Movies may seems frivolous in moments like this. But as I said in the intro to this week's music listings, we all need to recharge sometimes.
This week, I have new reviews of Father Mother Sister Brother and Is This Thing On? Also, one of my favorite annual traditions begins: the Walker's screenings of Film Independent Spirit Awards nominees. It's how I catch up on some of what I missed in indie film last year. They're free, but they're also only for Walker members (so they aren't exactly free).
Special Screenings
Thursday, January 15
Gundam Premiere Night
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Whole lotta Gundam goin’ on. Also Tuesday-Thursday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
Matewan (1987)
East Side Freedom Library
John Sayles’s classic will give you strength for the struggle. Presented by TriLingua Cinema. Part of the Reel Stories: Labor in Film series. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
The Sting (1973)
Emagine Willow Creek
Newman ‘n’ Redford are old-timey grifters. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Grandview 1&2
Wes Anderson introduces us to the Wilson bros. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Animal House (1978)
Parkway Theater
Frat boys behaving badly. $9/$12. Music from Goo Goo Mucks at 7 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Friday, January 16
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Alamo Drafthouse
It certainly is. $13.99. 6:45 p.m. More info here.
Paprika (2007)
Heights Theater
Like the Japanese Breakfast song. $13. 10 p.m. More info here.
A Minecraft Movie (2025)
Marcus West End
Relive the magic. Through Monday. 12:25 p.m. Prices and more info here.
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987)
Trylon
Director Kazuo Hara investigates the brutality of the Japanese army during WWII. $8. 7 p.m. Saturday 9 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974)
Trylon
Hara’s intimate portrait of his wife, the feminist Miyuki Takeda. $8. 9:15. Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 5:15 p.m. More info here.
Peter Hujar’s Day (2025)
Walker Art Center
Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Ferguson recreate Linda Rosenkrantz’s 1974 interview of the photographer Peter Hujar. Intimate and rewarding. Also Saturday. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, January 17
Twin Peaks: Episodes 7-9
Alamo Drafthouse
Season 1 ends and Season 2 begins. $10.99. 11 a.m. More info here.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
Alamo Drafthouse
*C.C. DeVille voice* It went from the best little house of whores in Texas to the worst little house of horrors in Texas. $10.99. 3:30 p.m. More info here.
Being Michelle (2022)
Emagine Willow Creek
A deaf woman with autism survives incarceration and abuse. $11. 2 p.m. More info here.
101 Dalmatians (1961)
Heights Theater
That’s too many dalmatians. $13. 11 a.m. More info here.
Mandy (2018)
Heights Theater
Nicolas Cage at his cagiest in this trippy gorefest. $13. 10 p.m. More info here.
Merrily We Roll Along (2025)
Heights Theater
Daniel Radcliffe does Sondheim. $13. 4 p.m. Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Janvaris (2022)
Trylon
In 1991, an aspiring Latvian filmmaker’s life is turned upside down when the Soviets attempt to take power. $15. 2:30 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, January 18
Steel Magnolias (1989)
Alamo Drafthouse
Happy birthday, Dolly! $20. Noon. More info here.
Mean Girls (2004)
Emagine Willow Creek
Yes, the original. Also Monday & Wednesday. $11. 3:50 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Grandview 1&2
Michael Cera seems like such a long time ago. Also Thursday. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Unforgiven (1992)
Heights Theater
Clint’s revisionist western. $16. 11 a.m. Monday 7 p.m. More info here.
Kill Bill (2003)
Roxy’s Cabaret
Not sure if this is The Whole Bloody Affair or just Volume 1. But it’s… Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Il Bidone (1955)
Trylon
It means “the bidone” in Italian. $8. 7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9 p.m. More info here.
Monday, January 19
Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise (2025)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Alamo Drafthouse
Zombies spending most their lives, living in Yumeginga Paradise. Showtimes. prices, and more info here.
