Movie of the Week – Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Lighthouse Cinema continues its season of ‘Movies You’d Like Your Kids To See’ with Spielberg’s sci-fi masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Wednesday. Made at the peak of Spielberg’s powers, the movie is a cinematic delight, featuring a career best turn from star Richard Dreyfuss as a man offered a celestial way out of his suburban mid-life crisis.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
The best of the new releases is writer-director Marielle Heller’s impressive debut The Diary of a Teenage Girl, the story of an affair between a 15-year-old and her mother’s immature boyfriend, handled in a refreshingly non-judgemental, non-exploitive manner. It’s a shame that due to its 18 rating, the titular demographic won’t be able to enjoy it on the big screen, as it’s a movie both teens and adults will interpret in different ways while enjoying it equally.
Manglehorn
Al Pacino delivers his best performance in a long, long time in Manglehorn, playing an aging locksmith whose obsession with a long past love keeps him excluded from human interaction. The film’s magic-realist elements may be off-putting to some, but it’s well worth seeing for Pacino’s performance alone.
Marshland
Spanish thriller Marshland is a deadly dull and unoriginal ’80s set tale of two cops investigating a string of murders in a small rural town. The setting is the only interesting aspect of a movie that feels derivative of too many recent TV shows and movies.
Fantastic Four
It wouldn’t be summer without a superhero movie, and this week’s is the atrocious new version of Fantastic Four. It’s actually quite watchable up to the point where our heroes are imbued with their powers, but then the movie fails to find anything interesting for them to do. The overall effect is of a TV pilot for a show that we’ll likely never see play out.
By Eric Hillis
