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This week's new releases
- David Crosby: Remember My Name proves the musician is no easy rider
- Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is two outrageous hours of planes, Dwaynes and automobiles
- Israeli farce Tel Aviv on Fire offers a cinematic olive branch, of sorts
- Also: Dr. Strange Ryder, or: How I learned to stop worrying and tolerate Paw Patrol
David Crosby: Remember My Name
Handout
- Directed by A.J. Eaton
- Classification: 14A; 95 minutes
Dennis Hopper’s character in Easy Rider was at least partly inspired by sixties rock star David Crosby. But Crosby, as we learn in documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, is no easy rider. Rock-journalist-turned-filmmaker Cameron Crowe does the interviewing, but he barely needs to be there. Crosby never shuts up, and you don’t want him to. (Opens at Toronto’s Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Aug. 2, and in Vancouver and Montreal on Aug. 9)
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Daniel Smith/Universal Pictures/Universal Pictures
- Directed by David Leitch
- Written by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce
- Starring Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Vanessa Kirby and Idris Elba
- Classification PG; 135 minutes
Over the past 18 years, the Fast & Furious series has become increasingly self-aware of its total bonkers-bananas appeal and leaned into the mania while maintaining a sentimental centre that works hard for your emotional investment. Part of director David Leitch’s success is in ripping off his own work. He goes back to his experience on the first John Wick film to bring a distinct, bruising flair to Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw’s hand-to-hand combat. But there is the sense that, this time, the filmmakers cared a little too much about having fun and too little about the Furiousverse’s other mission-critical F-word: family. (Opens Aug. 2)
Tel Aviv on Fire
Patricia Peribáñez/Courtesy of Unobstructed View
- Directed and written by Sameh Zoabi
- Starring Kais Nashef, Lubna Azabal and Yaniv Biton
- Classification PG; 97 minutes
The film is called Tel Aviv on Fire, yet nothing is inflamed. Because Palestinian writer-director Sameh Zoabi’s film is about sympathy and listening to both sides. Kais Nashef stars as a mild-mannered Palestinian flunkie who only through nepotism and bilingual fluency lands a job as a production assistant on a popular Palestinian soap opera. They likely won’t win an Oscar for his good-humoured farce on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but could we interest him in a peace prize? (Opens in Toronto on Aug. 2, and in Montreal on Aug. 9)
Paw Patrol
Courtesy of Spin Master
Film critic Barry Hertz writes that Ready Race Rescue isn’t Paw Patrol’s first big-screen outing – that honour belongs to 2018′s Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups. If the film is anything like the series, it should bring plentiful smiles to every child who watches it. This may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but sometimes you just want, or need, to make your kid unreservedly happy for a few hours. Or 44 minutes. Paw Patrol, as the pups say over and over again, is on a roll. (Opens Aug. 2)
This guide was compiled by Sierra Bein, with reviews by Barry Hertz and Brad Wheeler.
Sierra Bein