August

August, a strangely insular yet urgent indie drama, feels like a well-observed snapshot of a now vanished subculture. I've no idea if director Austin Chick or writer Howard Rodman are intimate with the late-'90s/early 2000s dot com bubble that the movie catches the tail end of (the movie is set in August 2001), but the muscular vapidity of Tom Stern (Josh Hartnett) seems right. Stern is the head of a rapidly hemorrhaging company called Landshark, and it's a wise choice that it's never explained just what the company does. Stern floats along on an air of possibility, bluffing an ex-lover (Naomie Harris) and blustering with his liberal intellectual parents ("Go tell the maid to dust the Godard posters" is a great kiss-off line). But it's all falling apart. Josh Hartnett has always been more enjoyable to look at than to watch for me, but here he plays both Stern's bravado and the confusion underneath in every scene. Still, it's telling that he gets blown off the screen by David Bowie of all people in the climactic scene. I also wanted a bit more of Adam Scott as the brother who may be the real genius behind it all. August is an odd duck (even the electronic score feels so 2001) but worth a look.