‘Marcel the Shell With Shoes On’ (Aug. 23)
What began as a simple stop-motion animation short on YouTube in 2010 became a viral sensation and then, in 2022, this charming feature film. In it, the director Dean Fleischer Camp reprises his role as the human interviewer of Marcel, an inch-long hermit crab shell, assisting him on a journey to find his family. Isabella Rossellini (pitch perfect) joins the cast as his grandmother. The screenplay, by Camp, Nick Pale and Jenny Slate (who voices Marcel), achieves bespoke whimsy without tipping into self-congratulatory twee, thanks in no small part to Slate’s energetic performance, which combines childlike wonder and no-nonsense practicality with a healthy dose of her comic timing.
‘Burn After Reading’ (Aug. 31)
Never ones for repeating themselves, the Coen Brothers followed up their Oscar-winning existentialist western “No Country For Old Men” with this wild, uproariously funny slapstick comedy. John Malkovich stars as Osborne Cox, a recently unemployed C.I.A. analyst, whose attempt to skewer his bosses with a tell-all backfires broadly, pulling in a philandering lawman (George Clooney), Cox’s fed-up wife (Tilda Swinton), and two utterly brainless gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). The Coens smoothly replicate the seemingly impossible blend of hyper-smart and dopey-dumb comedy that made “Raising Arizona” and “The Big Lebowski” so memorable and coax gloriously goofy performances out of their movie-star cast.
‘Liar Liar’ (Aug. 31)
The best of the high-concept comedies of the ’90s, this 1997 smash re-teamed Jim Carrey with Tom Shadyac, who directed Carrey’s breakthrough feature, “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” three years earlier. The gimmick is simple: Carrey is Fletcher Reede, a fast-talking divorce lawyer whose son grows so weary of his father’s constant lies that he wishes on his birthday candles that his dad must spend an entire day telling only the truth. It somehow works, not only causing Reede immediate professional problems (Jennifer Tilly is a scream as his cheerfully amoral client) but also shipwrecking even the simplest everyday interactions. The touchy-feely ending is a little much, but there are plenty of laughs, up to and including the especially funny end-credits outtakes.
‘Miami Vice’ (Aug. 31)
Michael Mann played a big part in defining ’80s cool (and redefining ’80s television) with the hit cop series “Miami Vice,” for which he was an executive producer and made many of the key decisions about its look and feel. He never wrote or directed any of its episodes, though he does both for this 2006 film adaptation, which is informed as much by his films (“Heat,” “Thief” and “Collateral,” especially) as by the original show. Critics complained about the hard-to-follow plot and murkily motivated characters, but that is all beside the point — it’s a film that’s all about vibes and style, parachuting viewers into its relentless action and daring them to keep up. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx smolder as Miami cops Crockett and Tubbs; Gong Li adds considerable heat as Crockett’s romantic interest.
‘The Nutty Professor’ / ‘The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps’ (Aug. 31)
Stream ‘The Nutty Professor’ here and ‘The Nutty Professor II’ here.
The “Liar Liar” director, Tom Shadyac, also directed Eddie Murphy’s 1996 remake of the 1963 Jerry Lewis comedy classic “The Nutty Professor,” which proved a potent comeback vehicle for Murphy after a series of critical and commercial disappointments. In playing both the kindhearted Professor Sherman Klump and Buddy Love, his smooth-talking but obnoxious alter ego who emerges when Klump swallows an experimental weight-loss potion, Murphy was able to fill in more shades of his comic persona. He also showed his considerable versatility in playing five additional characters, including most of Sherman’s family. The family scenes, the comic highlights of the picture, were expanded for the 2000 sequel “The Klumps,” which can’t quite match the laughs or pathos of the original film but offers plenty of pleasures nonetheless.
Read More: Stream These 12 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in August
