Top 3 Critics’ Picks In Theaters this July: Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens’ Land Ho!

Land Ho! – Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens
Limited Release – July 11th
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Awards & Fests: Announced as a sleeper hit acquisition at the Sundance Film Fest (there is nothing sleeper about this gem) by Sony Pictures Classics, this was picked up smack-dab during its premiere week. So far, this has traveled to both coasts with showings at Tribeca and LAFF.

What the critic’s are saying?: Like most critics, Variety’s Justin Chang recognized the power of two identifying “pitch-perfect turns from Paul Eenhoorn and relative newcomer Earl Lynn Nelson, but also a seamless writing-directing collaboration between rising indie helmers Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz.” Indiewire’s Eric Kohn points out how it manages to avoid certain trappings found in the subgenres, “Indie road trip comedies are perhaps the worst cliché of low budget American filmmaking, but “Land Ho!,” the story of two aging men on a meandering vacation in Iceland, provides a notable exception” while Todd McCarthy is one among many to underline the film’s third character as a plus, “refitted for a charming spin around scenic Iceland in Land Ho!, a serio-comedy of very modest ambition but a distinct character of its own.

Our 3rd and final Critics’ Pick for the Month of July: Cannibal