The Trylon's John Frankenheimer series (sponsored by Racket!) kicks off this week with The Manchurian Candidate. Meanwhile, there's a new doc out about whether Lincoln was gay—which, funnily enough, I saw a preview for before Reagan. Can't imagine what the audience made of that. (Yes I can, but I don't wanna.)
Special Screenings
Thursday, September 5
Power (2024)
Capri Theater
A history of U.S. policing. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Back to the Future (1985)
Grandview 1&2
I need to come up with a new Back to the Future quip. Also Saturday. $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Friday, September 6
Top Gun (1986)
Marcus West End Cinema
How'd they get them planes so fast? $6. 3 & 8:45 p.m. More info here.
The Goonies (1985)
Marcus West End Cinema
Your childhood was a lie. $6. 5:45 p.m. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
Read all about it here. 8 p.m. $13/$19. More info here.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Trylon
*Extremely Liz Collin voice* Oh I see they made a movie about Tim Walz. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:30 p.m. Sunday 3 & 5:30 p.m. More info here.
23 Mile (2023)
Walker Art Center
A "political video diary" from activist Mitch McCabe, filmed in 2020. McCabe will be in conversation wtih Dr. Morgan Adamson and Dr. Catherine R. Squires after the screening. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, September 7
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers—Extended (2002)
Emagine Willow Creek
So long they coulda fit a third tower in there. Also Sunday & Wednesday. $9. 12:30 & 5:30 p.m. More info here.
The Brother From Another Planet (1984)
Main Cinema
A Black spaceman faces special challenges on Earth. $10. 10 p.m. More info here.
The Great Outdoors (1988)
Parkway Theater
It's John Candy month at the Parkway! $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, September 8
Kiki (2017)
Emagine Willow Creek
The unofficial sequel to the classic Paris Is Burning. $10. 4 p.m. More info here.
Kiru (1962)
Trylon
An orphaned samurai is unbeatable. $8. 8 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 8:45 p.m. More info here.
Monday, September 9
AMC Scream Unseen
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
A new horror movie, but they're not saying which. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Emagine Willow Creek
If you call that living. $10. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Nye
Main Cinema
Filmed live at the National Theatre, the story of the man who founded the NHS. $20. 7 p.m. Also Wednesday 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, September 11
Cinema Lounge
Bryant-Lake Bowl
A local filmmaker meetup with a screening of several short local independent works. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
North Loop Green
A Minnesota classic. Free. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision (2024)
Trylon
Documentary about the founding of Hendrix's landmark Manhattan studio. Presented by Sound Unseen. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Wherefore art thou Beetlejuice?
The Front Room
A pregnant Brandy must fend off her mother-in-law.
The Greatest of All Time
A three-hour Indian spy flick.
His Three Daughters
Sure, I'll watch a movie starring Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen.
Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln
More Like GAYbraham Lincoln.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Between the Temples
The setup is a little too much like a movie pitch: Jason Schwartzman is a cantor unable to get over his wife’s death; Carol Kane is his old music teacher, who demands that he prep her for a late-life bat mitzvah. But though these two characters do indeed, you know, “learn a little about each other—and themselves—along the way,” Nathan Silver’s understated little comedy (co-written with C. Mason Wells) is unconventional in a lived, everyday sort of way rather than willfully quirky. (It’s also a welcome peek into a middle-class community of Jews who for once aren’t depicted as screaming neurotics.) Great cast, for sure: Cantor Ben’s two moms are noodgy Dolly de Leon (even better here than in Ghostlight) and matronly Caroline Aaron (you’ll recognize that gravelly voice), while Robert Smigel is an easygoing rabbi and Madeline Weinstein is his daughter, who everyone wants Ben to marry. But it’s Schwartzman and Kane, both wizards of cadence, who carry the film, their relationship developing along a comic, conversational rhythm that’s complemented by MVP Sean Price Williams’s trademark handheld verite style. I wasn’t convinced the conclusion was true to the film’s non-confrontational spirit, but I was willing to be persuaded. A-
Blink Twice
