Cincinnati is awash in support for the current effort to bring the Sundance Film Festival here. We are one of six finalists to host the world-famous annual festival should it leave its current home, Park City, Utah, in 2027. Park City, in tandem with Salt Lake City, is one of those six.
Such excitement is good, necessary even, if Cincinnati is to get Sundance. But what else would be good is better local awareness—which maybe translates into greater attendance at theaters—when an indie/specialty movie that’s won praise and buzz at Sundance or elsewhere opens here. Besides, as cinephiles know, films are better on the big screen.
We’ll get a good chance to do that on August 9 when Dídi opens at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton. (It’s set to expand to AMC Newport and West Chester on August 16.) At the 2024 Sundance film festival in January, it won the Audience Award for Best U.S. Dramatic Film and also the Jury’s special award for best ensemble cast in a U.S. dramatic film.
Dídi
[Watch the trailer. Opens August 9 at the Esquire Theatre.]
Directed, written, and produced by Sean Wang, this comedy/drama is set in the Bay Area city of Fremont circa 2008. Modeled on his own life as a Taiwanese American, it follows 13-year-old Chris (Izaac Wang, no relation) as he starts to come of age, pursuing adolescent interests in skateboarding, girls, school, what have you. Early reviews, mostly highly positive, have singled out how director Wang and actor Wang both get that age and its “nerdiness” right. The film also deals with Chris’ difficult relationship his family, including his mother (Joan Chen). The film’s title means “younger brother” in Chinese.
Sean Wang’s film and its enthusiastic early reception have made him a hot commodity. “If having your first feature premiere at the Sundance Film Festival is an accomplishment, being nominated for an Academy Award the same week is pretty much unheard of,” Eric Luers wrote in Filmmaker Magazine. “Nonetheless, that’s what writer-director Sean Wang experienced last January when his coming-of-age narrative feature, Dídi, premiered to glowing reviews (and a distribution deal with Focus Features) while his nonfiction portrait of his two grandmothers, Nai Nai & Wài Pó, was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Still in his 20s, Wang’s career has skyrocketed over the past year, and now Dìdi opens in theaters riding a wave of strong press and audience reactions.”
Kneecap
[Watch the trailer. Opens August 2 at the Esquire Theatre and AMC Newport.]
This comedy/drama is billed as the first Irish language film to play the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award in the festival’s Next category. Set in West Belfast in Northern Ireland, it follows in the tradition of fine Irish music films, a category that includes two set in the Republic of Ireland’s Dublin, Once and The Commitments. Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, it stars the actual members of a hip hop trio that’s found a devoted audience by singing in their “mother tongue” and having songs with Irish Republican themes. This is not a documentary, however; it’s a fictionalized biopic. The three rappers/actors composing Kneecap are Liam Óg “Mo Chara” Ó Hannaidh, Naoise “Moglai Bap” O cairealláin, and JJ “DJ Próvai” Ó Dochartaigh.
After the Sundance premiere, Variety’s Carlos Aguilar wrote a Critic’s Pick review with such a wonderful headline that I’m just going to quote that: “Irish Rap Group Flips the Finger at British Imperialism in Wonderfully Offbeat Docudrama.”
Last Summer
[Watch the trailer. Now running at the Esquire Theatre.]
This new French film is an example of the kind of erotic thriller the French have long excelled in. It’s directed by one of the venerable giants of French Cinema, 76-year-old Catherine Breillat. In the film, the domestic life of lawyer Anne (Léa Drucker), her husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), and their two daughters is upended when his 17-year-old son from a previous marriage, Théo (Samuel Kircher), comes to live with them. He and Anne begin a torrid, dangerous affair.
“The provocative French auteur is back with her first feature in more than a decade, and at nearly 76 remains as curious and clear-eyed as ever in her depiction of women’s sexuality,” said Christy Lemire for the site RogerEbert.com. “There’s no judgment in her portrayal of Anne’s torrid, taboo affair; her downfall will occur regardless of what we think of her. Breillat’s approach is technically intimate yet tonally detached—languid as a summer’s day, sometimes unbearably so, and often uncomfortably warm.”
Sing Sing
[Watch the trailer. Opens August 16 at Cinemark Oakley and either August 16 or 23 at the Esquire Theatre.]
While this eagerly awaited film doesn’t technically have a Sundance pedigree—it premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival—it’s just several steps removed. The movie is directed by Greg Kwedar, who co-wrote it with Clint Bentley. Their previous film, Jockey, which was directed by Bentley and co-written with Kwedar, premiered at Sundance in 2021. And Sing Sing was the subject of a special panel discussion there this year.
