From the touching Amy to Woody Allen’s cross-generational love-and-crime story Irrational Man, July is more than basking in the Sun. Here are this month’s best movie releases.
Amy
Director: Asif Kapadia
Starring: Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson, Yasiin Bey, Pete Doherty, Tony Bennett, Mitch Winehouse
Opens July 1st
From director Asif Kapadia, Amy tells the story of six-time Grammy-winner Amy Winehouse – in her own words. Featuring extensive unseen archive footage and previously unheard tracks, Amy is a revealing and touching tribute to one of the most unique voices of her generation. Irreplaceable, unforgettable and larger-than-life, Amy does not – nor could a documentary ever – do the singer justice, but it comes close to perfectly remembering her.
Tangerine
Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O’Hagan, James Ransone
Opens July 10th
One of this year’s Sundance Film Festival breakout successes, Tangerine, is compelling in many ways: the first Sundance film to be shot almost entirely on an iPhone 5S, Tangerine transcends its small budget. The story, which focuses on one night in the rocky life of a Los Angeles trans prostitute who, after being released from jail, is on the hunt for her pimp/boyfriend and the female he cheated on her with. Tangerine is full of propulsive energy, purpose and urgency, and color tones and compositions that do not hint at this being a movie shot on a smartphone. But while the smartphone thing might be a bit of a gimmick, the movie is far from it.
Irrational Man
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley
Opens July 17th
With Irrational Man, Woody Allen is back to the same crime-and-punishment themes he tackled with movies such as 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. This time, muse Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix – who plays a disillusioned small town college philosophy professor going through a deep existential crisis – star as lovers and, quite literally, partners in crime. Irrational Man is Woody back in form, serving a movie that punches, surprises and fascinates.
The Look of Silence
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Opens July 17th
Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing was a slow-burning, powerful masterpiece. The movie’s successor, The Look of Silence is equally ambitious, if more personal. Oppenheimer has made great strides, through these two major cinematic projects, in documenting the fallout from the Indonesian genocide. The Look of Silence is about a family of survivors who found out who killed their son, and documents their humane confrontation with the killer. Speaking to us last year, Oppenheimer said, “The Look of Silence gives you a haunted feeling of what it would be like to be an ordinary person… and will take the debate inside Indonesia to a whole new level.”
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Starring: Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Michael Angarano, Tye Sheridan, Thomas Mann, Keir Gilchrist, Johnny Simmons, Olivia Thirlby
Opens July 17th
IFC Film’s adaptation of the seminal psychological experiment conducted in the early 70s doesn’t hold back: a chilling procedural recreation of the experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971 investigating the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard, the movie is crude, brutal and complex, and despite its peachy-keen denouement, difficult to stomach from today’s perspective.