Keep an eye out for these films in the Hamptons this week.
Insidious: Chapter 2
No Friday the 13th would be complete without the release of a new bone chiller, and Insidious 2 promises to freeze the spine and raise the goose pimples with a broad, if by now familiar, menu of horror movie tricks. How about the sinister baby stuff that moves on its own? Got it. Accompanied by the sound of a music box playing “row, row, row your boat”—a sweet song made perverse by the freaky context? Got it. An old house with a seeming endless supply of steam-punk paraphernalia that could give Boris Karloff the creeps? Got that, too! Curiously, a prominent feature of the trailer, if not the film, is the old recording of Tiny Tim singing “Tiptoe Through The Tulips,” which may scare some younger people; older audience members will probably just be distracted by hazy memories of the whimsical Mr. Tim with his dark tresses and mincing ukulele strumming. Not scary!
GMO OMG
More scary than any horror movie, according to some, is the food we Americans eat every day. Genetically modified, processed beyond recognition, designed to appeal to our basest instincts, and frequently leading to obesity and ill-health, the American diet is difficult to escape. Most people, even if they recognize the problem, simply don’t have the time to explore other options—especially when those options are hard to track down and prohibitively expensive. The documentary GMO OMG chronicles one family’s attempt to break free of the existing food system—to see if it’s possible to get what you need without supporting a cynical and profit-driven food industry.
And While We Were Here
With a title like And While We Were Here, you can only expect a film to start in media res, which in this case finds writer Jane (Kate Bosworth) with her concert violinist husband Leonard (Iddo Goldberg) in a small seaside village in Italy. She’s working on her grandmother’s memoir, he’s in town to play a concert, but Jane is restless: she and her husband don’t talk enough. So when she meets the twenty-something Caleb (Jamie Blackley), who listens to her and follows her around like a puppy, well, let’s just say they get carried away by the romance of the scenery. It’s one of the minor clichés of popular culture that serious musicians, if they happen to be men, are wrapped up in their work and are emotionally stunted. Similarly, popular culture would have it that women writers are in touch with their feelings and hungry for experience. Let’s hope this film isn’t as clichéd as it would appear from the outside.
