AI, Dracula, and Freebird, Oh My…

August was sedate compared to July, which isn’t hard because July was a jam-packed month. Still, there were gems to be found, and here they are, from Worst To Best. Well, more like, from Least Best to Best, and since I had trouble deciding which movie deserved the Best slot, I took the easy way out and made it a tie. All right, here we go (Click on the images for the full reviews)…

Heart of Stone

Gal Gadot’s new Netflix film is modeled after, believe it or not, Octopussy, and also suspiciously like Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One because it’s all about protecting the world from The Heart, a mysterious AI that can control everything in the world. Since Heart came out a couple of months after Dead Reckoning, are the plot similarities a coincidence, or…? Who really knows, but Gal Gadot puts in a competent performance and the ending hints at a sequel.

The Last Voyage Of the Demeter

Anyone who has read Dracula will no doubt remember the six-or-so pages devoted to the Demeter, the ship that brought the title character to England. We know these characters are doomed. We know Dracula makes it to England. What happens in between, though, is mostly a mystery. This movie does retcon the Dracula canon a little bit, it’s a little bit predictable, and it doesn’t quite end the way the novel tells it, plus Dracula looks a little bit like Gollum and Nosferatu, but it’s not entirely bad, either.

Jules

The first of two Bleecker Street films I saw in August, Jules is all about Milton, an older gentleman who lives in a small town in Pennsylvania. His life is unfailingly predictable until an alien crash-lands in his backyard, and after that he builds an unlikely community with Sandy and Joyce, two of his fellow seniors who weren’t exactly fond of him before. The three of them not only get to know each other better, but also piece together what Jules is doing on Planet Earth. They never learn everything because Jules isn’t exactly a talkative fella, but it’s all good. Oh, and Joyce may just serenade everyone with her rendition of “Freebird” if things ever get awkward.

Golda

Bleecker Street has really stepped up their game lately, and Golda is the second film they released this month. Oh boy howdy, it is excellent. Starring Helen Mirren and Liev Schreiber, it focuses on the Yom Kippur War, which happened fifty years ago as of October and is still a touchy subject for certain people on both sides. Helen Mirren is a tour-de-force as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and very much deserves an Oscar nod for her performance.

The Hiding Place

Just as excellent as Golda, The Hiding Place is a filmed play starring Nan Gurley, Carrie Tillis and John Schuck and gives an overview of the experiences of Corrie ten Boom and her family during the Second World War. While I wish the film had allowed the play to speak on its own terms more in regards to audience focus, it’s a powerful new adaptation of Tante Corrie’s story, setting its rhythm by the ticking of a clock. The Hiding Place was commissioned in honor of Jeannette Clift, who played Corrie ten Boom in the 1971 film of the same name and who passed away in 2017.

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What films have you seen this month? Did we see the same ones? Feel free to leave a comment below! Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you on Tuesday for another review. Trust me, you won’t want to miss this one…

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