There’s probably no way to discuss Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, which she also co-wrote, without spilling the beans, so the spoiler-averse might just wanna clamp those eyes tight. In this Cinderella story turned nightmare, Channing Tatum is a tech titan who, following an undisclosed scandal and an apology tour, professes that therapy has made him a new man. He invites caterer Naomi Ackie and her more skeptical buddy Alia Shawkat (along with some other ladies and assorted hangers on) to his private island. Here the guests lounge around during the day and, by night, indulge in hallucinogenic larks that are quick-edited to conceal any details from us. As you’ve maybe heard, Blink Twice begins with a trigger warning regarding “depictions of violence—including sexual violence,” but the rape here is more implied than shown, unlike the orgy of vengeance it leads to. Kravitz’s glib one-liners and cartoonish characterizations are a mismatch for her big ideas about repressed trauma and gaslighting and abuse. The audience I saw kept laughing even when shit got grim—I don’t know if that’s what Kravitz wanted, but she certainly provided the opportunity. Loved the Yoko needle drop though. C
God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust
Inside Out 2
Inside Out’s model of the human psyche was something only Pixar could have dreamt up (derogatory): Your brain is an office staffed with project managers jockeying for control of your emotional responses. Despite the corporatized determinism at its core, the 2015 movie worked dramatically because its story of a Minnesota girl named Riley played off adult sympathies for distressed children in the sort of pitiless, heart-wrenching way that only Pixar can (complimentary, I think?). In this noisy, chaotic follow up, Riley enters adolescence and a new emotion, Anxiety, shows up to the job. The upstart feeling stages a coup, literally bottles up Joy and other inconvenient emotions, and constructs Riley’s sense of self based wholly on the perception of others. There’s so much focus on the internal conflict here that Riley becomes a puppet yanked too and fro, and the emotional dynamics make no sense even on their own terms. C+
Strange Darling
I’m resistant to the mystique of serial killers, but I’ll say this for writer/director JT Mollner’s much-praised, supposedly script-flipping new feature—it annoyed me in new and wholly unexpected ways. The film centers on a battle of wits (and eventually weapons) between Willa Fitzgerald (ID’d solely as “The Lady”) and Kyle Gallner (aka “The Demon”) as a one night stand turns into a life-or-death chase. Both leads give strong physical performances while doing what they can with Mollner’s dialogue, and there’s a fun interlude with Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey as “old hippies” living an idyllic life in the mountains. But Strange Darling’s non-linear storytelling ostentatiously hides its secrets from us; rather than intriguing and surprising us through creative misdirection, Mollner is just evasive. As for first-time cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, he’s got some style. But the opening onscreen boast about being shot on 35mm is a perfect introduction to a movie that’s so overly impressed with itself. C
Thelma
A nonegenarian (June Squibb) gets scammed online and then tracks down the evildoers to get her money back—it’s kinda like The Beekeeper if Phylicia Rashad hadn’t needed Statham to avenge her. Squibb is generally wonderful as the plucky old gal, but despite some cute moments the whole shebang still felt a little too “hooray for the aged” overall. For me, that is. Everyone seems to love this movie. Maybe my experience was flavored by an excessively enthusiastic MSPIFF crowd? Or maybe I really do expect too much from movies? B-
Twisters
Twister may not be quite the summer classic that anyone who wasn’t old enough to vote in 1996 thinks it is, but it knew what it was and what it was supposed to do. This not-really-a-sequel (unless every movie about a shark is a Jaws sequel) is a bigger mess than a small Oklahoma town after an EF5. It can't really be about climate change because blockbusters have to be carefully nonpartisan, but it can’t not be about climate change because why else (as everyone in this movie is constantly saying) are there more tornadoes than ever. The goofiest part is that the chasers keep abandoning storms to instead rush into threatened towns to "help," i.e. telling everyone to get away from windows and get into the basement, which, sorry, but if you live in tornado alley and don't already know that you deserve to get swooped up into the sky. As Normal People and Hit Man showed, both Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell are better actors than they are movie stars. He needs to find another auteur to cast him against type instead of passing off his permasquint and smackably handsome grin as charisma; she needs to star in a Jane Austen adaptation or a Paddington sequel or something because I don’t believe she could find Oklahoma on a map. This will make enough money that neither of those things will ever happen, and I bet director Lee Isaac Chung never makes another Minari either. Meanwhile we’ll probably lose the National Weather Service. C+
