Booksmart follows the misadventures of two best-friends as they attempt to cast off their studiousness and sense of responsibility during the night before they graduate from high school. It is not unusual for a teen film to be funnier, more insightful and more heartfelt than most romcoms and dramas aimed at adults, but this is a particularly special example of the genre. The performances are excellent, the depiction of the various social subgroups is refreshingly overhauled and made to feel contemporary, and the film effortlessly blends the laughs and the pathos.
If nothing else Apollo 11 is a brilliant example of how to assemble archival footage of a historical event to construct an engaging narrative through editing and sound design. The fact that the footage covers one of humanity’s most extraordinary achievements – the space mission the resulted in the first people to walk on the moon – compounds this film’s intense power and beauty. Despite the outcome of the mission being known and documented for five decades, this incredible documentary still delivers an exhilarating and profound experience that left me breathless.
The US documentary Hail Satan? examines how the provocatively named The Satanic Temple began as a group of social misfits exposing the hypocrisy of the Christian right through pranks and trolling, to a diverse and sometime fractured political organisation fighting against the erosion of the separation of church and state, and the growing creep of what one interviewee calls Christian supremacy. A lot of the film is highly entertaining, but it also seriously examines the Temple’s work in challenging how religion institutions threaten social justice and rational thought.
CINEMA AUTOPSY 