CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures (CREDIT: Screenshot)

I saw a bunch of movies in August 2024 that I haven’t released my full thoughts about yet, as it’s been too hot to say too much about any one movie. So I waited until September in the hopes that it would cool down at least a little bit and that I wouldn’t overheat from all this film analysis.

Trap

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Marnie McPhail, Jonathan Langdon, Kid Cudi

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: August 2, 2024 (Theaters)

CREDIT: Lionsgate/Screenshot

Borderlands

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Ariana Greenblatt, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Florian Munteanu, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershon, Haley Bennett, Bobby Lee, Janina Gavankar

Director: Eli Roth

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: August 9, 2024 (Theaters)

CREDIT: 20th Century Studios/Screenshot

Alien: Romulus

Starring: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Daniel Betts

Director: Fede Álvarez

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: August 16, 2024 (Theaters)

CREDIT: Columbia Pictures

It Ends with Us

Starring: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Brandon Sklenar, Isabela Ferrer, Alex Neustaedter, Hasan Minhaj, Amy Morton, Kevin McKidd

Director: Justin Baldoni

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: August 9, 2024 (Theaters)

CREDIT: Carlos Somonte/Amazon MGM Studios

Blink Twice

Starring: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, Adria Arjona, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Liz Caribel, Levon Hawke, Trew Mullen, Geena Davis, Kyle MacLachlan

Director: Zoë Kravitz

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: August 23, 2024 (Theaters)

CREDIT: Magenta Light Studios/Screenshot

Strange Darling

Starring: Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Barbara Hershey, Ed Begley Jr.

Director: JT Mollner

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: August 23, 2024 (Theaters)

CREDIT: Sony Pictures Classics/Screenshot

Between the Temples

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly de Leon, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel, Madeline Weinstein, Matthew Shear

Director: Nathan Silver

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: August 23, 2024 (Theaters)

I kicked off the Dog Day Month with my good buddy M. Night as I got myself caught up in his Trap. The trailer made it seem like Josh Hartnett was going to be a bad guy, but I thought there might be a twist revealing that he wasn’t that bad a guy. Instead, I guess the twist was that he was a fun guy.* (*-Not a mushroom pun.)

Then I went on vacation, but I came right back in time to see Borderlands, which got famously terrible reviews. I on the other hand found it to be rather innocuous, which was kind of a relief and rather refreshing. Also, I chuckled here and there. I might even re-watch the trailer, since it has a pretty great ELO song. (Sure, I could just listen to the song on its own, but it’s not the same.)

I was a little wary going into Alien: Romulus, since I enjoyed Prometheus, and I LUVED Covenant, and I was worried that this was going to pull too far away from that direction and get back to basics, or some other franchise-resetting cliché. But then it turned out that it was a kind of a love letter to pretty much every Alien movie that had come before it, no matter how embraced or despised. I can dig it!

As for It Ends with Us, my understanding of how particular characters would behave was a little reversed based on what I’d heard secondhand about the source material. Sometimes you have to make mental adjustments when you finally encounter something that’s been hanging out in the ether! Anyway, this was quite a brightly lit movie considering how much it’s about surviving abuse. Meanwhile, Jenny Slate proved to be quite versatile.

Blink Twice has one of those endings that makes you go, “So how long has this all been going on?” And that’s the sort of thought that prompts me to have an existential freakout, as it’s a similar question to “What caused the beginning of existence?” Which of course just begs the question “And what caused that cause?”

Strange Darling is the type of indie thriller that promises to reinvent the wheel but actually starts off rather insufferably. It won me back a bit by the end by bouncing around in time and revealing its full hand, but I was mostly interested in watching Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hersey eat breakfast and talk about Sasquatches.

I decided to go see Between the Temples because of the promise of Robert Smigel playing a rabbi. But somehow I hadn’t even noticed Carol Kane in the trailer! I guess I wasn’t paying close attention, because she surely must have been featured quite prominently. Anyway, Jason Schwartzman stars as a guy who helps people sing and get bar and bat mitzvahed, while Kane plays someone who wants a late-in-life bat mitzvah. At this moment, I feel compelled to say (though YMMV): everyone needs a gimmick!

Grades:
Trap: 3 Secret Exits out of 4 Featured Artists
Borderlands: TI (Totally Innocuous)
Alien: Romulus: 10 Callbacks out of 14 Rebirths
It Ends with Us: It Gets Recursive with Them
Blink Twice: 11 Blinks out of 19 Shots
Strange Darling: Don’t Forget the Syrup!
Between the Temples: Permanent Dilemma