August in North America is summertime and a month to kick back and relax in the sun. These seven new releases on Hulu explore the carefree nature of love and the integrity of ambition, through tales that confirm our complexities even when we respond to what we consider as joy. These films show us a divergence of journeys in exploring heydays and what moments of looseness do to our experiences of constriction.
Related:The 40 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now
Akeelah and the Bee
Available: August 1
Director/Writer: Doug Atchison
Cast: Keke Palmer, Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne
In her breakout role,Keke Palmerplays an eleven-year-old girl, who wins a spelling bee. The film’s heart comes from centralizing the personal and professional relationships in her life while making wider observations about competition, community, and the power of systems and institutions that support and destruct us.
Synecdoche, New York
Director/Writer: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Michelle Williams, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton
Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debutis a masterpiece of art inside art. Equally as revelatory is the tension between realism and fantasy charging throughPhillip Seymour Hoffman’s protagonist. While he creates theater, he experiences his own life building up and falling apart. [synedoche: a part and a whole, hard to distinguish.]
Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John J. McLaughlin
Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel
Black Swanlives and thrives in high art, and ultra-personal eroticism. The melodrama of Swan Lake is perfectly placed - the ballet, in its dueling of force and flailing of the body, is easily the film’s chief protagonist.
The Blair Witch Project
Director: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez,
Writer: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, Heather Donahue
Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
Audiences suspend in belief about what is real and what is not inThe Blair Witch Project, which is the film’s genius. Add that viewer confusion, in this skull-tingling, ghost story, which becomes something mesmerizing, and makes the panting on camera into something terrifying. Yes, we are watching others fear, but that pathos dives us into the screen.
Director: Barry Levinson
Writer: James Toback, Dean Jennings
Cast: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Ben Kingsley, Harvey Keitel
An early 90s gangster origin story, with the expected lot of glittery endorphins in a Hollywood film,Bugsyis grounded by performances that offer an expansive way to experience a villain’s becoming. There is a love story, and drama, and business, and, of course, secrets, what does not go awry, and what preserves.
Blazing Saddles
Director: Mel Brooks
Writer: Mel Brooks, Norma Steinberg, Andrew Bergman
Cast: Cleavon Little, Madeline Kahn, Gene Wilder
A 70sMel Brooks’ take on a Western, this reflexive, dark comedy, asks the audience to consider if we are able to distinguish between disturbing intentions and behavior for folly. At the core ofBlazing Saddles, as in his preceding filmThe Producers, are racism and xenophobia. The most potent revelation may be that everyone is revealed, in the end, to themselves.
Director: Steve McQueen
Writer: Steve McQueen, Abi Morgan
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Michael Fassbender, Marie-Ange Ramirez
InShame, the main character’s sex addiction behavior, and affected conflicted slope he approaches others with, contrasts the authenticity of his sister who comes to visit him and whom he values. There is no typical savior or victimizing set-up here, but a story, in integrative ways, set to sultry cinematography, about the radiancies and traps of interpersonal needing and desire.
