Tuesday Releases: Book Club, Tag, & Upgrade

August 28, 2018 / Leave a Comment

AUGUST 28TH, 2018

TAG (2018)

Official Synopsis: For one month every year, five highly competitive friends hit the ground running in a no-holds-barred game of tag they’ve been playing since the first grade–risking their necks, their jobs and their relationships to take each other down with the battle cry “You’re It!” This year, the game coincides with the wedding of their only undefeated player, which should finally make him an easy target. But he knows they’re coming… and he’s ready. Based on a true story, “Tag” shows how far some guys will go to be the last man standing.

TV SPOTLIGHT

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE: SEASON FIVE (2017-2018)

Official Synopsis: Jake and Rosa adjust to life in jail before the Nine-Nine are able to bust Melanie Hawkins when Holt is forced to make a deal with local mobster Seamus Murphy. After their release, Jake realizes he’s not ready to be back out in the field right away and Rosa breaks up with Adrian. During the fifth annual Halloween heist, Jake proposes to Amy and they get engaged. On a trip to Los Angeles for the funeral of the Nine-Nine’s previous captain, Holt learns he’s in the running to become the new police commissioner and the crew vows to help him deal with Murphy. Rosa comes out as bisexual. Gina returns to the Nine-Nine after spending months on maternity leave. Though the crew successfully finds a loophole that allows Holt to keep up his deal with Murphy without jeopardizing his moral code, Murphy finds out about their ruse and threatens Kevin’s life.

Kevin is forced to remain in a safe house with Jake for two months to avoid detection from Murphy. After the Nine-Nine successfully locates Murphy’s hideout, Kevin takes down Murphy and the mobster and his men are successfully apprehended. Charles attempts to run his own food truck business. Amy passes the Sergeant’s Exam. After their wedding plans fall apart from a bomb threat, Jake and Amy get married outside of the precinct. The season ends at the after-party of their wedding where the squad is unsure whether Holt won the Commissioner title or not.

CRITERION CORNER

MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (1968)

Official Synopsis: This film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is the most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) passes his days wandering Havana in idle reflection, his amorous entanglements and political ambivalence gradually giving way to a mounting sense of alienation. With this adaptation of an innovative novel by Edmundo Desnoes, Gutiérrez Alea developed a cinematic style as radical as the times he was chronicling, creating a collage of vivid impressions through the use of experimental editing techniques, archival material, and spontaneously shot street scenes. Intimate and densely layered, Memories of Underdevelopment provides an indictment of its protagonist’s disengagement and an extraordinary glimpse of life in postrevolutionary Cuba.

Memories of Underdevelopment was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna in association with the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), and funded by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.

Disc features include:

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New interviews with film critics B. Ruby Rich and José Antonio Évora
New interview with novelist and screenwriter Edmundo Desnoes
Titón: From Havana to “Guantanamera,” a 2008 feature-length documentary on director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s life and career
Segment from a 1989 audio interview with Gutiérrez Alea
Segments from 2017 interviews with actor Daisy Granados and editor Nelson Rodríguez from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Visual History Program collection
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
Plus: An essay by author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

New cover by Danijel Žeželj

HIGHLIGHT RELEASES OF THE WEEK

AMERICAN ANIMALS (2018)

Official Synopsis: The unbelievable but true story of four young men who brazenly attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in US history. Determined to live lives that are out of the ordinary, they formulate a daring plan for the perfect robbery, only to discover that the plan has taken on a life of its own.

BOOK CLUB (2018)

Official Synopsis: Diane (Diane Keaton) is recently widowed after 40 years of marriage. Vivian (Jane Fonda) enjoys her men with no strings attached. Sharon (Candice Bergen) is still working through a decades-old divorce. Carol’s (Mary Steenburgen) marriage is in a slump after 35 years. Four lifelong friends’ lives are turned upside down to hilarious ends when their book club tackles the infamous Fifty Shades of Grey. From discovering new romance to rekindling old flames, they inspire each other to make their next chapter the best chapter.

MARY SHELLEY (2018)

Official Synopsis: MARY SHELLEY tells the story of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Elle Fanning) – author of one of the world’s most famous Gothic novels ‘Frankenstein’ – and her fiery, tempestuous relationship with renowned romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth.) The pair are two outsiders constrained by polite society but bound together by a natural chemistry and progressive ideas that are beyond the boundaries of their age and time. Mary and Percy declare their love for each other and much to her family’s horror they run away together, joined by Mary’s half-sister Claire (Bel Powley.) In the midst of growing tension within their relationship during their stay at Lord Byron’s (Tom Sturridge) house at Lake Geneva, the idea of Frankenstein is conceived when a challenge is put to all houseguests to write a ghost story. An incredible character is created, which will loom large in popular culture for centuries to come, but society at the time puts little value in female authors. At the tender age of 18, Mary is forced to challenge these preconceptions, to protect her work and to forge her own identity..

RBG (2018)

Official Synopsis: At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior’s rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG is a revelatory documentary exploring Ginsburg ‘s exceptional life and career from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and co-produced by Storyville Films and CNN Films.

UPGRADE (2018)

Official Synopsis: After his wife is killed during a brutal mugging that also leaves him paralyzed, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall Green, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, PROMETHEUS) is approached by a billionaire inventor with an experimental cure that will “upgrade” his body. The cure – an Artificial Intelligence implant called STEM – gives Grey physical abilities beyond anything experienced and the ability to relentlessly claim vengeance against those who murdered his wife and left him for dead.

WOMAN WALKS AHEAD (2018)

Official Synopsis: Based on true events, WOMAN WALKS AHEAD tells the story of Catherine Weldon (Jessica Chastain), a widowed artist from New York who, in the 1880s, traveled alone to North Dakota to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes). Her arrival at Standing Rock is welcomed with open hostility by a US Army officer (Sam Rockwell), who has stationed troops around the Lakota reservation to undermine Native American claims to the land. As Catherine and Sitting Bull grow closer, and as their friendship-and his life-are threatened by imperious government forces, Catherine must contend with the violence that underlies her position.

TV BOX SETS

LUCIFER: SEASON THREE (2017-2018)

Official Synopsis: Season 3 of the drama series picks up right where the previous season ended: Lucifer (Tom Ellis) wakes up in the middle of the desert with his wings, and later asks Chloe (Lauren German) for help to find out what happened to him. As the season progresses, Lucifer goes to great lengths to figure out who kidnapped him and why, while also helping the LAPD solve cases that include murdered comedians, serial killers, and death in a casino. Meanwhile, Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) tries to adjust to his new life; and Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) discovers that being a bounty hunter might not be enough for her anymore.