New Movies to Watch This Week: Abe, Selah and the Spades, Sergio – Variety

This time last year, audiences were buying tickets to see Avengers: Endgame. Now, pretty much the biggest new release bypassing theaters and going straight to streaming, amid the turmoil caused by the coronavirusis a movie called Butt Boy.

But dont worry. Governmental leaders are starting to share plans about a reopening of movie theaters, and there are still lots of quality new releases making themselves available by streaming. So, while no new studio movies bowed this week, you can find treasures from festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, plus fresh fare for Amazon Prime and Netflix subscribers.

Here are all the new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them.

Ingvar Sigurdsson smolders in Icelandic thriller A White, White DayCourtesy of New Europe Film Sales

A White, White Day (Hlynur Palmason) CRITICS PICKDistributor: Film MovementWhere to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to supportA muscular study of toxic masculinity set in one of the worlds more remote locations, A White, White Day debuted in Critics Week at Cannes, where Ingvar Sigurdsson won the best actor prize. He delivers an astonishing performance here, a display of locomotive determination and exasperated futility transformed into dangerous, unpredictable anger. Im convinced that A White, White Day is the work of one of the most important voices of this emerging generation, arriving at a stage where we have yet to learn his language. Peter DebrugeRead the full review

Abe (Fernando Grostein Andrade)Distributor: Amazon StudiosWhere to Find It: Rent on Amazon or iTunesThe home life depicted in Abe, whose Big Apple-based 12-year-old title character (played by Stranger Things trouper Noah Schnapp) is the product of a Palestinian father and an Israeli mother, skews awfully far from the ordinary. Family dinners, which bring together grandparents from both sides to rehash the religious and political disputes of their respective faiths and countries, are never less than awkward. But Abe has an idea, and an obsession. Abe loves to cook. Hes like Julia Childs inner child, and has more spirit than Rocco DiSpirito. His dream is to use cooking to unite the two sides of the family, Jewish and Muslim (his parents consider themselves agnostic atheists, but their son wants to attend mosque and have a bar mitzvah, and he dreams of dishes that will combine the two sides of his heritage). Peter DebrugeRead the full review

Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack)Distributor: Epic PicturesWhere to Find It: Rent on Amazon, Google Play and other on-demand platformsNobody is going to watch a movie called Butt Boy in pursuit of sophisticated wit. That said, this feature spinoff from a prior sketch by the collaborative comedy-video team known as Tiny Cinema does manage to be just about the drollest execution possible of the most juvenile concept imaginable. Those inclined to be tickled by a one-joke bad-taste premise treated with an incongruous poker face will give this perversely well-crafted goof a leg-up toward immediate moderate cult status. Dennis HarveyRead the full review

Endings, Beginnings (Drake Doremus)Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn FilmsWhere to Find It: Rent on Amazon, iTunes or other on-demand platformsDaphne, who is played by Shailene Woodley in what is simultaneously her most realistic and least accessible performance yet, recently broke up with her boyfriend, moving back into her sisters pool house. That split had something to do with a drunken one-night stand. And now, though shes sworn herself to six months of sobriety and celibacy, Daphne cant deny her attraction to two totally different guys, played by Jamie Dornan and Sebastian Stan. This result is like the mumblecore version of The Philadelphia Story. Peter DebrugeRead the full review

The Quarry (Scott Teems)Distributor: Lionsgate, GrindstoneWhere to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platformsThis Southern-set thriller from the director of That Evening Sun was set to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival, but pivoted to streaming instead.

The Sharks (Luca Garibaldi)Distributor: Quiver DisributionWhere to Find It: Rent on iTunes and other on-demand platformsIn its portrayal of a 14-year-old girls disturbing sexual awakening in a sleepy seaside town, Uruguayan writer-director Lucia Garibaldis debut feature suggests luridly violent dangers in tranquil waters both figuratively and, per its title, literally whilst sketching Rosina, its introverted heroine, in light, fragile strokes. The result is intermittently striking before settling into an overly familiar drift: The films icy-humid atmospherics trouble the memory for longer than its remote protagonist and stagnant storytelling, just enough to pique interest in Garibaldis future work. Guy LodgeRead the full review

Bad Therapy (Bill Teitler)Distributor: Gravitas VenturesWhere to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platformsAlicia Silverstone and Rob Corddry play a married couple working with a counselor to repair their marriage in this straight-to-VOD relationship drama.

Sergio (Greg Barker)Where to Find It: NetflixThere is a Robert Frost poem called Escapist Never which provides a frequent refrain in Greg Barkers deeply admiring but drawn-out biopic of Brazilian diplomat and U.N. leading light Sergio Vieira de Mello. It is the future that creates his present, runs the penultimate line, and de Mello (played with persuasive charm by Wagner Moura) certainly does seem like a man whose present was shaped by the future. The mans impact on world affairs does render understandable Barkers rather starry-eyed approach, but in its unnecessary length and sentimental emphasis on the mans romantic life, Sergio more often, intentionally and otherwise, evokes the interminable chain of longing of the poems celebrated last line. Jessica KiangRead the full review

Rising High (Cneyt Kaya)Where to Find It: NetflixFact-based The Wolf of Wall Street won criticism from some quarters for seeming to revel in its protagonists sex, drugs and rock n roll lifestyle, while barely chiding him for the predatory, large-scale financial fraud that funded it. Cneyt Kayas new Rising High offers a similar disconnect in its fictive tale of bold chicanery in the realm of high-end real estate, treating its heroes climb to ill-gotten wealth as a vicarious thrill ride, with scant attention paid to the victims they presumably bankrupt. Dennis HarveyRead the full review

Selah and the Spades (Tayarisha Poe)Distributor: Amazon StudiosWhere to Find It: Amazon PrimeStudents from Haldwell prep school graduate prepared for any career, particularly the Mafia. This exclusive boarding prep school is controlled by five factions, and senior spirit captain Selah (Lovie Simone) commands the Spades, the most criminal of the clubs that distributes kush, acid, cocaine, Adderall and tequila around campus. Writer-director Tayarisha Poes cold and stylish debut, commands attention. More specifically, Simones Selah seizes it. The film has more style than plot, but that style is terrific. Amy NicholsonRead the full review

Javier Bardem explores Antarctica in SanctuaryCourtesy of NYFF

The Booksellers (D.W. Young)Distributor: Greenwich EntertainmentWhere to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to supportThis lovely and wistful documentary invites us to dote on the tactile mystery of old books the elegance of the print, the pages that may be fragmenting, the colorful latticework bindings, the back-breaking size of certain old volumes. Young is a veteran film editor who leads us into grand and cozy old bookstores like the mysterious museums they are. The Booksellers is a documentary for anyone who can still look at a book and see a dream, a magic teleportation device, an object that contains the world. Owen GleibermanRead the full review

Beyond the Visible Hilma Af Klint (Halina Dyrschka)Distributor: Zeitgeist Films, in association with Kino LorberWhere to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to supportRecently featured at the Guggenheim Museum, Klint was nearly forgotten by time. This documentary explores what was almost lost.

Bias (Robin Hauser)Distributor: 1091 MediaWhere to Find It: Rent it on Amazon, Google Play and other on-demand platformsA deep dive into the subject of implicit bias and how it impacts human behavior.

Earth (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)Distributor: KimStimWhere to Find It: Virtual screenings tied to Earth DayThe director of Our Daily Bread takes a satellite view of how homo sapiens are transforming their planet.

View original post here:
New Movies to Watch This Week: Abe, Selah and the Spades, Sergio - Variety

Related Posts