Sometimes, you just want a feel-good movie.
That’s the guiding sentiment behind this month’s first pick for under-the-radar moviegoing in the Triangle. Cookie Queens, the maximum-fun documentary opening August 7, spotlights four adorable Girl Scouts—each from a different background and community—as they navigate cookie-selling season and its attendant challenges. The warm-and-fuzzy doc was a hit at this year’s Sundance festival (it also screened locally at Full Frame) where it played the family-friendly daytime matinee slot.
Director Alysa Nahmias sticks to the observational documentary format with her film, which maintains a light tone and has great respect for the nuclear-grade cuteness of its subjects. The film’s trailer is very funny. But the movie also touches on some grown-up issues associated with the Girl Scouts’ annual entrepreneurial blitz. Open questions concerning parenting, beauty standards, and income inequality are raised obliquely—by selection and juxtaposition—and will only register with attentive adult viewers.
Cookie Queens is a good summer movie to keep in mind for kids, visiting relatives, or any situation where you need a safe and agreeable all-ages option. Also, weird bonus trivia: Among the film’s executive producers are Harry and Meghan, the expat Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Meanwhile, from the thoughtful science fiction aisle, the Japanese import Sheep in the Box tells the story of a grieving family who purchase a generative AI replica of their recently deceased seven-year-old son. It’s a robot boy, in other words, designed to look and act like the real thing.
This is a familiar setup for contemporary speculative fiction, but overseas reviews indicate that director Hirokazu Kore-eda does interesting new things with the story premise. There’s no violence or AI doom spiraling, thank the gods, and the film includes some intriguing conjecture on what future machines might consider their family issues.
Director Kore-eda is a deeply humanist filmmaker known especially for stories of families and children. He wrote and directed the beloved 2018 film Shoplifters, about a resilient and loving family with a whole other set of coping mechanisms. Sheep in the Box is playing local theaters in spoken Japanese with English subtitles.
For a different kind of feel-good vibe, keep an eye out for the indie film The Wrong Girls, a stoner comedy that flips the usual script by going with two female leads. Pretty good idea! Alia Shawkat and Kristen Stewart star as a pair of besties on an alkaloid-fueled adventure through Los Angeles. The directorial debut of screenwriter Dylan Meyer—Stewart’s wife, as it happens—this movie has reportedly been a passion project for years.
The film also follows genre tradition by assembling a motley crew of supporting actors, in this case, LaKeith Stanfield, Kate McKinnon, Geena Davis, Tony Hale, and Cate Blanchett. Plus Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani as a pair of telepathic cats. Or something. The plot has to do with an experimental mind-meld drug, a case of mistaken identity, and those cats.
It looks like a lot of fun. There’s something inherently lovable about watching very stoned people deal with escalating crises. It always works out in the end, which suggests the delicate workings of an invisible, benevolent universe. In the movies, anyway.
Quick Picks
The erotic comedy-thriller I Want Your Sex stars Olivia Wilde as a provocative art star who recruits a younger employee (Cooper Hoffman) as her new sexual muse. Also in the cast: Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho. Director Gregg Araki has called the film his “sex-positive love letter to Gen Z.”
An option for older kids, The End of Oak Street is a PG-13 action thriller about a family whose suburban neighborhood is somehow teleported to a dangerous world of prehistoric predators. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor play mom and dad.
Adventurous foodies might dig the indie documentary The Big Cheese, which follows a group of underdog American cheesemongers at the Mondial du Fromage, a prestigious international cheese competition in France.
Horror fans of the 2024 sleeper hit I Saw the TV Glow will want to flag the new movie from mischievous filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The quick logline: A queer filmmaker (Hannah Einbinder) shooting a slasher franchise reboot falls for the older actress who played the original “final girl” (Gillian Anderson).
The annual CatVideoFest returns to theaters on August 7. It is what you think it is: Seventy minutes of nonstop funny cat videos, with a portion of proceeds going to area cat shelters. The project has been a huge success nationwide. Check your local listings for participating theaters.
To comment on this story, email [email protected].
You must be logged in to post a comment.