Presenting My Fourth Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Preview

It's a tradition! Here once again I choose a dozen movies due in the next three months for which I've got medium-high hopes.

Taking Trump Literally: Building the Wall, reviewed.

Tracey Conyer Lee and Eric Messner. (Teresa Castracane/Forum Theatre)

Robert Schenkkahn's Building the Wall, a terrifyingly plausible future-history of the Trump Administration that Forum Theatre has scrambled to shoehorn into their season, is a cry of warning that requires little suspension of disbelief.

I saw the show at Arena Stage last week in the first part of its bifurcated, two-venue run. It's at Forum's Silver Spring performance space May 18-17. Go. My review is in this week's Washington City Paper, along with one of The Shakespeare Theatre's Company's more-is-less Macbeth.

A Split Decision for Chuck

Liev Schreiber and Ron Perlman in Philippe Falardeau's Chuck Wepner biopic. (Sarah Shatz/IFC)

Here's my NPR review of Chuck, a biopic about Chuck Wepner, the self-sabotaging New Jersey boxer who inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky.  It ain't bad, but I wanted to love it. Anyway, Rocky already has a wonderful latter-day lega-sequel.

Tinker, Swinger, Playwright, Spy: Or, reviewed.

Erin Weaver and Holly Twyford (Grace Toulotte)

Given that Aaron Posner's 2009 production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Folger Theatre, starring Holly Twyford and Erin Weaver (and Cody Nickell and Eric Hissom) remains one of my favorite theatrical experiences, it's a cinch I'd be susceptible to Posner's reteaming with Twyford and Weaver in Or, Liz Duffy Adams' erudite farce about seminal British playwright Aphra Behn. Here's my Washington City Paper review.

Gunsmoke Gets in Your Eyes: Free Fire, reviewed.

Brie Larson protects her personal space. (A24)

Ben Wheatley's new comic thriller Free Fire is a feature-length-gun-battle-as-anti-gun-PSA. I enjoyed it, as far as it goes.

Diesel Fumes: The Fate of the Furious, reviewed.

Xander Cage as Dominic Toretto. (Universal)

We all know the inexplicably prolonged Fast & Furious series can't touch Mad Max: Fury Road or even its closer competitor the Mission: Impossible franchise, right? We all know that?

Even by the series' own standards of allegedly intentional badness, the new The Fate of the Furious is a sour lemon. (136 minutes, four good scenes.) Here's my NPR review.