I said this long before they started giving us money for that little ad you see in the margins here: I look forward to the Walker's Film Independent Spirit Awards showcase each winter. It's where I catch up on what I missed, and this week that includes the acclaimed Palestinian documentary No Other Land, which has yet to find a distributor for... reasons. Yes, it's only for Walker members, so if you're not one, make sure to pal up with one.
Special Screenings
Thursday, January 23
Marked Men: Rule + Shaw (2024)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Is this a Fast & Furious spinoff? $16.11. 7 p.m. More info here.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Grandview 1&2
“These miserable people should give it another shot”—people who like this movie, for some reason. Also Sunday. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Asmarina (2015)
Main Cinema
A documentary about the lives of Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Milan. $10. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Escape From New York (1981)
Parkway Theater
What Trump voters think NYC is actually like in 2025. $9/$12. Pre-show poetry contest at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
The Fifth Element (1997)
Trylon
Hope you weren’t looking forward to seeing this one, because it’s sold out. $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday, January 24
Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)
Marcus West End Cinema
Keep the kids warm and entertained. Through Monday. 12 p.m. Price and more info here.
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Trylon
That means “the red moulin” in French. $8. Friday 7 p.m. Saturday 9 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Dead Calm (1989)
Trylon
Watch out, Nicole! It’s Billy Zane! $8. 9:30 p.m. 7 p.m. 5:30 p.m. More info here.
Dìdi (2024)
Walker Art Center
Sean Wang’s fresh take on the coming-of-age comedy. Free for Walker members. 6 p.m. More info here.
No Other Land (2024)
Walker Art Center
A timely, acclaimed documentary about Palestine. Free for Walker members. 8 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, January 25
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Alamo Drafthouse
An instructional film for the avian afflicted. $10. 11 a.m. More info here.
The Princess Bride (1987)
Emagine Willow Creek
A princess and a bride? In this economy? Also Sunday, Wednesday. $12.60. 12 & 6 p.m. More info here.
Chasing Time (2024)
Main Cinema
A film crew gathers documentary evidence of climate change. Part of the Great Northern. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Ink and Linda (2022)
Mia
Two mismatched troublemakers spread art through L.A. Free, but registration required. More info here.
The Dark Crystal (1982)
Parkway Theater
Jim Henson really went off with this one. $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Riverview Theater
Sorry, this annual full-day marathon is sold out. 10:45 a.m. More info here.
Where Is the Friend’s House (1987)
Trylon
No one directs kids quite like Abbas Kiarostami. Part of the 2025 Mizna Film Series. $10. 3 p.m. More info here.
Problemista (2024)
Walker Art Center
A toy designer from El Salvador struggles to please a nightmare boss so he can stay in the U.S. Free for Walker members. 1 p.m. More info here.
Nickel Boys (2024)
Walker Art Center
RaMell Ross’s formally daring adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel. Free for Walker members. 3 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, January 26
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition (2001)
Alamo Drafthouse
That ring is bad news! They gotta get rid of it. $13.50. 11 a.m. Monday 6 p.m. More info here.
Live From the Met: Aida
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Opera! Also Wednesday. $28.70. Showtimes and more info here.
Satranic Panic (2023)
Emagine Willow Creek
That is not a typo. $11.60. 2 p.m. More info here.
All That Jazz (1979)
Trylon
Weirdly, one of my early crushes was somehow on Ann Reinking. $8. 7:30 p.m. 7 & 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Monday, January 27
Prison (1987)
Emagine Willow Creek
It’s haunted by an executed inmate! $6. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End Cinema
All we know is that it’s a 90-minute horror movie. 7 p.m. Price and more info here.
Tuesday, January 28
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Extended Edition (2001)
Alamo Drafthouse
The extended edition actually includes a third tower. $13.50. 11 a.m. Monday 6 p.m. More info here.
Companion (2025)
Alamo Drafthouse
An advance screening of the new killer robot girlfriend movie. $14.50. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, January 29
Between Borders (2024)
AMC Southdale 16/Marcus West End
Armenian musicians struggle after the breakup of the Soviet Union. $19.04. Showtimes and more info here.
The Dungeonmaster (1984)
Emagine Willow Creek
A computer programmer must battle a demonic wizard to save his girlfriend. You know how it is. $7.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Brave the Dark
A teacher tries to help a troubled student. But it turns out the student is really troubled.
Flight Risk
A hitman, a government witness, and a U.S. Marshall battle it out on a plane.