AMC Screen Unseen
AMC Southdale
In IMAX 3D. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
9 to 5 (1981)
Emagine Willow Creek
Dolly Parton Birthday Weekend wraps up at the Alamo. $13.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Edina Mann
Not super into the “Japanese people talk funny” part of this, to be honest. Also Wednesday. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971)
Emagine Willow Creek
Emagine loves its giallo. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
WTF! Watch Terrible Films Club
56 Brewing
I don’t know what the movie is, but I know it’ll be terrible. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, January 13
White of the Eye (1987)
Alamo Drafthouse
A woman suspects her husband is a serial killer. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, January 21
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Alamo Drafthouse
There’s a new sheriff in town and it’s … Sharon Stone? $13.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
Army of Darkness (1992)
Lagoon Cinema
Sam Raimi’s zany followup to Evil Dead 2. $11. 7 p.m. More info here.
Suburban Sasquatch (2004)
Trylon
What’s Bigfoot doing in the suburbs??? $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Twinless (2025)
Walker Art Center
The most pleasant surprise of 2025. Read our review here. Free for Walker members only. 6 p.m. More info here.
One of Them Days (2025)
Walker Art Center
Is Keke Palmer the most charming person in the world? Read our review here. Free for Walker members only. 8 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, January 22
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
Alamo Drafthouse
Sorry, all tapped out of Twilight jokes right now. Ask again later. $22. 7 p.m. More info here.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Parkway Theater
Memorize this movie in middle school? Me? Couldn’t have happened. $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
The Plague (2025)
Walker Art Center
Tween water polo players bully each other. Read our review here. Free for Walker members only. 6 p.m. More info here.
Dust Bunny (2025)
Walker Art Center
Mads Mikkelsen battles a monster under a little girl’s bed. Free for Walker members only. 8 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
All You Need Is Kill
An alien flower threatens Japan.
Charlie the Wonderdog
Owen Wilson voices a dog that becomes a superhero.
The Choral
Two very different Ralph Fiennes movies open this week.
Dead Man's Wire
Bill Skarsgård takes a banker hostage.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The first good thing to happen after 9/11.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Longest ending ever.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Yep, they’re all back in theaters.
Madagascar (2005)
What kind of car is actually an island off the coast of Africa?
Night Patrol
An L.A. cop defends the projects he grew up in against vampires—who are also cops.
Sheepdog
An army vet training to be a trauma therapist has a complicated relationship with his father-in-law.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
“The Bone Temple” is what I call my bedroom.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
There’s a silly ongoing online debate that no, I will not join, about whether the Avatar movies have any “cultural impact.” But I can say that watching the first 10 minutes of each new sequel is like seeing your in-laws’ extended family over the holidays: Everyone looks kind of familiar but damned if you can be expected to remember their names, let alone what their deal is. And you know what? I like that. When you’re not actually watching an Avatar movie, nobody expects you to think about Avatar at all, and what more can you ask from a talented megalomaniac’s misguided passion project? James Cameron still can’t plot for shit, and even more than its two predecessors, Avatar: Fire and Ash is just one damn thing after another. (It hardly fits his grandiose vision, but what Cameron is narratively suited for, with his cliffhangery series of captures and escapes, is an old-fashioned serial.) So… do those damn things still look cool? Sigh, yes, they still look cool. We’re introduced to the Mangkwan, a more vicious race of Na’vi who shoot flaming arrows and practice dark magic, ruled by the sinewy, feline Varang (Oona Chaplin, whose hissing skills rival even Zoe Saldana’s). There’s a billowy, translucent trading vessel that floats through the air. Nasty squids with pincers haunt the ocean depths. So while all the usual caveats apply— Cameron’s ideas about indigenous peoples remain ideologically suspect, the younger actors still sound like they’re doing voice work for a tepid Scooby-Doo reboot, the whole thing’s just too damn long—Avatar remains your best one-stop-shop for state-of-the-art ecotopian fantasy and the righteous destruction of military hardware. B
