Your Weekend Preview: What To See (And What To Skip) In The Theatres

By Original-Cin Staff

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw (Rating: B-) is a spin-off — or is that a spin-out? — of the spies and cars franchise, with the expected globe-hopping chases, comic-book fights, and macho banter. Dwayne Johnson, whose likeability is the main redeeming feature here, plays agent Luke Hobbs, with Jason Statham as former rival Decker Shaw, who team up to fight bad guy, Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). The movie aside, we can definitely vouch for the entertainment value of Jim Slotek’s review.

Palestinian-set, Israeli-backed comedy, Tel Aviv on Fire (Rating: B) follows an aspiring writer on a schlocky, popular Palestinian soap opera, who gets his story ideas from an overbearing Israeli checkpoint guard. Precariously glib as that sounds, reviewer Liam Lacey says it mostly works: The focus on Israeli-Palestinian shared culture is novel, and the send-up of the soap opera style is fun even in translation. For another dose of intercultural understanding, there’s the well-meaning if unsurprising doc, Free Trip to Egypt (Rating: B-) in which an Egyptian-Canadian entrepreneur takes seven conservative Americans on a tour of Egypt to meet real-life Muslims.

David Crosby: Remember My Name (Rating: B+) is a documentary about the mellow-voiced singer/songwriter of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame. Our reviewer Karen Gordon says this doc, in which Crosby is interviewed by Cameron Crowe, is an unflinching look at Crosby’s personal and professional failures which still finding “grace notes in the world.”

For dessert, we have Honeyland (Rating: A), an award-winning documentary which follows the daily life of a middle-aged Macedonian wild honey gatherer, the last of her kind, and what happens when a raucous Turkish family moves in next door. Reviewer Liam Lacey describes this exceptionally beautiful is a “real life fable” about humans and their relationship to the environment.

Have a great weekend.