Irreviews has been down for almost two months, and significantly slowed for about four months, for a variety of reasons. As it stumbles back to life, it is at the suggestion of Mrs. Irreviews that I begin with brief (one sentence) summaries of all the (mostly unremarkable) summer movies that never got reviewed.

So without further ado, here was Summer 2014:

The Hundred Foot Journey

A feel-good food movie featuring Helen Miren, lots of yummy food, and Hollywood’s now-standard, idealized (almost propagandist) portrayal of Indian people; it’s a sweet, inoffensive movie about love, food and the meaning of life, guaranteed to be insipid to some, and a relief to others.

About Alex

The Big Chill, re-envisioned for Generation Y, it has some genuinely funny characters and lines that by themselves make the film almost worth seeing, but the central character of the writer is both badly written and horribly acted, and the character of Alex himself is too much of a mystery man for the story to have any hope of emotional resonance at its denouement.

What If

Nerdy Daniel Radcliffe plays the long game for fellow nerd Zoe Kazan; it’s cute, inoffensive, and has a few funny moments, but the writing is uneven and it leaves you quite emotionally flat in the end.

Cavalry

A completely bizarre but strangely fascinating movie, featuring the always-fabulous Brendan Gleeson amidst a breathtaking array of revolting supporting characters who test his Christian patience to the breaking point; the film is at times wickedly funny, at other times heartbreakingly emotional, but in the end the artistic point of the film somewhat eluded me, and I seem to remember it mainly for isolated moments of brilliance (in a movie I’m not at all sure I could sit through again.)

Very Good Girls

Written and directed by the mother of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Naomi Foner, who wrote the Sidney Lumet classic Running on Empty (1988)), Very Good Girls features the electrifying Elizabeth Olsen and the pleasingly plain Dakota Fanning as two Brooklyn best friends who fall for the same mysterious young ice cream vendor, a laconic stud played by Boyd Holbrook (who is visually like a poor man’s Ryan Gosling); the film is well-written, beautifully acted, and packed with old-school nuance – it’s a high-quality B-film that you should definitely check out.

Tammy

In this her second film in a row playing a disgusting, moronic, ignorant, belligerent asshole with no dignity, no common sense, and no charm, Melissa McCarthy again articulates the popular rage in a totally unconstructive and unhelpful manner.

The Internet’s Own Boy

It’s a spectacularly good and important documentary which I intend to review once I get the opportunity to see it again.

The Master Builder

Heavy, heavy fare, from Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, on the subject of what it means to die; I’ll try to give it its own review, at some point.