From a micro-biography about Anthony Bourdain to “the best ‘Jurassic Park’ movie that isn’t a ‘Jurassic Park’ movie in years,” film critic Richard Roeper has thoughts on movie picks for the week of Aug. 13
Here’s a look at what to watch this week:
“Tony” (in theaters)
Before Anthony Bourdain became a famous, charismatic and beloved chef/globe-trotting adventurer, he was, by his own admission, a teenage jerk and serial liar called Tony. Director Matt Johnson, who helmed the criminally overlooked gem “Blackberry,” delivers one of the most captivating movies of the year with “Tony,” a micro-biography that focuses on the summer of 1975, when Tony (Dominic Sessa) works at a Cape Cod restaurant.
This was a defining period in Bourdain’s life, and “Tony” expertly captures the mid-1970s vibe. Antonio Banderas merits Best Supporting Actor consideration as the restaurateur who becomes a mentor to Bourdain, while Sessa, who was so good in “The Holdovers,” solidifies his standing as one of our best young actors. This is the kind of role Dustin Hoffman or Jack Nicholson would have nailed at the outset of their careers, and yes, Sessa merits the comparison to those two giants of cinema. “Tony” is a raw, wickedly funny, jagged and utterly cool slice of life. It’s not a documentary and no one can say what Bourdain would have thought of it, but it sure has a ring of truth about the man.
Unvarnished, but deeply affectionate truth.
3.5 stars
“The End of Oak Street” (in theaters)
This is the best “Jurassic Park” movie that isn’t a “Jurassic Park” movie in years. Set in 1982, “The End of Oak Street” starts off like a classic Amblin entertainment movie, filled with idyllic images of a block party, kids pedaling their bicycles down the middle of quiet suburban streets and family meals with shows such as “The Love Boat” playing in the background. After a mysterious and terrifying cosmic event transports the neighborhood to prehistoric times, here come the spinosauruses, stegosauruses, triceratopses, ankylosauruses, and coelophyses—and they’re HUNGRY.
It’s all quite ridiculous, of course, and not everything in the screenplay holds together, but “The End of Oak Street” works as a late-summer popcorn thriller that will have you jumping in your seat, as Denise and Greg Platt (Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor) grab any shotgun, knife or sledgehammer in reach to protect their children while they search for a way back home. Hathaway and McGregor are really good at running, and running some more, and director David Robert Mitchell pushes the limits of the PG-13 rating with some chomp-chomp-kill-kill moments that will have you cringing or laughing. With influences from Steven Spielberg to M. Night Shyamalan to Jordan Peele, “The End of Oak Street” is crackling good escapist entertainment.
3.0 stars
“The Brink of War” (in theaters)
Two men who respect but don’t trust each other enter a room carrying the weight of the Cold War and emerge two days later with the beginnings of a breakthrough that changed history. That’s the setup for “The Brink of War,” a sharp, absorbing political drama about the 1986 Reykjavik summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Jeff Daniels doesn’t look like Reagan, nor does he quite have the voice down, but it’s a deeply effective performance. Daniels nails the Gipper’s physical tics and folksy, though sometimes meandering essence. As Secretary of State George Shultz (a sturdy J.K. Simmons) notes, there’s immense value in opponents underestimating you.
Director Michael Russell Gunn opens the film with a hook, as Reagan laments to Shultz: “I failed…” in his mission to reach impactful agreements with Gorbachev, played magnificently by Jared Harris. Much of the drama unfolds inside the historic Höfði House in Iceland where the two leaders alternate between polite banter and heated sparring over human rights, gulags and American racism. (“The Brink of War” was filmed in the very house where the summit took place, which adds a cool, authentic texture to the tight quarters.)
At times, the script veers into a bit of a history lesson, with characters occasionally stating the obvious for the audience’s benefit. But Simmons makes Shultz the unsung hero of the room, keeping things on the rails when tempers flare. Magdalena Górka’s cinematography of Iceland’s forbidding landscapes provides a nice visual breather from the claustrophobic tension.
While history logged the Reykjavik summit as a failure in 1986, it paved the way for a historic arms treaty just 14 months later. “The Brink of War” is a compelling reminder that the world can change when two enemies simply choose to keep the talks going.
3.0 stars
Richard Roeper has reviewed films and TV series for more than 25 years, most notably with the Chicago Sun-Times and on the nationally syndicated “Ebert & Roeper.” Roeper is an entertainment and culture contributor to NBC 5 Chicago. He is the host of the globally popular “The Movie of Your Life” podcast, and he writes reviews for RogerEbert.com.
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