Summer Movie Preview

We're all for getting out in the summertime, but there might not be anything more...

July 1

“The Beaches of Agnès”
Director: Agnès Varda
Fest Cred: Toronto, Venice, Buenos Aires, Istanbul
The Gist: As the legendary filmmaker Agnès Varda explains in this autobiographical documentary, “If you opened people up, you would find landscapes; if you opened me up, you would find beaches.” Which goes a long way towards describing the vast examination of her life (including her marriage to fellow New Wave filmmaker Jacques Demy) and her work and how the two have inspired each other.

July 3

“I Hate Valentine’s Day”
The Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett
Writer/Director: Nia Vardalos
The Gist: The second part of Vardalos’ summer double bill, the “Big Fat Greek Wedding” star actually takes the directorial reins for the first time with a romantic comedy about a florist (Vardalos) who dates a restaurant owner (Corbett) without the pressure of calling it a “relationship.”

July 10

“Humpday”
The Cast: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore, Lynn Shelton, Trina Willard
Writer/Director: Lynn Shelton
Fest Cred: Sundance, SXSW
The Gist: Seattle-based filmmaker Shelton needed only to look in her own backyard for the inspiration for her latest film, a comedy about two straight dudes (Duplass and Leonard) who challenge each other to make a gay porno starring themselves for a contest sponsored by Seattle’s alternative weekly The Stranger. Needless to say, when the married one tells his wife (Delmore), she’s less than thrilled, though audiences at Sundance and SXSW have been ecstatic.

“Soul Power”
The Cast: Muhammad Ali, James Brown, BB King, Miriam Makeba, Celia Cruz
Writer/Director: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte
Fest Cred:Toronto, Berlinale
The Gist: Longtime indie producer Levy-Hinte (“Thirteen,” “Mysterious Skin”) makes his directorial debut with a concert film constructed from the three-day musical festival, headlined by James Brown, that accompanied Muhammad Ali-George Foreman’s 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire, which was the subject of the doc “When We Were Kings.” Incidentally, Levy-Hinte discovered the 30-year-old footage of acts like Celia Cruz and the Spinners while he was and editor on the boxing doc.

“Weather Girl”
The Cast: Tricia O’Kelley, Patrick Adams, Mark Harmon, Ryan Devlin, Kaitlin Olson, Marin Hinkle, Jane Lynch, Jon Cryer
Writer/Director: Blayne Weaver (co-writer of “Manic”)
Fest Cred: Slamdance, Vail
The Gist: After having a meltdown on a morning show, a weather girl (O’Kelley) is fired and must reexamine her life after she moves in with her brother and deal with the infamy of airing out her relationship problems on live TV.

“Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg”
Writer/Director: Aviva Kempner
Fest Cred: San Diego Jewish, L.A. Jewish, San Diego Jewish
The Gist: Director Kempner, who last directed the baseball doc “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” now tackles another story of Jews in U.S. popular culture, this time focusing on Gertrude Berg, the actress who became a radio pioneer and inspiration to millions as the creator/writer/star of the 1920s serial “The Goldbergs.”

July 15

“Somers Town”
The Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Piotr Jabiello, Elisa Lasowski, Kate Dickie
Director: Shane Meadows
Fest Cred: Tribeca, Edinburgh, Karlovy Vary, Berlinale
The Gist: Meadows teams up once again with Turgoose, the young star of his last film, “This is England,” for a tale of two teens vying for the attention of a French waitress while taking odd jobs to get by. Alison Willmore was quite the fan when the film played Tribeca last year.

July 17

“All the Boys Love Mandy Lane”
The Cast: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able, Aaron Himelstein
Director: Jonathan Levine (“The Wackness”)
Fest Cred:Toronto, Sitges, SXSW
The Gist: One of the long-running mysteries of the indie world will come to an end when “Wackness” director Levine’s first film is finally released to the masses — almost three years after it was acquired by the Weinstein Company and then sold back to producer Senator Films a year later. Still, the clever take on the slasher genre, about a girl whose party on a ranch turns into easy pickings for a serial killer, has aged nicely, considering that lead Amber Heard’s star has risen after roles in “The Informers” and “Pineapple Express.”

“(500) Days of Summer”
The Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel
Director: Marc Webb
Fest Cred:Sundance, SXSW
The Gist: Don’t call it a romantic comedy, or an anti-romantic comedy for that matter, but Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel star as a couple who meet cute to Morrissey and spend the next 499 days navigating a tricky relationship as it becomes obvious that both want different things.

“In The Loop”
The Cast: Anna Chlumsky, Chris Addison, David Rasche, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini, Mimi Kennedy, Olivia Poulet, Peter Capaldi, Steve Coogan, Tom Hollander, and Zach Woods
Director: Armando Iannuci
Fest Cred: Sundance, San Francisco
The Gist: Although Iannucci’s BBC Four government satire series “The Thick of It” is barely available in the States, the writer/director is about to invade America in a big way with a skewering of both the U.S. and U.K. governments as one utterance by a British minister leads to a potential war and hundreds of perfectly idiotic conversations between bureaucrats trying to avoid one.