Father Mother Sister Brother
A character in a Jim Jarmusch film earnestly declaring “Who wants to be a square and live a conventional life?” is like if Hitchcock had a character say “I only care about two things: blondes and voyeurism.” And in this quiet triptych (love that word) of family life, the director does fiddle with that notion of “hip” and “square” some. But his primary concern is with the breakdown of intergenerational communication. “Father” is Tom Waits, a loner and an enigma to his two button-down children (Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik), much as he is to us all. During a short and awkward visit to his house (a rarity, we learn) he putters and mutters Waitsily as they survey him with incomprehension. “Mother” is Charlotte Rampling, as icy and elegant as ever. Her two daughters—stylish hipster fraud Lilith (Vicky Krieps) and meekly even-tempered Timothea (Cate Blanchett)—compete for maternal approval at their annual tea party. “Sister Brother” are twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat), who sort through old photos and together learn more about their parents, whose plane recently went down in the Azores. (It’s Billy who vocalizes the line I quoted above.) There’s not just thematic overlap between these vignettes—shared words and phrases emerge, in different contexts, and in each segment some skate rats pass by, providing an unexplained slow-mo epiphany. Jarmusch calls this an “anti-action film,” and though it’s at times a little too static, we could all use a little well-constructed stasis right about now. B+
Five Nights at Freddy's 2—ends January 15
Hamnet
There’s no reason this should work. Hamlet isn’t “about” the death of Shakespeare’s only son, and even if the play was his way of processing that calamity, what’s that to us? But while I feared the biographical fallacy would run amok through (cursed phrase incoming) Chloé Zhao’s first film since Eternals—movies have a tedious habit of treating works of art as riddles we decode to understand an artist’s life—Hamnet honors the complexity of human creativity. It helps that the central figure isn’t Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, here to make the girlies weep once more), but his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley), a “forest witch” (as the villagers say) who takes to motherhood intensely, with a protectiveness born out of her visions of dark foreboding. With the aid of DP Łukasz Żal’s muddy tones and chiaroscuro interiors, and an allusive yet plainspoken script co-written with Maggie O'Farrell (author of the novel that serves as source material), Zhao creates a credible Elizabethan world, and Buckley’s performance, ranging from the subtle flickers of a smile to wracked howls of grief, is all-encompassing. The final segment—the premiere of Hamlet itself—is the emotional equivalent of juggling chainsaws, yet Buckley’s commitment anchors a conceit that could as easily elicit snickers as sniffles. In her expression we watch as the stuff of life—mourning, family drama, the unworthiness we feel in the face of personal tragedy—is subsumed into something greater than its components. A
The Housemaid
Sydney Sweeney is Millie, an ex-con living out of her car who miraculously lands a job as a live-in maid for the wealthy Winchester family. Amanda Seyfried is Nora, the too-perfect wife. Brandon Sklenar is Andrew, a kind Barry Lyndon buff who’s built like an underwear model. There’s also a daughter who looks like she sees dead people. No sooner does Millie sign on than Nora becomes unpredictably moody and vicious. Mysteries abound! Does Nora have an ulterior motive for hiring a hottie with a killer rack? Why does Andrew stick around with his cuckoo wife? Just what is the deal with that dead-eyed kid? If Sydney Sweeney can act, why does she deliver every line in the same flat zoomer mutter, as though she’s just getting the words out of the way? Seyfried has a ball throughout, and Sweeney does wake up for the finale, but trash shouldn’t be this impressed with itself, and the twist—you knew there was one—is undermined by an extended period of explanatory voiceover. Cartoonish about class, which is fine, and about domestic abuse, which is less so, and overall just not enough fun. Next time you think, “They don’t make movies like that anymore,” be careful what you wish for: This is what happens when they try. C+
Is This Thing On?
