Don’t Breathe 2 (In theaters Aug 13)
Stephen Lang returns as Norman Nordstrom, the critically acclaimed villain of Don’t Breathe. Having successfully replaced the daughter he lost to a drunk driver, Nordstrom is raising young Phoenix (Madelyn Grace) when the pair are attacked by thugs determined to steal her. As in chapter one, Nordstrom, along with his loyal Rottweiler, and now with Phoenix, are underestimated by their adversaries. Blinded in an accident, Nordstrom uses sightlessness to his advantage, as well as his past experience in special forces. Produced by Sam Raimi, who famously stated he’s more excited about this sequel than by Evil Dead 2. Count me among those in breathless agreement. (Lisa Miller)
Free Guy (In theaters Aug 13)
Ryan Reynolds plays everyman Guy, this time a scripted character in the video game “Free City.” Without warning, Guy’s evolving AI allows him to go off-script and rediscover Free City, seeing it from the player’s point of view. Guy becomes fully self-aware when he meets game-coder Millie (Jodie Comer). She comes to Free City searching for hidden code in hopes of beating greedy CEO Antoine (Taika Waititi) to it. Millie is astounded to realize virtual creation Guy is also the best guy she knows, while Guy goes gaga for her. Writers Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn script Guy’s awakening to emphasize his dreams of romance. They seem to believe we’ll give them a pass (and we might), because Reynold’s is a funny kind of guy. (Lisa Miller)
The Gang / Three Men to Kill (Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray)
At the end of World War II, “Le Gang” are confronted in a Paris nightclub by drunken GIs who think they own the country because they liberated it. They show the Yanks who’s in charge. The merry band of bank robbers then embark on a crime spree in postwar France (where if the screenplay is true, police were stretched thin). Whimsical music and romance keep this 1977 film by director Jacques Deray lighter in tone than expected. The restored film is paired on a new Blu-ray release with Deray’s 1980 thriller, Three Men to Kill. (David Luhrssen)
Nakom (Corinth Films DVD)
Iddrisu is a Ghanian student with dreams of the future—medical school, maybe even America? But when his father dies suddenly, he travels a day and what feels like a century to his home village and the clay-walled family compound. He finds family problems including disagreements between his father’s two wives and an uncle to whom they are in debt. Many of the villagers resent him for leaving. Although directors Kelly Daniella Norris and T.W. Pittman are American, they filmed in Ghana with a local cast and a believable feel for the place. Jacob Ayanaba shows good emotional range as Iddrisu. (David Luhrssen)
Stone Time Touch (IndiePix DVD)
Canadian filmmaker Garine Torossian grew up with stories of a lost ancestral homeland in Armenia, but when finally visiting the country, only recently free from Soviet dominance, she’s challenged to travel the gap between dreamland and reality. She navigates it well in this imaginative, nearly no-budget film journal of her thoughts, impressions, memories and conversations as glimpses of past and present flicker past. Segments are tinted, treated and scrambled like dream fragments as she encounters people who hold on to fierce hope in the face of many difficulties. (David Luhrssen)