Presence
Retired director Steven Soderbergh tries his hand at horror.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Anora
From Kitana Kiki Rodriguez’s enraged trans sex worker in Tangerine to Simon Rex’s washed-up porn star in Red Rocket, Sean Baker knows how to let a character loose upon a movie, and Mikey Madison’s Ani may be the most fully realized of Baker’s high-powered, self-deluded survivors. A stripper and occasional escort whose charm and sheer self-determination haven’t failed her yet, she’s eking out a life in Brooklyn’s least glamorous southern reaches. (Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island are captured in all their drab, offseason outer-borough-ness.) Her life changes after a dance for a Russian oligarch’s son parlays into a paid fuck, which in turn goes so well he hires her for an extended stint. Baker captures their whirlwind spree through all forms of excess, ending with a Vegas wedding, as an audiovisual sugar rush that makes Pretty Woman’s shopping montage look like amateur hour. But when Ivan’s parents find out, they sic his handlers on him; he runs off like the spoiled little fuckboy we always knew he was and Ani is left to unleash her rage on the hired muscle as they hunt for him. Madison can be as subtle here as she was on Pamela Adlon’s Better Things and even more furious than she was in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood before Tarantino thought it’d be a hoot to immolate her with a flamethrower. This decade, we’ve seen plenty of commoners enter the worlds of the wealthy, often ending with fantasies of vengeance. Anora’s trip through the looking glass ends on a far more ambiguous note. A
Babygirl
I know many misguided youth feel deprived that Adrian Lyne’s alleged prime ended before they hit puberty, but take it from grandpa, erotic thrillers were rarely this self-assured in ye olde 20th century. Nicole Kidman is a tautly wound robotics exec who still packs her daughters’ lunches, Harris Dickinson is the intern who sniffs out the need to surrender beneath her hypercompetent sheen. And let’s not forget Antonio Banderas, who ably fills the traditional Anne Archer Hot Spouse role. What writer/director Halina Reijn gets about America’s official contemporary sexual ideology is that while no kink may be shamed—certainly not the fairly tame obedience training Kidman undergoes here—sex with an intern is a taboo we daren’t treat lightly. And what Kidman captures in her performance, especially in the petulance that precedes her submission, is that every kink feels like an unimaginable transgression to the person overcoming her shame. She’s a genuine auteur of self-degradation—truly, no one this side of Isabelle Huppert can match her freak. Yes, it’s “sometimes a bit much,” to quote the quibbles of one AP critic, which is like noting that “there are a lot of songs” in Wicked, but give in to your uncomfortable snickers, even if they emerge as full LOLs. The fun here is never knowing when to be turned on, amused, anxious, or outraged. As for Dickinson, he smolders credibly as Samuel, a kid whose instinct for dominance outpaces his competence or authority, and I promise never again to confuse him with George McKay. A
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet’s aspiring epic tracks the disillusionment of a man who believed himself beyond illusion. László Tóth (Adrien Brody, once more a heroic European Jew) is a Bauhaus-tutored architect, Buchenwald survivor, and recent immigrant in Philadelphia. Into his life strides Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a Bucks County nouveaux with a pseud’s hunger for as much expert-approved culture as money can buy. He enlists his pedigreed discovery to design and construct a massive community center for the suburban backwater of Doylestown. The Brutalist is a film about grandiosity that also aspires to it. There are tremendous moments, in which far from subtle images communicate boldly what language cannot, that only a filmmaker gifted with a certain degree of self-importance can achieve. But on the back end it loses the shape of a masterpiece, and the sturdy facsimile of a greatness we'd been watching reveals itself as something lumpier and less monumental. And for a film supposedly about ideas, The Brutalist is strangely devoid of them, unless you count “rich people will fuck you over,” “Americans hate foreigners,” and “the Holocaust!” Read our full review here. B
A Complete Unknown
Timothée Chalamet’s relative success here—he gets that Bob Dylan himself has always been a guy performing as Bob Dylan—is just one reason that James Mangold’s new biopic is so relatively un-embarrassing. The source material also helps: Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! is a thoroughly researched and reported account of Newport ’65 that’s preceded by an even-handed evaluation of what was at stake. Wald represents the ethos of the folk scene with a respect that rockist triumphalists could never see past their ingrained generational narratives to allow, and the film’s climax, Dylan’s amplified defiance of the Newport folkies, doesn’t feel as triumphant as we might expect. Dylan comes off less as a genius coming into his own than a cornered, confused guy lashing out at whoever comes closest; when his pal Bobby Neuwirth asks him point blank who he wants to be, it’s hard not hear a hollowness in the defiance of Dylan's reply: “Whoever they don’t want me to be.” When he returns to visit Woody Guthrie one last time after Newport, reflecting on what he’s done and lost, Bobby Zimmerman is now as completely Bob Dylan as Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. How does it feel? Not great, Bob. Read our full review here. B