“A Woman in Berlin”
The Cast: Nina Hoss, Evgeny Sidikhin, Irm Hermann, Ruediger Vogler, Ulrike Krumbiegel
Director: Max Färberböck (“Aimée & Jaguar”)
Fest Cred: Toronto, Berlinale
The Gist: In this true story, Hoss stars as a journalist who struggles to find protection from the Red Army as Berlin is taken over by Communists during the tail end of World War II and she’s forced into unspeakable acts as a form of self-preservation until she meets a Russian soldier (Sidikhin) who she is drawn to, yet she cannot trust.

July 24

“All Good Things”
The Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Kristen Wiig, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Philip Baker Hall
Director: Andrew Jarecki (“Capturing the Friedmans”)
The Gist: Jarecki changes gears from documentary to fiction with this ‘80s-set murder mystery involving a real estate heir (Gosling) whose girlfriend (Dunst) goes missing and when a detective (Morgan) is hired to find her whereabouts, the political and personal implications mount for everyone involved.

“The Answer Man”
The Cast: Jeff Daniels, Lauren Graham, Lou Taylor Pucci, Olivia Thirlby, Kat Dennings, Nora Dunn
Writer/Director: John Hindman
Fest Cred: Sundance
The Gist: Rechristened from its original title “Arlen Faber” since Sundance, writer/director Hindman’s debut centers on a reclusive author (Daniels) whose spiritual self-help book is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary when he meets a single mother (Graham) and a recent rehab patient (Pucci) for whom he can’t offer any help.

“Gotta Dance”
Writer/Director: Dori Berinstein
Fest Cred: Tribeca
The Gist: A Tribeca ’08 premiere, “ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway” director Berinstein turns her camera towards another facet of the entertainment biz with this doc about the Netsationals, a dance squad comprised of 60- to 80-year-olds who became an unlikely sensation as the halftime act at New Jersey Nets games.

“Sabor Tropical”
The Cast: Matthew Leitch, Jose Rosete, Jorge Ameer, Torie Tyson
Writer/Director: Jorge Ameer
The Gist: “AKA” star Matthew Leitch plays a young journalist who travels down to Panama for the Carnival of Las Tablas and gets in over his head with women and booze in this directorial effort from the Panamanian native Jorge Ameer, a prominent gay filmmaker and one-time founder of the Continental Film Fest.

“Shake Hands With the Devil”
The Cast: Roy Dupuis, Owen Sejake, James Gallanders, Deborah Kara Unger
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Fest Cred: Toronto, Atlantic, Cinefest Sudbury, Palm Springs
The Gist: Spottiswoode, the director of both a Bond movie (“Tomorrow Never Dies”) and “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!”, once again takes another interesting career turn with an eye-opening adaptation of Roméo Dallaire’s memoir of serving as a Canadian general assigned to lead troops into Rwanda during the height of the genocide and ends up rebelling against his own country’s apathy towards the dire situation.

July 29

“Adam”
The Cast: Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving, Frankie Faison
Writer/Director: Max Mayer
Fest Cred: Sundance, Method Fest
The Gist: The surprise pick-up of this year’s Sundance Film Fest, the romantic dramedy about an engineer with Asperger’s Syndrome (Dancy) who falls for his new neighbor (Byrne) also came away from Park City with an Alfred P. Sloan Award for its depiction of science.

July 31

“The Cove”
Director: Louie Psihoyos
Fest Cred: Sundance
The Gist: A famed photographer who once worked for National Geographic, Psihoyos was inspired by his diving buddy (and Netscape founder) Jim Clark to make a movie about the growing industry of dolphin hunting in Japan and by extension, how toxins such as mercury are poisoning the ocean and humans. In other words, this one’s got Jeremy Piven’s endorsement.

“Death in Love”
The Cast: Adam Brody, Josh Lucas, Lukas Haas, Jacqueline Bisset
Writers/Director: Boaz Yakin (“Fresh”)
Fest Cred: Sundance, Boston
The Gist: Two brothers (Lucas and Haas) must come to terms with the revelation that their mother (Huppert), a Holocaust survivor, seduced a concentration camp doctor to escape unharmed. The film is both a return to roots and complete 180 for writer/director Yakin, whose last film was the 2003 Brittany Murphy comedy “Uptown Girls.”

“Flame & Citron”
The Cast: Thure Lindhardt, Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade, Christian Berkel, Hanns Zischler, Peter Muggind
Director: Ole Christian Madsen
Fest Cred: Toronto, Edmonton, Seville European, Jakarta
The Gist: “Casino Royale” star Mikkelsen plays one half of a Danish assassin duo who spend World War II working for the Resistance, taking out Nazis and their collaborators in Denmark. Rather than shying off from their past, Danish audiences have made the film one of the biggest box office hits in the nation’s history.

“Lorna’s Silence”
The Cast: Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione, Alban Ukaj, Morgan Marinne
Writers/Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“L’Enfant”)
Fest Cred: Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Toronto, Helsinki
The Gist: The latest from the Dardenne brothers played to mixed response in Cannes, but continues their commitment to naturalistic dramas about the lives of the Belgian lower class, this time featuring an Albanian immigrant (Dobroshi) who marries her way into Belgian citizenship by taking the hand of an inveterate junkie, but finds out that she is merely a part of a plot to remarry a Russian gangster.

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