It’s the story of how a man (Colman Domingo, Oscar nominated for Best Actor this year for Rustin), convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to New York’s maximum security Sing Sing prison, becomes involved in a theater group for inmates. The cast uses former inmates who actually participated in such a program.
Writing a Critic’s Choice review for The New York Times, Lisa Kennedy said, “Colman Domingo imbues his character John Whitfield, a.k.a. Divine G, with a steadfast compassion but also the tamped-down frustrations of a man convicted of a crime he says he didn’t commit. And Clarence Maclin—a formerly incarcerated newcomer whose story, along with that of the actual Whitfield, the film is built upon—burrows into his former self in a finessed and fierce performance as Divine Eye, the prison-yard alpha who auditions for Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts theater program. That program is the movie’s other star.”
Resistance: They Fought Back
[Watch the trailer. Likely to open later in August at the Mariemont Theatre or Esquire Theatre.]
It’s worth repeating the below pick from my July preview column, since the film didn’t open last month but is still promised as a “coming soon” title for August at the Esquire or Mairemont….
This powerful documentary challenges a certain belief about the Holocaust murder of millions of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II.
Online, co-director Paula Apsell explained the film’s purpose: “Our goal is nothing less than a corrective to the dominant narrative of the Holocaust, one in which Jewish victims quietly went to their fate ‘like sheep to the slaughter.’ To the contrary, there were more than ninety armed rebellions in ghettos and concentration camps, thousands of Jewish partisans fighting in the forests, as well as countless examples of non-violent resistance against the Nazis.”
Two promising documentaries about artistic creators are tentatively scheduled to open at the Mariemont on either August 9 or August 16. One is How to Come Alive (with Norman Mailer), billed as the first documentary about the wildly controversial late novelist to have access to his family and archives. (He died in 2007 at age 84). The distributor, Zeitgeist Films, says the film “explores the rollercoaster life of America’s most controversial and bestselling author of the 20th Century, Norman Mailer. Propelled by his tremendous ego and contrarian spirit, Mailer’s ceaseless visibility in the public eye lasted 6 decades, during which he had 6 tumultuous marriages, 9 beloved children, 11 bestsellers, 3 arrests, and 2 Pulitzer Prizes. Prophet, hedonist, violent criminal, literary outlaw, and social provocateur, Mailer’s ideas about love, anger, fear, and courage cut to the core of human nature, are more relevant than ever today, and point to a prescription for waking ourselves up, shaking free of society’s expectations, and coming alive as a people.”
The other is Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, also at the Mariemont. Martin Scorsese and others lead us on a review of the classic films produced in the 1940s and ’50s, predominately, by the best British filmmaking partnership of the era. Michael Powell directed and Emeric Pressburger produced and handled some editing and other duties. Among their landmark films are Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, Red Shoes, and more.
Dogfight
[Watch the trailer. Screens August 27 at the Esquire Theatre.]
The Esquire, Mariemont, and Kenwood theaters offer a plethora of special screenings, including monthly presentations by outside film-buff groups. At the rate it’s going, the theaters are going to need to bring back The Movies’ beloved (and deeply missed) wall calendars to help us keep track of their offerings. To keep up more closely with those outside presenters, you should check out Garin Pirnia’s excellent recent Cincinnati Magazine story.
One of this month’s highlights is the debut of Leontine Cinema, a new monthly series focused on cult classics directed by women that’s programmed by Pirnia and Ann Driscoll. It has a great film to start: Nancy Savoca’s 1991 Dogfight, the the story of how several soldiers about to depart for Vietnam in November 1963 choose to “celebrate” by tricking young women to attend an “ugliest girl” contest being held by Marines. One soldier, played by River Phoenix, takes a waitress (Lili Taylor) to the party without telling her the party’s theme or that she’ll be an unwitting contestant. The film ultimately takes some unusual and sensitive turns.
Taylor went on to be one of the standout indie-film actors of the 1990s and has stayed busy; Phoenix died in 1993 at just 23. Brendan Fraser is also featured. Savoca’s subsequent film, 1993’s Household Saints (which also features Taylor), just received a 4K restoration and is being rediscovered as a classic. Perhaps Dogfight will meet the same fate.