Conclave
Edward Berger may think he’s cooked up something more substantial than a chewy Vatican potboiler here—a meditation on faith in the modern era, or some other middlebrow (papal) bull. Who knows and who cares? The crowd I saw it with thought Berger’s flamboyant pope opera was funny as hell (pardon the expression, Father) and they were right. Watching old guys from around the world in funny clothes politic, gossip, and backstab is just solid entertainment. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine milks everything he can from the ornate setting and bright costumery, and this cast knows how to project an ominous seriousness that’s forever camp adjacent. We’re talking Ralph Fiennes working his timeworn visage of existential indigestion, John Lithgow looking more like Donald Rumsfield than ever, Sergio Castellitto as a gregarious bear who wants to repeal Vatican II, Isabella Rossellini as a mysterious nun, and, for the ladies, a little Stanley Tucci. You’ll guess most of the twists, groan at some, and even get blindsided by a few. Still, without giving too much away, it’s hard not to notice that none of the scandals here are as horrific as those the Catholic Church has covered up in real life. B+
Gladiator II
Gladiator worked as well as it did (which might not be quite as well as you remember) because Ridley Scott stocked his swords ‘n’ sandals rehash with hams who knew how to spout nonsense about "the dream of Marcus Aurelius" and "the glory of Rome" as though it were meaningful, nay crucial. And this sequel is almost worth seeing solely for Denzel Washington, who accepts his role as a challenge, supercharging the eccentric cadences that made his Macbeth a darkly comic curiosity a couple years back—his “I own … your house. I want … your loyalty” may be the line reading of the year. As the wily former slave Macrinus, Washington traipses, flounces, pounces, smirks, exclaims, and keenly outwits his dim foes. Close your eyes and he could be playing an evil Disney tiger. But poor Paul Mescal looks as out of place as a puppy at a Senate budget hearing. He’s surely swole enough as the son of Crowe’s Maximus (and a rightful heir to the imperial throne) to credibly wallop challengers in the arena, whether corporeal or poorly animated. But we all know Paulie’s a weeper not a fighter. Every generation needs its moody dreamboat, and Aftersun and Normal People made Mescal that nontoxic totem. As for the combat scenes, if the first Gladiator challenged Scott to revamp a genre for modern audiences, all his sequel can offer is more. Read our full review here. C+
Hard Truths
When someone casually proposes a little family get together in a Mike Leigh film, you just know some shit’s going down at that party. At the center of Hard Truths’ gathering is the miserable but caustically hilarious Pansy Deacon. (“What’s it gonna keep in its pockets? A knife?” she asks incredulously about a baby wearing an outfit with pockets). As brilliantly portrayed by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Patsy is the latest character to demonstrate that while Leigh is sometimes called a realist, the characterizations he coaxes from his actors are broader than that term suggests. In a worse movie, a child or a dog would soften Pansy up, and she’d deliver an Oscar-primed speech about her formative trauma. Instead, an act of kindness draws a complicated response from her (and better acting than whoever will win that dumb trophy) and the long standoff between Pansy and her quiet husband Curtley enters a new stage. Even as we learn more about Pansy, we never get a simple answer as to why she is the way she is. Why would we want one? Read our full review here. A
The Last Showgirl
Gia Coppola’s determination to reward Pamela Anderson with a star turn is as phony as a rhinestone. The camera lingering on that unmade up 57-year-old face, the low-res shots of Anderson against the backdrop of the Strip set to the whooshes of ambient soundtrackcore, that persistent and deliberate deglamorization of everything the camera sees—Coppola hauls out every nu-showbiz trick there is to signify “reality” in this film about a Vegas lifer being put out to pasture. And yet, line by line, Kate Gersten’s script pops, and everyone here does it justice: Dave Bautista as the show’s vulnerably gruff producer, Jamie Lee Curtis as a weathered dancer-turned-cocktail-waitress, bitchy Brenda Song and sweet Kiernan Shipka as younger dancers, and yes, Anderson as the chirpy Shelly, struggling to reorient herself as life undermines her cherished identity as a showgirl. But oy, the plot. Of course Shelly has an estranged daughter (Billie Lourd, doing what she can). Of course Shelly’s audition for a new gig doesn’t go as planned. Of course Curtis gets a “supporting actress” moment of her own, set to a blaringly obvious song choice. If it’s endearingly gentle of The Last Showgirl to refuses to fully puncture Shelly’s illusions, its pulled punches are also unfair to her, to us, and to Anderson, who should be given a character to act, rather than a routine to perform. B
Nosferatu
