August 15

Towelhead
Adapting Alicia Erian’s novel of the same name, Alan Ball (the writer behind American Beauty and Six Feet Under) has a lot of balls to keep in the air. It’s a coming-of-age story about a Lebanese-American teenage girl, and it’s set during the Gulf War. As in American Beauty, there’s a bad-news neighbor, this time an Army reservist (Aaron Eckhart), whose racism is overcome by his lust for the 13-year-old protagonist. Ew.

Tropic Thunder
Cowriter and director Ben Stiller has raised horrendously self-satisfied mugging into a high art, so we were all set to hate this, sight unseen. But then we saw the trailer. Damned if this comedy about the cast of an action film who end up stranded in the jungle doesn’t look pretty funny.

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