Doris Day Films
Since her death in 2019, and especially with the centenary celebration of her life in 2022, Doris Day has been the subject of critical reappraisal. One of the best-known celebrities to have been born and raised in Cincinnati, her films were huge hits in their day, though they came to be dismissed as inconsequential and anodyne once she stopped making them in 1968 and times changed. Her roles, however, are now seen as “progressive” in their portrayal of women. Esquire and Mariemont are presenting two of her more popular films this month, with introduction and commentary by film historian Joe Horine.
- Pillow Talk (1959), starring Day and Rock Hudson, screens at 7:30 p.m. August 5 at the Mariemont; same time August 7 at the Esquire.
- Calamity Jane, 1953, starring Day and Howard Keel: 7:30 p.m. August 12 at the Esquire; same time August 14 at the Mariemont.
Do the Right Thing
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. August 13 at the Esquire Theatre.]
One other notable special screening is of Spike Lee’s landmark 1989 Do the Right Thing, presented by Conveyor Belt Books of Covington. If you’ve never seen it or haven’t seen it in a while, this is a good chance to watch what was voted the 24th best film of all time in the wake of Sight & Sound’s closely followed 2022 poll of history’s best movies.
Woodward Theater Screenings
While the Esquire/Mariemont are busy, so is Over-the-Rhine’s Woodward Theater’s burgeoning offerings of film screenings into its lineup of entertainment events. They’re often first-run offerings of indie films that may well never play Cincinnati otherwise. With its powerful sound system, the venue is especially receptive to music films, especially filmed concerts.
In fact, Woodward’s first film of August (8/5) is exactly that, a repeat performance of Okonokos, a new 4K restoration of an exciting 2006 film that captured My Morning Jacket playing two nights at San Francisco’s Fillmore. The playlist is heavy on selections from two albums of that era, It Still Moves and Okonokos, which each received four stars from AllMusic.com.
We Grown Now, the August 19 offering, is being given a second chance by the Woodward. It was released by Sony Pictures Classics last April but didn’t generate much demand—I believe it played the Esquire or Mariemont for a week. Written, directed, and produced by Minhal Baig, it follows two adolescents, Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), growing up in Chicago’s tough Cabrini Green housing complex in the early 1990s. Some top reviewers felt it had flaws but also powerful strengths. Amy Nicholson, then of The Washington Post (she now writes for The New York Times), described one of those strengths so beautifully that it makes me really want to see the film. Perhaps you will, too: “Cinematographer Pat Scola has a great eye. At least half a dozen shots are flat-out fantastic, and we visually pick up on everything we need to know about Malik’s roots in the building by the fact that his grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson) managed to drill dozens of framed family portraits into their apartment’s cinder block walls. The lens casts such a warm glow over everything that a close-up of a heap of pencil shavings could practically start a fire. All the while, the score’s violins command attention, at first frolicking like gulls that just swooped in from Lake Michigan, then doing their utmost to add emotional oomph to a slender plot.”
The new documentary Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision looks at the late, great guitarist’s decision to build a Manhattan recording studio that could live up to his high sonic standards. He did that, but died just after it opened in 1970. It plays August 26. The jimihendrix.com website describes the film on its website: “Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision recounts the creation of the studio, rising from the rubble of a bankrupt Manhattan nightclub to becoming a state-of-the-art recording facility inspired by Hendrix’s desire for a permanent studio. Electric Lady Studios was the first-ever artist-owned commercial recording studio. Hendrix had first envisioned creating an experiential nightclub. He was inspired by the short-lived Greenwich Village nightspot Cerebrum, whose patrons donned flowing robes and were inundated by flashing lights, spectral images and swirling sound. Hendrix so enjoyed the Cerebrum experience that he asked its architect John Storyk to work with him and his manager Michael Jeffery.”
The Good Half, screening August 27, is a comedy/drama directed by Robert Schwartzman, son of actress Talia Shire and nephew of Francis Ford Coppola. In the film, Renn Wheeland (Nick Jonas) comes home to Cleveland for his mother’s funeral and finds himself facing his past relationships, beginning new ones, and confronting his grief.
And, finally, a film playing the Woodward at the beginning of September has been building an underground reputation as being so bizarre you have to see it to believe it. It’s called Hundreds of Beavers and it’s about a 19th-Century applejack salesman who, through various plot turns, needs to become North America’s premier fur trapper in order to win the hand of the woman he loves. That means chasing after hundreds of beavers. Playing those critters are adults in costumes, though the film also uses animation techniques and special effects. Directed and co-written by Mike Cheslik, it’s meant to be comic and a tribute to slapstick and has been getting excellent reviews.
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