novel way to deliver wish fulfillment to teen audiences: He invites them to imagine what superpower they’d want if mutant abilities kicked in at puberty. Like “The Breakfast Club” on steroids, five misfits slowly overcome their differences, bonding and becoming friends by the time Boone reveals a twist he must have thought would blow people’s minds. — Peter DebrugeRead the full review
Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (Werner Herzog)Distributor: Music Box FilmsWhere to Find It: Available via Film Forum’s virtual cinema
Throughout his career, Werner Herzog has shared a deep connection with his daring explorer subjects, be it with “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo,” “Little Dieter Needs to Fly,” or “Grizzly Man.” That’s again true in the prolific filmmaker’s heartfelt documentary tribute to his celebrated writer friend, who passed away from AIDS in 1989. Duplicating many of Chatwin’s most notable journeys, Herzog evokes the late English wanderer’s restless soul and curious fascination with profound issues that have long captivated the director. — Nick SchagerRead the full review
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci)Distributor: Searchlight PicturesWhere to Find It: Available exclusively in theaters and drive-ins
Iannucci’s uncommon adaptation of “David Copperfield” comes across as a bright and jaunty corrective to the dour and stuffy Charles Dickens adaptations that have come before. This movie is his attempt to rescue the writer from the musty category of “literature” — not a disrespectful place to be, but stodgier than cucumber sandwiches at a croquet match — and reintroduce him as a rapid-fire ahead-of-his-time wit. Iannucci’s most radical choice comes in casting, beginning with the certainty that the title role could be played by Dev Patel, the London-born star of “Slumdog Millionaire.” — Peter DebrugeRead the full review
#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump (Dan Partland)Distributor: Dark Star PicturesWhere to Find It: Select a virtual cinema to support; or rent on demand Sept. 1
Trump, as Dan Partland’s film explains, is a malignant narcissist. The film details the four qualities in Trump that define that syndrome: his paranoia (the feeling that any journalist who asks him a challenging question, or any staff member who doesn’t kiss his ring, is out to get him); his anti-social personality disorder (the constant lying, the lack of remorse about even the most destructive things he does); the sadism (the thousands of vicious attacks and insults in his tweets); and…well, the narcissism. — Owen GleibermanRead the full review
You Cannot Kill David Arquette (David Darg, Price James)Distributor: Super LTDWhere to Find It: Available via iTunes and video-on-demand services
This documentary follows Arquette’s attempt, in 2018, to return to the wrestling world — only this time with a kick-a— integrity that he lacked before. Eighteen years ago, he was a skinny kid playing dress-up and coming on like the bada— he clearly wasn’t. Now, at 46, he does all that he can to show up as a trained wrestler who can hold his own with fighters like the platinum-blond wrecking machine Ken Anderson. Arquette is certainly game to claw his way back into the limelight. Yet the dude is such a lightweight that you can’t be overly annoyed by the innocence of his opportunism. — Owen GleibermanRead the full review
Exclusive to Amazon Prime
Get Duked! (Ninian Doff) CRITIC’S PICKWhere to Find It: Amazon Prime
What surely would have made a good reality-TV series — three juvenile delinquents from the big city, plus an awkward kid with no friends, are dropped in the Scottish Highlands and left to find their way back to civilization — works even better as a dark comedy goof when a couple of lunatics start shooting at them from afar. The stakes are high, but so are half the characters in Doff’s irreverent survivalist satire, which makes this deranged camping trip — with its phallocentric hip-hop jams, improvised pyrotechnics and hallucinogenic rabbit droppings — all the more unforgettable. — Peter DebrugeRead the full review
Exclusive to Hulu
"The Binge"(Jeremy Garelick)Where to Find It: Hulu
A weirdly tame, let’s-all-get-wasted riff on “The Purge,” “The Binge” imagines an alternate America where all drugs and alcohol are illegal, except during a 12-hour window each year, at which time anything goes. If the premise sounds more fun than the execution, that’s because “The Binge” doesn’t seem to recognize how or why people indulge in such substances to begin with. Screenwriter Jordan VanDina has a few genuinely rowdy ideas up his sleeve, heightened by some reasonably inspired improvisation, especially from MVP Vince Vaughn as a wildly inappropriate high school principal. — Peter DebrugeRead the full review
Exclusive to Netflix
All Together Now (Bretty Haley)Where to Find It: Netflix
Starring Auli’i Cravalho (best known as the voice of “Moana”), this well-intentioned, well-acted, well-textured film sees its better qualities start to dissipate as it piles on miserablism and misfortune en route to an uplifting ending that can’t help but scan as a bit empty. Featuring winning performances all around — including supporting turns from the likes of Fred Armisen and Carol Burnett — “All Together Now” has enough of Haley’s signature humanism to elevate it above the average teen melodrama, but only just. — Andrew BarkerRead the full review
Rising Phoenix (Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui)Where to Find It: Netflix
Unknown Origins (David Galán Galindo)Where to Find It: Netflix
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