Margaret Qualley in Honey Don't!
According to the calendar, we still have several more weeks of summer. According to the Hollywood calendar, the season effectively ended on August 8, when the last of summer-'25's box-office gobblers – Weapons and Freakier Friday – debuted. As per usual during this time of year, what we're left with regarding new releases are whatever throwaways studios think a few of us might be interested in catching on the big screen in favor of, y'know, hanging outdoors or reading a book.
As a way of acknowledging the brief time they'll likely stay in theaters, here are brief ruminations on four of these all-but-abandoned late-August titles, in escalating order from not-awful to actually-pretty-great.
HONEY DON'T!
Margaret Qualley is a hard-boiled lesbian gumshoe in high heels and high-waisted pants. Aubrey Plaza is a surly lesbian cop with a desk job. Chris Evans is a religious-cult leader who leads his female flock with the staff located just below his belt. And one can only imagine how hysterical, subversive, and possibly even trenchant this thing might've been if directed by the Coen brothers. It's not, though. It's directed by a single Coen brother – that would be Ethan – and just like last year's Drive-Away Dolls (also co-written by Ethan's spouse Tricia Cooke), this present-day comic noir is a slapdash series of comic gambits in search of a sustaining through-line, causing you to lose hope that the myriad plot points will coalesce in any meaningful, or even satisfying, manner. It's been seven years since the Coens delivered their Western-comedy triumph The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and I'm honestly not sure how much more of their collaborative breakup I can take. Let it be said, though, that Honey Don't! is at least worlds better – less confounding, less self-conscious – than the godawful Drive-Away Dolls, and that while Qualley, Plaza, Evans, and others do a reasonable job doing Coen-brother(s) dress-up, at least Charlie Day emerges as the genuine article. Playing a Bakersfield detective who can't believe Qualley's private eye would rather sleep with a woman than with him, to the point that he doesn't even accept her sexual leanings as truth, the riotous Day is spectacularly winning in his unconscious catchphrases and abject cluelessness. The movie does boast randomly decent set pieces and a number of deaths that occur earlier than expected. But in Ethan's latest, only the It's Always Sunny co-star appears lit from within.
EDEN
Dodgy German accents, ludicrous narrative turns, awkward full-frontal male nudity and all, I giggled throughout director Ron Howard's survival thriller Eden. I'm really hoping I was meant to. Based on preposterously factual events that took place on the eve of the second World War, Howard's and screenwriter Noah Pink's sick-joke adventure is kind of like Lord of the Flies meets The White Lotus, with a pair of German dissidents (Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby) settling on a remote Galapagos Island in hopes of building a from-scratch Utopia. Intrigued by newspaper reports, a family of adventurers (Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney, and Jonathan Tittel) immediately upend that dream, as does the later arrival of a self-proclaimed baroness (Ana de Armas) and her hunky, seemingly interchangeable lovers (Felix Kammerer and Toby Wallace). Despite its non-fiction bona fides, Howard's movie is goofy beyond belief, and this is the rare two-hours-and-change outing that seems far too short, the climaxes to several scenes – including a potential gunfight among numerous armed settlers – appearing weirdly lopped off in the editing room. (A Lotus-y six hour-long episodes might've been preferable.) But the sweaty luridness of Eden is admittedly semi-intoxicating, and among a field of going-for-broke performers, the alternately inscrutable and emotionally naked de Armas is particularly bewitching, with an accent on the “witch.” Thanks to last year's convent-horror Immaculate, we also get the second-most traumatizing childbirth scene Sweeney has committed to film. That's definitely a niche skill, but as we're reminded here, also a pretty great one.
RELAY
About an hour into director David Mackenzie's low-tech thriller, I thought it was one of the best movies I'd seen all year. About 20 minutes after that, I decided it would firmly place on my annual top-20. About 20 minutes after that, I wondered what special recognition I could give it in my year-end recap – maybe “Best Movie Completely Undone by a Totally Effed-Up Ending.” Let's start by accentuating the positive, because before it flies off the rails, Relay might be the most enthralling work of its kind since 2007's Michael Clayton. Riz Ahmed, as watchful and charismatic as he's ever been, plays a self-employed fixer for very specifically beleaguered individuals: He negotiates dealings between whistle-blowers and their criminally negligent companies in which the whistle-blowers want to retract their blowing, letting said companies off the hook in exchange for no future harassment. That's a topnotch setup for a paranoid thriller seemingly out of the 1970s playbook. And as Ahmed and his latest client Lily James navigate this ordeal, Hell or High Water helmer Mackenzie and screenwriter Justin Piasecki find avenues for beautifully staged, beautifully quiet set pieces and intense encounters that involve, among others, Sam Worthington, who's uncharacteristically excellent as a vitriolic counterintelligence agent. Sadly, though, the inevitable hints at romance sour the pulse-quickening mood, and the, I'm sorry, insanely stupid climactic twist turns Relay into a running, shooting, prototypically empty-headed action flick. However, if you ignore the final reel (not that movies still have reels …), you'll likely have a helluva time. Not for nothing, but Ahmed also plays a recovering addict fluent in sign language. So if you're a ravenous Sound of Metal fan like I am, hop aboard, because this might be the closest we'll ever get to a sequel.
IT'S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY
When it comes to feature-length celebrity documentaries, my needs as a viewer are minimal, as I really only ask to be entertained and learn a little something, and if anything of legitimate insight or feeling happens to sneak through, so much the better. With director Amy Berg's doc, I couldn't help but be entertained, given the plethora of culled, largely adorable footage from its titular singer/songwriter during his 1990s heyday, the arresting abstract animation employed as connective tissue, and, good God, that voice. I also learned a helluva lot, considering I was so personally unacquainted with Buckley's output that, before I saw the film, a friend had to address my ignorance with “He's the guy who sings 'Hallelujah.'” But while there are numerous talking heads sharing their thoughts in It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley, the grandest thing about this relatively straightforward, chronological celebration (Buckley drowned, at age 30, in 1997) are the recollections from three of the women who knew the artist best: Buckley's mother Mary Guibert, and his past girlfriends Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser. Other collaborators and fans, among them Aimee Mann, offer thoughts, praise, and regrets. But between the expertly considered and incorporated clips and the heartbreak shared by these women who loved Buckley perhaps more than anyone else, Berg's movie allows viewers to access what feels like the true soul of this artist. You feel close to him in ways that films of this sort rarely allow, underlining the why behind your involuntary sobs when Buckley's aching, pained, exhilarating vocals destroy you even after a zillionth listen of Leonard Cohen's overplayed anthem. Hallelujah, indeed.
