SINISTER 2

You know the feeling you get when you go to summer camp and make a great new friend, but he/she isn't there the next summer, or the summer after that, and you end up forgetting about that friend until the next summer, when, all of a sudden, there he/she is? I don't, because I never went to summer camp. But I'm betting that sensation is similar to what I felt in the first minutes of Sinister 2 once I recognized James Ransone, who played Ethan Hawke's adorably dippy deputy pal in 2012's Sinister. Although the actor has amassed a bunch of film and TV credits since then (albeit not in anything I've seen), I can't say I've thought of him even once since the release of that low-budget horror hit. Yet the second Ransone's character showed up in director Cirián Foy's follow-up, with his chronic awkwardness and puppy-dog eyes and intense likability, it was like being reunited with a long-lost buddy whom you're ashamed to have let slip away. Ransone's presence here - as our romantic lead, no less! - was a hugely welcome surprise. That Sinister 2 didn't at all suck might've been a bigger one.

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

In the N.W.A. bio-pic Straight Outta Compton, long after the professional and personal flame-outs between Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) and Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr., playing his real-life father), the two rappers run into each other at a club, and Eazy, seeking reconciliation, tells Cube he saw him in Boyz n the Hood. Cube reminds his former friend that Eazy publicly called the movie "an after-school special," and Eazy, knowing he's caught, simply grins and says, "Man, you know I like after-school specials." (As it must, this initially tense encounter ends in a hug.) Given the film's expectedly harsh language, constant threats of violence, and poolisde and hotel-room debaucheries that only platinum-selling albums can buy, I was amazed to find its own resemblence to an after-school special the most surprising thing about director F. Gary Gray's musical drama. But whatever - I, too, like after-school specials.

You can tell it's August at the cineplex, not because the newly released movies are so terrible (though a couple of them definitely are), but because there are so many of them. This annual dumping-ground month for films generally considered too weak to score summer-blockbuster dollars and too insignificant to pass as autumnal prestige fare has also, in recent years, become the cinematic equivalent of a Sam's Club or Costco: a little bit of everything, in bulk. And over four consecutive days, I caught up with seven of these debuting area titles - a collective experience that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous ... and back to the sublime.

Before Saturday's opening-night presentation, executive director Doug Tschopp took the stage for Genesius Guild's traditional pre-show announcements and T-shirt giveaway, and kindly asked the crowd for continued financial support, especially given the organization's decreased support since 2008 from the State of Illinois. Not to make light of a very real monetary concern, but I wish power players from Nike had been there for Tschopp's request. Because after seeing Macbeth, they might've happily handed over a check, considering the motto for everyone involved in director Michael King's inspiriting production appeared to be the same: "Just do it."