Who needs a vampire to drain the life from a town when you’ve got Robert Eggers directing? Wisborg, the German community that Count Orloc (Bill Skarsgård) will eventually infest with plague, is so gloomy at the start of Eggers's take on the Dracula story that the fiend has hardly got any work to do. And the wan woman Orloc is drawn to (Lily Rose-Depp) already endures joyless orgasmic gasps and speaks in trite Emily Dickinson first drafts. Like any well-prepared corpse, Nosferatu can be striking, even beautiful, in its airless, stylized way. For the German scenes, Eggers favors a blue filter familiar to admirers of The Piano or the first Twilight movie, and some of his fussily framed shots do rise to a Barry Lyndon quality—no mean feat. Orloc’s castle is a black-on-black-on-black realm of shadows within shadows, a daring and somewhat frustrating design for those of us who like to occasionally see what we’re looking at. Willem Dafoe’s mad, chaotic Prof. Albin Eberhart Von—ah fuck it, I’m just gonna call him Van Helsing—brings a mad touch of chaos to the proceedings, but much of Nosferatu advances with the grim inevitability of a fairy tale. Skarsgård’s Orloc, a hulking, shadowy beast with the bristly mustache of an ancient warlord and a booming, electronically modulated voice, is a beastly embodiment of menace, a dark force awakened. But without pathos or malice, he’s just acting on instinct. Turns out pure evil can be almost as boring as pure good. B-
A Real Pain
You might expect a buddy comedy about Holocaust tourism to flounder on the side of bad taste or staid reverence. So one thing I’ll say about A Real Pain, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, is that it does strike the right delicate tonal balance. As to why that balance needed to be struck, however, I’m still not entirely sure. It's the story of inseparable cousins who now rarely see each other, reunited because their beloved grandmother’s dying wish was for them to visit the home in Poland that she fled during the Holocaust. David is uptight and tetchy, Benji is mouthy and moody. In other words, David is Jesse Eisenberg and Benji is Kieran Culkin. If you were hoping for Mark Zuckerberg and Roman Roy on the Road to Lublin, you’re in luck. Do they learn a little about themselves—and each other—along the way? Oh, brother (er, cousin?), do they ever. Though Culkin and Eisenberg are an ace comic pair, yuks are not enough for A Real Pain, and it’s one of those movies where the characters’ backstories seem to be written after the fact to justify the drama. The great thing about comedy? It never requires justification. B
The Substance
Without our shared cultural knowledge of Demi Moore’s life and career, The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s absurdist experiment in gory meta-hagsploitation, is a fairly limp if expressively graphic satire of impossible female body standards. Moore’s presence, and her performance, give the film its moments of depth—moments Fargeat doesn’t always seem particularly interested in. Moore is an aging, discarded star who injects herself with a black-market serum that looks like radioactive pee and mitoses into the “ideal version of herself,” a perky-butted and gleam-smiled Margaret Qualley who calls herself Sue. Each woman gets to remain conscious for exactly a week apiece, spending each alternate week as a nude, comatose lump ingesting bagged nutrients. And as Elisabeth begins to sulk through her allotment of days and Sue wants more time to shine, rules are inevitably bent, with increasingly disastrous results. The subtlety-free finale, which fire-hoses blood at the patriarchy and anyone else in proximity, will either have you pumping your fist at its audacity or rolling your eyes at what a cop out it is. For better or for worse, what Fargeat is “trying to say” and her grisly overindulgence are inseparable. Read the full review here. B-
Wicked
Thinkpieces are surely in the works about how Wicked, the story of a good woman who is cast as an enemy of the people by authoritarians using fiendishly disseminated lies, is a perfect Trump era fable (just as it was a perfect Bush era fable two decades ago). But maybe the best topical lesson that Wicked offers is that villains are often more entertaining than heroes. If anything, Cynthia Erivo has too much screen presence for her already underwritten part, and her almost-adult dignity undermines her character arc. Her Elphaba (a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West) is no ingénue misled by foolish dreams, and seems incapable of humiliation. Meanwhile, Glinda is a dream of a role that Ariana Grande floats through with perfect timing, flaunting her shallow vanity, scene-stealing blonde hair tosses, and comically sudden upshoots into her showy soprano. And while I’ll take songwriter Stephen Schwartz’s generically inspirational pop over the wan schlock of the dreaded Pasek and Paul, I have seen better movie musicals set in Oz. Read our full review here. B
The Wild Robot
What happens when an all-purpose droid designed to perform just about every utilitarian task crash lands on a human-free island? Short answer: She learns intuition and love from the wild animals around her. Longer answer: After she accidentally smooshes a family of geese, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (aka Roz) makes it her task to raise the sole survivor, a runt. Lotsa nice messages about motherhood and such here and the animation has a brisk sense of physical comedy. Lupita Nyong'o is fun as Roz, and so’s the rest of the all-star voice cast—Pedro Pascal as a wily fox (is there any other kind?), Catherine O’Hara as a hedgehog mom who keeps losing count of her progeny. But I was so impressed with how casually Lilo & Stitch creator Chris Sanders captured the everyday, no-big-deal, unsentimental brutality of the animal world in the first part of the film that I was a little bummed when the critters all learned to get along in order to survive. Sorry, I’m just an “overwhelming indifference of nature” guy, what can I say? B