At last, Bradley Cooper makes the tedious relationship drama we all knew he had in him. A Star Is Born had Gaga; Maestro went down swinging. But this is a grownup movie about grownup stuff for grownups, as filtered through the sensibility of a guy who spent his 40s dating Irina Shayk and Gigi Hadid. (If it tanks, the Times will surely scold us all once again for not going to see serious adult films.) Will Arnett and Laura Dern are Alex and Tess. He’s in finance, she’s a former U.S. Olympic volleyball star, and I’m sure we can all relate to their lives. When we meet the married couple, they’ve decided to separate, though we won’t know why until an argument later in the film where they somberly fling lines like “You checked out first!” at each other. One night, to avoid paying a $15 cover, Will puts his name down on an open mic list, and he is reborn onstage; he’s befriended by other comics and (we’re told) develops a newfound sexual magnetism as he processes his new life confessionally onstage. Arnett capably exudes middle-aged surrender when necessary, and Dern is always a welcome presence, but there’s no sense that these people were together for 26 years. Meanwhile Andra Day and Cooper play one of those couples you always wish would break up already, and guess what? They’re even less fun to be around than in real life. Most annoyingly, Is This Thing On? plays into the noxious idea that art is therapy, and that audiences are obliged to play along as people onstage work through their shit. Why should I pay $15 to hear what a professional should charge $150/hour to listen to? C+
Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu
Marty Supreme
Josh Safie and Ronald Bronstein’s script brings the frenetic energy of postwar Jewish fiction to the story of an annoying little man who is very good at 1) ping pong and 2) getting people to do what he wants. In the course of two and a half hours, Marty Mauser robs his uncle, knocks up a married woman, bangs an aging movie star, opens for the Harlem Globetrotters, loses a mobster’s dog, swindles some Jersey rubes, and screws over anyone who gives him a break. The cast is uniformly great, even (grits teeth) Kevin O’Leary, but this is the Timothée Chalamet show, let’s be real. He gets that Marty’s ego and his willingness to be humiliated all come from the same place, that drive to succeed that either hollows you out or reveals your hollowness. Open wounds from the last war seep out all over this film via Jewish resentment, Holocaust survival, Japanese nationalism. And despite an anachronistic ’80s new wave/pop soundtrack blended with composer Daniel Lopatin’s audition to become this generation’s Giorgio Moroder, the production design is impeccable: No one in this movie looks like they’ve ever seen a cell phone. So smart and frantic and bracing that if you’re not careful you might even mistake its closing scene for a moment of heartwarming redemption. A-
No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook sure knows how to end a damn movie—if at any point you find the macabre comedy of No Other Choice a bit unfocused, rest assured that it will end with as much bleak finality as Decision to Leave, though on a far less romantic note of doom. We begin with handsome paper-factory manager Man-Su (Squid Game album Lee Byung-hun) outside his gorgeous home, grilling eel to celebrate his pretty wife Mi-ri’s (Son Ye-jin) birthday. As they huddle together with daughter and son, and their two dogs dart between their legs in the lovely autumn light, you just know an ax is gonna fall. Sure enough, the new American owners toss Man-Su out on his ear, forcing him to endure a patronizing session where the newly unemployed are coached to chant that their firing is not their fault. But masculinity doesn’t untangle that easily. Battling guilt, jealousy, alcoholism, pride, and sheer purposelessness as he fails to find a new job, Man-Su decides he must murder his competition. Unlike Park’s usual protagonists, though, Man-su has a hard time acclimating to murder. He’s not just squeamish and inept, he’s hobbled by empathy—he might be able to kill these guys, but he can’t stand to see their feelings hurt. Working with cinematographer Woo-hyung Kim, Park’s technique dazzles with acrobatic unpredictability here, with tricky dissolves that wash us nimbly between scenes and perspectives. And by the time Man-Su gets his final reward Park’s kill-or-be-killed metaphor has left all subtlety behind, as it damn well should. A-
Resurrection—ends January 15
“In a wild and brutal era, humans have discovered that the secret to eternal life is to no longer dream!” a title card tells us with suitably melodramatic aplomb. And yet, in this world of the future (or is it?), some outcasts, called Deliriants, continue to dream regardless, even though they wither to nosferaturian husks as a result. An introductory sequence shot as a silent film follows an agent (Shu Qi) who tracks down a decaying Deliriant (Jackson Yee) in a steampunk opium den that recalls the space station in Twin Peaks’ third season. When he begs for a mercy killing, the agent instead keeps him alive a century longer, and he in essence relives the age of film, as condensed into four segments, each with its own characteristic style. Resurrection is like nothing you’ve seen before and yet every element of it seems familiar. Even if you’re not the sort of cineaste who can tick off boxes here and there—Orson Welles here, the Lumieres there—its remixing of genres, images, and techniques will stir up déjà vu. And since narrative is never Bi’s main concern, images are what will stay with you: the way a woman’s sneaker pivots as she turns to climb a ladder, or how a double rear-view mirror reflects a driver and a passenger individually. When we return to the framing device, and the Deleriant finally expires, the film ends in an empty movie theater. Is this an elegy for cinema or a call to rebirth? Resurrection suggests that we’ve barely begun to draw upon the wealth of images that can sustain us, and yet also that our time is running out to retain that capability. Which may make it the most realistic film of the year. A-
