On your Marks...

September doesn't start until tomorrow, and Fall's not for another three weeks, but Scott Marks has shaken off the torpor brought on by a slew of summer snoozefests and lept back into the fray like it's the first day of school and he wants to impress the teacher.

For starters, there's his interview with Operation Finale star Sir Ben Kingsley, an actor who works the high-low as well as anyone. (From his review, it sounds like Sir Ben was the best thing about the feature.)

Then he pauses to collect himself, and also to collect a few releases from last week: he liked The Happytime Murders more than most, and A-X-L as little as the rest of 'em.

Then it's on to this week's arty offerings. Scott loves lovingly shot old movies, and he also loves musicals, so if he didn't like the film version of My Fair Lady, there's probably a very specific reason why. That reason is Cecil Beaton. Small surprise, then, that he was not especially taken with the documentary Love, Cecil. Nor did he swoon over the period drama The Bookshop. (As Duncan Shepherd might have said, it's no You've Got Mail. It's not even The Shop Around the Corner.)

He did, however, manage to find something to enjoy: the looking-back-on-lost-youth doc 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie. The Digital Gym does it again! It may even prove enough of a pick-me-up to send him out into the wide-release desert for Kin and Searching!

As for me, I very much enjoyed the spooky elegance of The Little Stranger, though its muted tone may prove...insufficient for people who like their ghost stories gussied up with jump scares. And I had high hopes for the offbeat approach to sports documentary offered by John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, but found it to be so much French noodling. Quel dommage.