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Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Available soon for home viewing


Baywatch ½* Directed by Seth Gordon. Devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchannon butts heads with a brash new recruit, as they uncover a criminal plot that threatens the future of the bay. The waterlogged end product is an example of lazy writing and direction with the vague hope that perhaps the involvement of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will attract viewers.

Born in China ** Directed by Chuan Lu. The movie, filmed in the wilds of China, captures intimate moments with a panda and her growing cub, a young golden monkey who feels displaced by his baby sister, and a mother snow leopard struggling to raise her two cubs. The film partly confirms what The Lion King already taught ‘90s kids: We should take comfort in knowing that everything in life is natural when seen as part of the "circle of life," as surprisingly effective voiceover narrator John Kransinski reminds us.

Dean ** Directed by Demetri Martin. A comedy about loss, grief, and the redemptive power of love. Dean is a New York illustrator who falls hard for a Los Angeles woman while trying to prevent his father from selling the family home in the wake of his mother's death. A movie with which it is easy to find fault, and if you’re a particular kind of person, you’ll find fault with it without even trying too hard.

A Family Man ** Directed by Mark Williams. A headhunter whose life revolves around closing deals in a survival-of-the-fittest boiler room, battles his top rival for control of their job placement company — his dream of owning the company clashing with the needs of his family. Whenever the movie reaches for poetry it lands somewhere in a chain drugstore's greeting card aisle, trying to choose between one that shows an adorable child laughing in a Photoshopped field of sunlit daisies, one that tries for gallows humor but isn't really that funny, and a third with a quote about mortality and wisdom that only seems thoughtful because it's written in cursive.

My Cousin Rachel  ½* Directed by Roger Mitchell. A young Englishman plots revenge against his late cousin's mysterious, beautiful wife, believing her responsible for cousin’s death. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling under the beguiling spell of her charms. One of the problems with this version of the classic story is that it’s hard to come up with any issue or reason relative to its creation, I’m afraid.

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