Thursday night I went to a special screening of Goon: Last Of The Enforcers, which opens next Friday, the 17th. I can’t remember seeing a movie more obsessed with bodily function humour, f-bombs, and bloody violence, as this one since… well… maybe the first Goon?  I’ll have my review of the movie up on the FITI closer to the release date.

A new gigantic ape movie is out, Kong: Skull Island. I enjoyed it for the most part, recognizing that it’s a pretty entertaining popcorn monster movie. It lacks some of the poetics of the earlier Kong movies—yes, the three I’m thinking of from 1933, 1976, and 2005, respectively, all had some poetry—but it makes up for that with general fun and energy in the direction. My full review is here.

Bitter Harvest is a romantic drama set in Ukraine in the 1930s, when Stalinist Russia’s genocidal program starved the populace. Starring reliable screen presences Terence Stamp and Barry Pepper, it looks handsome, but the advance buzz is pretty negative.

Here’s one I’ve been looking forward to. A United Kingdom tells the post-war story of the King of Botswana who fell in love with a British commoner. It stars David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, and I’ve heard pretty good things about it. It probably unfairly reductive to say that this feels a little like a British version of Loving, but I’ll be interested to see how these period films, both dealing with forbidden interracial love, compare.