Confronting the issues of tokenism and race, it’s a riveting and thought-provoking movie that resides entirely in gray areas, swirling in ideas of youth, class, and opportunity.
Movie Previews
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Film preview: ‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’
Part mismatched buddy comedy and part road trip movie, “The Peanut Butter Falcon” aims to be a feel-good film. We follow Zak and Tyler’s episodic adventure as the “two bandits on the run” drift wherever the river may take them and encounter various oddball characters along the way.
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Film preview: ‘Good Boys’
There’s frat house drug deals, death-defying sprints across the highway, and annoyingly knowledgeable kid sisters. It’s an awful lot to handle for middle schoolers already navigating the hormone-addled world of 6th grade.
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Film preview: ‘Them That Follow’
There’s a fine line between making an attempt to truly understand what drives the behavior of religious subcultures, and simply using it as an excuse to gawk in horror. And while “Them That Follow” doesn’t always keep to the right side of that line, it remains a compelling story about the clash between spirituality and the messiness of life.
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Film preview: ‘The Farewell’
Exploring the complexities of cultural identity, “The Farewell” circulates with grief, love, regret, and guilt. It tells a warm, heartfelt, and often funny story about the bonds of family and the ways we work to stretch them as far as we can; across continents if we have to.
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Film preview: ‘The Art of Self-Defense’
Director Riley Stearns’ strange and seething satire is a pitch black comedy for the modern era, coming at a time when our culture continues a long overdue conversation about identity, masculinity, and violence.
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Preview: Rochester Jewish Film Festival
The eight-day festival will run from Sunday, July 7 through Monday, July 14 showcasing a collection of 26 films that includes entries from 18 countries, including 13 feature-length narratives, 12 feature-length documentaries, and one special event screening of the first two episodes of popular new Israeli television series “The Conductor.”
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Film preview: ‘The Dead Don’t Die’
The new zombie comedy “The Dead Don’t Die” suggests that it’s society itself that’s currently making writer-director Jim Jarmusch most apprehensive, and the film ultimately offers up his rather bleak appraisal of the modern world.
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Film preview: ‘The Tomorrow Man’
Each of the main characters have their own unique ways of maintaining control in a world that appears to be steadily careening toward chaos; both are eager to escape some pain of their past while possessing an often debilitating fear of the future. But together they might find a more manageable present.
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Film preview: ‘Rocketman’
“Restrained” shouldn’t be the first word that comes to mind when describing larger-than-life singer Elton John. But that’s exactly the descriptor that came to mind while watching “Rocketman,” director Dexter Fletcher’s surprisingly timid and conventional rock-musical-biopic of the artist’s most unconventional life.
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Film preview: ‘Booksmart’
Smart, funny, and empathetic, Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is a love letter to the blissfully uncool dorks among us. Both referential and thoroughly modern, it feels like an instant classic of the high school genre.
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Preview: The Reel Mind Theatre and Film Series
The annual series will return next week, continuing its mission to fight the social stigma of mental illness by shining a spotlight on topics far too many of us are content to sweep out of mind. This year’s four films focus on the difficult topic of suicide, highlighting stories of survivors that seek to spread a message of hope and recovery.
