Cookie Queens ***1/2
Director Alysa Nahmias’ formula here is like 85% adorableness and 15% other stuff, but oh man does she nail the adorableness. Her subject is the $800 million annual business that is the selling of Girl Scout cookies, focusing on four girls from around the country trying to hit their goals during the several-weeks-long annual selling window. Much of the focus is on 12-year-old Olive, a cookie-shilling wunderkind whose skills at upselling seem to dazzle all her customers into additional purchases, and there are layers to her character in her growing consciousness about being an exploited worker as well as the perils of pinning her entire identity on being an ace salesperson. And Nahmias definitely doesn’t shy away from the pressures on parents—who need to pre-purchase their kids’ inventory—trying to be supportive through rainy or otherwise unsuccessful sales days. But it’s really clear that the filmmaker had great instincts for picking her subjects for their potential appeal to audiences, including Nikki, whose ambitions are tied entirely to emulating her older sisters, and 5-year-old Ara, a first-timer whose innocence has her interpreting one woman’s “maybe later” response to a sales pitch as an assurance that she’ll be coming back soon. There are even some really inspired bits of visual filmmaking, like watching Ara struggle with pulling her wagon of cookies across the sand on a San Diego beach. The result is a documentary as sweet and easy to enjoy as a box of Thin Mints. Available Aug. 7 in theaters. (G)
“Ice Cream Man”The Horror Section
Ice Cream Man ***
In the age of “elevated horror,” we need a term for the stuff that’s just gleefully gross—maybe “basement horror?”—like the latest high-concept mayhem from co-writer/director Eli Roth. In the picturesque town of Bayleen Bay, the arrival of summer is accompanied by the arrival of a mysterious ice cream man (Ari Millen), whose frozen treats turn any child who eats them into a homicidal monster, leaving lactose-intolerant Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) among the few kids unaffected. What follows combines a bit of Weapons, a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and—in one particularly amusing set piece—a bit of The Birds for something that gets nearly all of its juice out of graphic depictions of children committing creative murder with whatever object is at hand, including the ice cream man’s preferred weapon of a combo ice cream scoop/bone saw. And it’s kind of outrageously fun in its over-the-top-ness, most notably in an extended playground sequence that finds the possessed youngsters turning a head into a tetherball, jumping rope with an intestine, etc. Eventually there’s a long expository scene that explains the origin of our monster, and it’s kinda forced in its attempt at a lesson about scapegoating, even if the instructions for ending the threat get hilariously complicated. Think of it as a kind of spiritual successor to morality-play creep-outs like Tales from the Crypt—just don’t call it “elevated.” Available Aug. 7 in theaters. (NR)
“Wild Inside”David Lei
Wild Inside ***
Documentarian Penny Lane has often explored quirkier subjects like Satanists and “Sea Monkeys,” so she might not intuitively seem like the ideal fit for telling the story of Flaco, the 13-year-old Eurasian eagle-owl that escaped from New York’s Central Park Zoo in early 2023 and immediately captured the imagination of the city’s residents. Yet she shows a wonderfully deft touch as she follows the Flaco saga, told through characters like animal researchers, bird rescue workers and the birding-enthusiast photographers who become a kind of Flaco-razzi following the bird’s every move. What emerges is a fascinating study of the way animals can become a kind of screen onto which humans project their own feelings, whether that involves the question of whether Flaco was better off in captivity than he was in the wild, or even feeling sympathy for the non-native-species’ futile mating behavior because “dating is hard in New York for everyone.” Along the way, Lane is wise enough to take time simply to observe Flaco and other creatures in Central Park, allowing them to be the star in a way that understands how encounters with wild nature can be spiritual moments for people. Inevitably some of the anecdotes from people about their experiences with Flaco become repetitive, but even then, it’s a way to show that the story of Flaco is really the story of what we decide to make of his life. Available Aug. 7 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)