Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast
New Releases For the Week of 8/26/16

Southside With You (PG-13)
Starring: Tika Sumpter, Parker Sawyers
Directed By: Richard Tanne
What were you doing in 1989? In Southside With You, a young law associate and community organizer was escorting his advisor on a sunny, day-long walk through Southside, Chicago that included a trip to an art exhibit, and an ice cream shop. He wants this to be their first date, while she believes they should remain colleagues—and nothing more. Until a fateful incident with the ice cream cone—when the relationship between the man named Barrack and the woman named Michelle blossoms before our eyes.
3 and 1/2 pieces of sweet and loving toast

Hands of Stone (R)
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Edgar Ramirez, Usher, EllenBArkin, John Turturro, Reuben Blades
Director: Jonathan Jakubowicz
You want the biopic about Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran to “be a contender,” especially with Robert DeNiro playing the trainer in the finest Burgess Meredith style. Problem is, the trainer’s activities outside the ring (including negotiations with mobsters, strained relationships with his wife and daughter), usurp the story of the gifted but mercurial slum-kid who literally fights his way to the top (or at least Madison Square Garden). Opening with Duran’s championship fight against Sugar Ray Leonard, everything else is told like snapshots from a dropped photo album where the pictures were reinserted in a non-chronological manner.
2 pieces of this ain’t no Raging Bull toast

Equity (R)
Starring: Anna Gunn, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner
Directed By: Meera Menon
If you are a female, making your mark on Wall Street means you have to swear more often and drink more deeply than any male— and lodge every knife in the drawer in a colleague’s back. You also have to place your marriage and motherhood in a safe-deposit vault (or drop it deep inside a volcano). This conclusion was reached by the two stars who act as producer/screenwriter for Equity, after extensive interviews with woman in the field. The resulting film is a film-noirish dissection of three women’s lives as they try different strategies to break through that ceiling made of glass.
3 pieces of is Greed Good? toast

Don’t Breathe (R)
Starring: Jane Levy, Stephen LAng, Dylan Minette, Daniel Zovato, Emma Bercovici
Director: Fede Alvarez
Perhaps the trio of young burglars should have watched the Para Olympics to understand how capable a wounded warrior can be. Instead, they decide to break free from their abusive family, neighborhood and probable future by robbing a blind veteran. Much to their surprise, the robbers discover that the Gulf War vet has a grudge against reckless teens, since one killed his daughter in a completely preventable auto accident. I won’t be giving too much away by letting you know that the teens have a scream-fest, horror film battle when the blind man levels the playing field by extinguishing every light in his deep, dark, secret-filled basement.
3 pieces of well-made horror movie toast