Summer movie season is in full swing this second weekend in July.
The highest profile release is Insidious: The Red Door. The Blumhouse horror dynasty made their bones with Paranormal Activity and the first film in the Insidious series. For this one, star Patrick Wilson, who plays long-suffering paterfamilias Josh Lambert, takes the director’s chair. Rose Byrne returns as Renai, who somehow hasn’t had a major breakdown after a decade of jump scares. Their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins, all grown up) isn’t so lucky. As he’s trying to work through his trauma, the spirits who bedevil the family return. This one’s low-budget and high-impact, just like I like ’em.
Four Asian-American women on a “work trip” to China decide to cut loose in Joy Ride. The directorial debut of Crazy Rich Asians writer Adele Lim stars Emily in Paris’ Ashley Park and Stephanie Hsu of Everything Everywhere All At Once fame. This one’s giving off serious Bridesmaids vibes.
Remember Bio-Dome, the Pauly Shore comedy vehicle from the 1990s? Or Spaceship Earth, the 2020 documentary about the extremely weird history of Biosphere, the experimental environment simulator facility in the Arizona Desert which was the inspiration for Bio-Dome? Well, this isn’t either one of those. Biosphere is, instead, a film by indie legend Mark Duplass and director Mel Eslyn, starring Sterling K. Brown and Duplass as two guys trying to ride out the end of civilization. Will the laughs get bigger as the oxygen runs out?
On Sunday at 4 p.m., Fathom Events’ Hayao Miyazaki retrospective continues with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The 1984 film, set on a future Earth ravaged by environmental degradation, was way ahead of its time and represented the beginning of Miyazaki’s most creative period. The trailer, which is very 1984, is just a taste of the wild visuals in store.
On Thursday, July 13, The Marriage of Maria Braun pops up at Crosstown Theatre. Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s postwar trilogy began in 1979 with this box office hit, which examined the ennui of German life in the 1950s. It’s now considered a classic of European cinema.