F9 (In Theaters, June 25)
Though tough to beat the skyscraper-hopping car from Furious 7, here, a car rockets into space. Dom Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) vengeful younger brother (John Cena) arrives plotting to take civilization down. He’s got the family driving skills with fight chops to match. The crew is back to aid Dom in defeating his sibling. They include Dom’s wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), her husband (Paul Walker, resurrected for another performance), Dom’s associates Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), along with villains played by Nathalie Emmanuel, Kurt Russell and Charlize Theron. Are Americans the target audience? Nope, since the franchise is a favorite in China where F9 debuted in May. (Lisa Miller)
The Ice Road (Streaming June 25 on Netflix)
This disaster tale, by writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh, takes a page from television’s “Ice Road Truckers.” Set in Northern Canada, Liam Neeson portrays Mike, an infamous ice road trucker called into action after a remote diamond mine collapses. Mike leads a mission over thawing ice roads to deliver life-saving equipment to the trapped miners. If a massive storm isn’t challenge enough, Mike discovers another, even more ominous threat. Laurence Fishburne and Amber Midthunder appear as fellow truckers caravanning with Mike. Ironically, one character suffers from PTSD, which this film works hard at passing on to viewers, but with this heat wave, I'll take the risk. (Lisa Miller)
Salvador Dali: In Search of Immortality (Film Movement DVD)
In his own words, Salvador Dali sought to rescue painting from “the void of modern art” and the world from the tyranny of the machine. In David Pujol’s documentary, an English-language narrator reads passages from Dali’s diaries, citing early on the hallucinatory images that followed him through life—the ductility of solid objects, the dissolution of time.
The well-paced documentary visits the places of Dali’s life with archival visuals and shifts between narration and discussions by art historians. Long before he ventured to Paris, the Catalonian artist was inspired by early cinema (intimations of the surreal) and studying reproductions of Western masterpieces as well as the discovery of Impressionism and Cubism. Interviews with Dali reveal an original thinker of extravagant self-presentation. He admits to the pride and narcissism that can be discerned in his canvases. (David Luhrssen)
Voyagers (Lionsgate DVD)
In the near future, with ecological disaster looming, 30 children (raised from birth for this purpose) are sent into space under the guidance of one adult (Colin Farrell). They are bound for a distant world that appears Earth-like but they will never arrive. The journey takes 86 years and the planet will be settled by their grandchildren. They are kept calm on the journey by a drug in their diet but 10 years on, when they discover their drug-induced conformity, they rebel.
What ensues is Lord of the Flies in a sterile white setting evoking Stanley Kubrick’s vision of 2001. Along with the question of personality-numbing pharmaceuticals, Voyagers addresses the eternal problem of freedom and responsibility—the careful calibration of restraint that separates civil society from tyranny on one hand and chaos on the other. Allusions to Trump’s populist rabble-rousing are visible. (David Luhrssen)
