Outside the multiplex: the best smaller films to see in the US this summer
There’s enough genuine warmth radiating from San Francisco-set Sundance breakout The Last Black Man in San Francisco to counter any potentially underwhelming weather this summer. Both a melancholic ode to a city transformed by gentrification as well as a tribute to a real-life friendship, the Kickstarter-born project is told through an ultra-stylised lens, lush and poetic despite the harsh truths at its core. It’s a tad twee at times but inarguably persuasive in its announcement of major talent in both director Joe Talbot and his real-life best friend Jimmie Fails, an untrained actor who makes for a charming lead. US release: 7 June (UK release: tbc)
The Dead Don’t Die
After he lent his unusual, unhurried style to the vampire genre in 2013’s alluring Only Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch has decided to move on to zombies in a far more accessible, if rather less well-received new comedy. Opening this year’s Cannes film festival, The Dead Don’t Die takes a starry cast, some of whom are Jarmusch regulars (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop, newly inducted Paterson lead Adam Driver) and some of whom are freshmen (Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, Danny Glover), and throws them into a familiar, yet still funny, small town set-up. It might not be one of his best but it remains a sharp enough alternative to the braindead standard set by the zombie genre. US release: 14 June (UK release: 12 July)
Maiden
In this inspiring documentary, we meet Tracy Edwards, a British woman recounting a youth filled with inertia, rebellion and ultimately glass ceilingsmashing success. In 1989 she led the first ever all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Race, a gruelling nine-month sailing competition that would test them all to their very limits as well as challenge a male-dominated subculture that was willing them to fail. Director Alex Holmes, whose previous work includes a 2014 Lance Armstrong doc, has assembled a rousing, prescient film about a woman who refused to let men dictate what she should or shouldn’t do with her life. US release: 28 June (UK release: out now on digital)
Three Peaks
Arriving even further under the radar than the other films on this list, writer-director Jan Zabeil’s chill
ing domestic drama Three Peaks made its way around the festival circuit two years ago but is only receiving a very muted release now. It’s a disturbing three-hander set during a remote vacation which sees tensions arise as a man questions his place as the boyfriend of a mother, played by Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo, whose son can’t decide whether to embrace or expel him. Spiky and unpredictable, it’s a film that increasingly plays out like a horror, one that will prove even more terrifying for certain family dynamics. US release: 28 June (UK release: tbc)
Midsommar
Last summer, writer-director Ari Aster scored a sleeper smash with debut Hereditary, a horribly convincing drama about grief that transformed into a slightly less convincing horror about cutting one’s head off. For his follow-up, he’s headed to Sweden for what looks like a Wicker Man-esque tale of a group of millennials who find something far scarier than maypoledancing when they visit a folksy festival that soon turns into something more ferocious. The trailer promises the unusual sight of horrors unfolding in the light of day and the much-anticipated delight of the wonderful Florence Pugh finally getting a worthy post-Lady Macbeth role. US release: 5 July (UK release: 5 July)
The Art of Self-Defense
After an Oscar nomination for his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg was thrust into franchise film-making, headlining the Now You See Me films, voicing the lead in the animated Rio adventures and playing the villain in the execrable Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In the last year, one can sense the actor taking a conscious step away with such fare, preferring the festival circuit over the multiplex with the offbeat Cannes horror Vivarium, Torontopremiering comedy The Hummingbird Project and SXSW audience hit The Art of Self-Defense. It’s the leftfield tale of a mousy man finding himself through karate after being attacked, and while it does lean on an over-abundance of quirk at times, it has Eisenberg comfortably back in his wheelhouse. US release: 12 July (UK release: tbc)
The Farewell
One of the most critically adored films from this year’s Sundance film festival, writer-director Lulu Wang’s semiautobiographical family drama The Farewell has all the makings of an arthouse summer breakout. Based on an episode of This American Life, the plot follows a young woman, played by a revelatory Awkwafina, who must travel to visit her extended family in China after finding out her grandmother has terminal lung cancer. The twist is that her grandmother doesn’t know she’s dying and the family has decided to keep it a secret. There’s an avoidance of farce despite the premise and instead, Wang’s film is filled with gentler comedy while a lingering sadness finally crescendoes during a tearjerker of a climax. It’s a hard film not to fall for. US release: 12 July (UK release: tbc)
Luce
It’s unlikely that the summer will reveal a more compelling performance than that offered up by Kelvin Harrison Jr in Luce, a tough, button-pushing thriller about racial stereotypes that premiered this year at Sundance. The actor, who made a haunting impression in dystopian horror It Comes at Night, stars as a teen living with adopted parents, played by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, whose background as a child soldier in Eritrea comes back to haunt him. It’s an utterly mesmeric turn, filled with crushing vulnerability and insidious menace, in a brutal, dramatically explosive film that challenges preconceptions and leaves us with difficult, troubling questions to consider. US release: 2 August (UK release: tbc)
The Nightingale
In her follow-up to The Babadook, a film that was immediately catapulted to the upper echelons of many a scariest horrors ever list, writer-director Jennifer Kent has decided to abandon the genre that launched her but not the ferocity that underscored her acclaimed debut. In this period thriller, a 21-year-old Irish convict witnesses the murder of her husband and child and vows revenge on the British officer, played by Sam Claflin, responsible. It’s a violent, gruelling journey across the Tasmanian wilderness and while not as tightly focused as her previous film, it
China’s draconian one child policy is explored in harrowing, often overwhelmingly graphic detail in One Child Nation, a powerful, difficult documentary that deservedly won the Grand Jury prize at this year’s Sundance film festival. It’s a story that starts with the film-maker herself, Nanfu Wang, and her experience of being a mother after leaving China to study film in the US. Her newfound role causes her to return home to explore how those who lived through the so-called “population war” remember it and how they have since coped with the devastating after-effects. There are many chilling moments, as interviewees recall the horror of forced late-term abortions, serving as an all-too-prescient reminder of what happens when the state exerts ultimate control over women’s bodies. US release: 9 August (UK release: tbc)
Where’d You Go Bernadette
When a film is shuffled around the release schedule as much as Where’d You Go, Bernadette, it’s usually safe to assume the worst. But with so much going for it, from director Richard Linklater to a cast including Cate Blanchett and Kristen Wiig to the acclaimed source material from author Maria Semple, it would be foolish to discount just yet. The story sees Blanchett playing an intolerant architect who goes missing, leading her daughter to investigate. The trailer has a Secret Life of Walter Mitty remake vibe, which might not necessarily be a good thing but after a few thankless blockbuster roles, at the very least, it’ll be a pleasure to see Blanchett doing a little more. US release: 16 August (UK release: tbc)