Sci-fi blockbusters and sentimental smaller films made up a lot of the films this summer. Here is a wide range of what came out between May and July.
Ida
Pawel Pawlikowski’s 80-minute black-and-white Polish film set in the 1960s is about a young nun on the verge of taking her vows who finds out she is Jewish. What she and her aunt learn about her past during the Nazi occupation is haunting and powerful, directed with brilliant simplicity and precision. The old-fashioned full frame format and the nearly always stationary camera capture the past with stark realism. The film is shot with such clarity in black and white, but what the film has to say is not so black and white.
God’s Pocket
One of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final films is a tragic tale of a bunch of lowlifes stuck in a rundown town. Hoffman and Christina Hendricks are stuck in a passionless marriage when their scuzzy son is killed at his job by a co-worker. Things only get more desperate and violent. First time director John Slattery (Roger on “Mad Men”) does not always have the right balance of tone, and the film, based on the novel by Peter Dexter (“The Paperboy”), contains some dialogue that surely works better read in print than spoken out loud. The lead performances are all first-rate and the cinematography appropriately captures the brownish/greenish grunginess of the town.
Maleficent
The worst film of the summer and whole year. Sleeping Beauty’s villain, one of Disney’s greatest, is given a backstory to prove that she wasn’t all that bad, thus neutering the character and taking away her evilness. The CGI world is so artificial that nothing has any weight or substance. Angelina Jolie is fine in the lead role, but it is mostly because of how well she looks in the costume and make-up. The film resorts to loud, violent battle scenes with Jolie flying around in what looks like a gimp suit. Sadly this has become the Oscar-winner’s highest grossing film to date.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Mutant superheroes travel back and forth in time, show off their unique powers and hit each other. It is bright and lively, well-acted and fun while one is watching it but evaporates from the mind almost immediately.
We Are the Best!
The passion, energy, pain and uncertainty of childhood are explored when three girls in 1980s Stockholm start a punk band in this rousing and perceptive dramedy. One does not have to have any interest or knowledge of punk music to be won over by this gem.
Chef
Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) wrote, directed, and starred in this charming comedy about a chef who gets fed up with being creatively stifled at the restaurant he works for and takes his talent on the road in a food truck with his son. The plot is too tidy at times and the cast (Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey, Jr.) feels more star-studded than a personal film like this needs to be, but it all goes down quite nicely.
Godzilla
The newest remake of the 1954 monster film classic has a wonderful international cast, but the big, bad creatures are the real star. Gareth Edwards does a good job of not fully showing the monsters and teasing the audience for the longest time (perhaps even too long) and then finally having an awesome smackdown final. He also manages to contrast the massive scope with intimate human perspective to give the audience a true sense of the grandeur.
Neighbors
A formally hip couple played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne begin to settle down because of their baby daughter when a raucous frat house moves right next door, led by Zac Efron. Antics ensue. There are scattershot laughs throughout, but the film is lazy and lacks momentum and consistency. It is nothing more than a collection of set pieces and gags which never come together as a whole.
Edge of Tomorrow
A diverting, decent sci-fi action film. In the future, Tom Cruise stars as a poster boy for the military who gets sent to actually fight and realizes he is stuck in a time loop where he is able to relive the same day over and over again after dying. The totally preposterous premise is handled with more intelligence and wit than is usual for a film of this ilk. Still, it is a loud, violent blockbuster that is like a video game where human life means nothing.
The Fault in Our Stars
One of the pleasant surprises of the summer is the adaption of the bestselling young adult novel about two teenagers, one who beat cancer and one who is dying from it, who fall in love. For the most part, the film avoids false emotions and cloying sentiment. The two leads, especially Shailene Woodley, light up the screen and make an irresistible pair.
Begin Again
Mark Ruffalo plays a down-and-out music producer who has not hit it big in years when he stumbles late one night upon a British songwriter, played by Keira Knightley, performing at a bar in New York City. In her modest voice and simple guitar strokes, he hears a talent waiting to be shown to the world. This romantic comedy/music film could have gone wrong in so many ways but manages to hit almost all the right notes. Knightley has never been better or more warm on screen, and Ruffalo is scruffy and delightful.
Life Itself
An expansive, funny, tragic, and deeply moving and humane documentary about film critic Roger Ebert. The Chicago Sun-Times film critic for over 40 years died of cancer in 2013 after many years of painful surgeries and recoveries. Steve James, who directed one of Ebert’s favorite films of all time, “Hoop Dreams,” documents the final weeks of Ebert in the hospital and at home. It is not easy to watch his suffering, but it is an honest portrait, the way Ebert wanted it. It makes all the reflecting on his life and work just that much more powerful.
Boyhood
Richard Linklater shot this film in only 39 days, but it was over a 12-year period. It chronicles the life of a young boy, played by Ellar Coltrane, from age six to 18 in real time. A truly landmark film in the history of cinema, the film also happens to be an absolutely stunning work regardless of how it was filmed. The 165-minute film flies by, flawlessly directed and edited so that one never stops and thinks about the years and method of shooting. The entire cast is outstanding, including Patricia Arquette, playing the boy’s mother, Ethan Hawke, playing the father, and Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter, playing the sister. The film feels spontaneous and improvised when it was actually tightly scripted. Rarely has a film said so much, with so much heart and with so much humanity, while seeming so effortless.
Jersey Boys
It looks great, with flawless production design and costumes, and sounds great, with finger-snapping tunes and electrifying singing, but Clint Eastwood’s film of the hit Broadway musical about the Frankie Valli and his band The Four Seasons is stiff and dull, embalmed in nostalgia.
Obvious Child
The best comedy of the year about abortion is awkward but honest, vulgar but funny and painful but disarmingly sweet. The film at times tries but misses, but what holds the film together is Jenny Slate, a wonderfully charismatic leading lady. Even though the film is a comedy, it is one of the most realistic and honest films about abortion.
Venus In Fur
Based on the play of the same name, this sexually charged drama set entirely within a theater is directed by now 80-year-old Roman Polanski (“Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown”) and stars only two actors: Emmanuelle Seigner, his wife, and Mathieu Amalric, who looks strikingly similar to a young Polanski. Amalric plays a theater director who auditions a voluptuous actress for his newest play based on the scandalous French novella about S&M, “Venus in Furs,” from 1870. Who is controlling who and who is playing what role is frequently twisted and reversed with devilish glee. Polanski is still a master at distilling great tension from the barest of elements.
They Came Together
Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler star in a very silly spoof of romantic comedies in the vein of “Airplane!” that skewers the genre’s worn-out tropes and clichés. No gag is too stupid or vulgar to leave out. Not all of them work, but they come so fast that the laugh ratio is high, even if the film loses some of its spark after 45 minutes. Comedies this absurd and devoid of real character development or narrative struggle to sustain laughs for feature length. Still, there is a lot of funny material here.