There have been a whole host of new movies out this summer, and the Fulcrum team is here to review them!
Girls Trip
Girls Trip is a light, fun, and heartwarming movie, making it a must-see for the summer. Starring fan favourites such as Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, and Jada Pinkett Smith, Girls Trip focuses on a group of old college friends who reunite for a weekend of drunken debauchery. As one would imagine, hilarity ensues.
Aside from it’s A-list cast and comedic value, Girls Trip’s success comes from being one of the rare big-budget movies showing women of colour as carefree, well-rounded individuals. Women of colour also comprise all the leading roles.
This movie is best described as The Hangover for women, but despite its raunchiness, it’s still a chick flick of epic proportions with an extra bit of cheesiness thrown in.
Overall, Girls Trip is an enjoyable and endearing production. Nearly every scene is comedic gold, and it is sure to leave you laughing.
—Deborah Sogelola
Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s World War Two film Dunkirk recounts the experiences of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers trapped in occupied France, separated from safety in England by only the English Channel.
The film is hauntingly realistic, as the audience is bombarded by the fear and desperation of the young soldiers. Nolan does not hide the tragedy of war, yet he also manages to illuminate the good in people, as seen in Dunkirk’s ending, which is as uplifting as any sentimental Hollywood blockbuster. (Don’t worry, no spoilers here.)
Dunkirk is a sober demonstration of human resilience, juxtaposed with a reminder of the destruction of which humans are capable. The film is important to watch—not only to bear witness to the men who lost their lives on that beach, or those who risked everything to save them—but to remember that history can sometimes be stranger—and more inspiring—than fiction.
—Bethany Keeshan
Okja
One of the most subversive films of the year, Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi thriller Okja dazzles, disgusts, moralizes, and melts the heart in equal measure.
The Netflix exclusive centres on the relationship between Mija, the granddaughter of a rural farmer, and Okja, an adorable super-pig lauded with the ability to curb world hunger. It’s an admirable goal, but to eat the super-pig, one must kill it, and that is what sets the movie on its frenetic adventure, as Mija travels from her mountain farm to Seoul to New York City to save Okja from the slaughterhouse.
The film is a much-needed reflection on our current consumption of animal products, as it tackles GMOs, mechanical slaughtering practices, and the fundamental idea that animals just don’t feel fear and pain like we do. But one can watch it and not become a vegetarian—and it’s really not that preachy. Seriously. It’s not that preachy. Though it isn’t without a few very disturbing moments.
Watch it for the moral grandstanding, or watch it for Paul Dano really, really liking animals and a deranged Jake Gyllenhaal. Or watch it for the cutest thing to grace our screens in a long time, because it’s pretty tough to beat that super-pig for sheer adorableness.
—Ryan Pepper
