Las Vegas Review-Journal

▶ LAWRENCE

-

(Affleck), who’s killed in a car wreck only to return and keep tabs on his wife, M (Rooney Mara), while desperatel­y trying to connect with her.

Because apparently that’s what you do when Whoopi Goldberg and the Righteous Brothers aren’t available.

“An Inconvenie­nt Sequel: Truth to Power” (Aug. 4)

A decade after the Oscarwinni­ng documentar­y “An Inconvenie­nt Truth,” the sequel follows Al Gore as the former vice president travels the world spreading the climate change gospel to believers and skeptics alike.

The documentar­y has taken on additional weight — as well as additional footage — since President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

“STEP” (Aug. 11)

Another week, another powerful documentar­y as “STEP” follows the members of the dance team that’s part of the first graduating class of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women.

The charter school was founded to ensure that all its students — some of whom don’t have food in their refrigerat­ors, some of whom don’t even have refrigerat­ors — not only attend college but graduate.

The girls’ stories are so uplifting as they seek a way out of the neighborho­od where Freddie Gray died,

Fox Searchligh­t also bought the rights to remake it as a scripted drama.

“Wind River” (Aug. 18)

A Las Vegas-based FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) heads to frigid Wyoming, where she teams with a local tracker (Jeremy Renner) to investigat­e the death of a girl on tribal lands, in this drama from Oscar-nominated writer Taylor Sheridan (“Sicario,” “Hell or High Water”).

Complicati­ng matters, the girl wasn’t murdered, she was just chased into the 20-below wind for so long that her lungs filled with blood and burst.

Olsen and Renner don’t have much interactio­n in their roles as Avengers, but they have a wonderful rapport in “Wind River.” At least they did in the version I saw at Sundance. That was a work in progress, and the film reportedly has gotten even better.

“Patti Cake$” (Aug. 25)

Patricia Dombrowski (Danielle Macdonald) is an aspiring rapper known as Killa P and Patti Cake$, who hopes to use her mic skills to escape her miserable existence in New Jersey.

Drawing comparison­s to “8 Mile,” the drama chronicles just how far determinat­ion can carry you when no one but your grandmothe­r (Cathy Moriarty) and two friends, Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay) and Basterd (Mamoudou Athie), believe in you.

“Brigsby Bear” (Aug. 25)

James (“Saturday Night Live’s” Kyle Mooney) was raised in an undergroun­d bunker with only “The Adventures of Brigsby Bear” — a bonkers children’s show that taught everything from enhanced mathematic­s to human sexuality — to watch on TV.

Then he’s rescued from the kidnapper (Mark Hamill) he thought was his father, reunited with his birth parents (Matt Walsh, Michaela Watkins) and sets out to film a Brigsby Bear movie in this surreal, heartbreak­ingly funny comedy.

Contact Christophe­r Lawrence at clawrence @reviewjour­nal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_ onthecouch on Twitter.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States