Starring: Alex Zhang Hungtai, Akiko Masuda
Best Movies of 2019 – The New Yorker
“Transcendently inventive.” – Richard Brody
August at Akiko’s is a mystical film that lives in the seams between dream, reality, and memory with a time-signature all its own. Armed with just his suitcase and a sax, cosmopolitan musician Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches, Last Lizard) returns home to the Big Island of Hawai‘i having been away for nearly a decade. Amidst possessed sax solos and brooding strolls, Alex stumbles upon a Buddhist bed and breakfast run by a woman named Akiko (Akiko Masuda). Hungtai’s wild sax and Akiko’s buddhist bells form the base for a rich soundtrack that wraps around the audience like a sonic web surrounding the unexpected new friendship.
Though Yogi took a very visceral and intuitive approach to the production of August at Akiko’s, the film is deeply informed by his sustained meditations on cinema as cultural memory and the Hollywood erasure of the local Hawaiian voice. However, as an intervention into cinematic experience, August at Akiko’s does not set itself in opposition, but rather sets itself apart. There is a quest for healing love, a quest to make sense of losses and transitions, big and small, manmade and earth-made, that courses through the film. August at Akiko’s offers up not just a visual product but a porous skin through which we may, if we allow ourselves to, get a tingly feeling as we experience the expansive flow of Big Island time.
Starring: Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett, Curtis Armstrong, Erica Hubbard
Akeelah Anderson is a precocious 11-year-old girl from south Los Angeles with a gift for words. Despite the objections of her mother Tanya, Akeelah enters various spelling contests, for which she is tutored by the forthright Dr. Larabee; her principal Mr. Welch and the proud residents of her neighborhood. Akeelah’s aptitude earns her an opportunity to compete for a spot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee and in turn unites her neighbors who witness the courage and inspiration of one amazing little girl.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn
Adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, The African Queen stars Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut, the slovenly, gin-swilling captain of a tramp steamer called the African Queen, which ships supplies to small East African villages during World War I. Katharine Hepburn plays Rose Sayer, the maiden-lady sister of a prim British missionary (Robert Morley). When invading Germans kill the missionary and level the village, Allnut offers to take Rose back to civilization.
Starring: Shay Walker, Tommie Lynn Milazzo, Stephanie Lynn Wilson
The classic story of Peter Pan is wildly reimagined in this ragtag epic from Benh Zeitlin, director of Beasts of the Southern Wild. Lost on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued, Wendy must fight to save her family, her freedom, and the joyous spirit of youth from the deadly peril of growing up.
Accessibility: Closed Captions, Assisted Listening, Descriptive Audio
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Bill Nighy, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, Josh O’Connor
Jane Austen’s beloved comedy about finding your equal and earning your happy ending, is reimagined in this delicious new film adaptation of Emma. Handsome, clever, and rich, Emma Woodhouse is a restless queen bee without rivals in her sleepy little town. In this glittering satire of social class and the pain of growing up, Emma must adventure through misguided matches and romantic missteps to find the love that has been there all along.
Accessibility: Closed Captions, Assisted Listening
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson
A powerful and thought-provoking true story, Just Mercy follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Jordan) and his history-making battle for justice. After graduating from Harvard, Bryan had his pick of lucrative jobs. Instead, he heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or who were not afforded proper representation, with the support of local advocate Eva Ansley (Larson). One of his first, and most incendiary, cases is that of Walter McMillian (Foxx), who, in 1987, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and the fact that the only testimony against him came from a criminal with a motive to lie. In the years that follow, Bryan becomes embroiled in a labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt and unabashed racism as he fights for Walter, and others like him, with the odds-and the system-stacked against them.
Starring: Robert Forster, Fiona Lewis, Ray Sharkey
‘Uncle’ Bill Lustig stops by The Deuce for yet another April, this time to take us to the Liberty Theatre for a very special tribute to the late Bob Forster with STUNTS!
Robert Forster is Glen Wilson, a senior stuntman, and you don’t reach his position without thoughtfully and carefully planning your every move. When his younger brother, who is equally careful, somehow dies during the performance of a stunt, he knows that something is wrong. He begins to investigate his brother’s death, and discovers that other stuntmen are dying also. This crime thriller explores the little-known stunt community and the eccentricities of the filmmaking community as Wilson seeks to discover who could be killing his collegaues.
Starring: Gail Neely, Robert Harden, Barry Brenner
Visit 42nd Street’s Cine 42 circa 1987, when The Deuce screens Troma’s SURF NAZIS MUST DIE… the “gnarliest cult-comedy surf action-adventure ever!”
Considered by aficionados to be one of Troma Studios’ best outings, the campy and very weird actioner is set in southern California after the Big One has created a brand new coastline. In the resulting ruin, a cult of crazy neo-Nazi surfers have commandeered the beaches until a brave hero and his portly girlfriend show up to get violent revenge. The film features considerable nudity, violence and sex.
Starring: Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Pamela Gidley
The Deuce Bozos celebrate Valentine’s Day with released-only-on-video CHERRY 2000, the futuroid love story made in 1987 but set in 2017!
In the future, a man travels to the ends of the earth to find that the perfect woman is always under his nose. In this sci-fi adventure, a futuristic bounty hunter goes on a mission to find a robot replicant of a rich man’s short-circuited wife.
When successful businessman Sam Treadwell (David Andrews) finds that his android wife, Cherry model 2000 (Pamela Gidley), has blown a fuse, he hires sexy renegade tracker E. Johnson (Melanie Griffith) to find her exact duplicate. But as their journey to replace his perfect mate leads them into the treacherous and lawless region of The Zone, Treadwell learns the hard way that the perfect woman is made not of computer chips and diodes, but of real flesh and blood!
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Laverne Cox, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, Adam Brody, Jennifer Coolidge
Everyone said Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was a promising young woman… until a tragic event abruptly derailed her future. Now she’s a medical school drop-out, living at home with her worried parents and working at a coffee shop with a concerned boss (Laverne Cox). It seems like she is at a standstill, except for the double life Cassie leads at night.
