Lotsa scary flicks to take in this Halloween—including, yes, Halloween. After that we (mostly) leave spooky stuff behind, with the Trylon's series on Chinese-American Hollywood star Anna May Wong beginning this weekend and Oscar movie season kicking into gear with Anora (anticiping!), Here (dreading!), and Emilia Pérez (curious!).
Special Screenings
Thursday, October 31
Halloween (1978)
Alamo Drafthouse/Marcus West End Cinema/Parkway Theater
The reason for the season. Alamo: $10. 2:50, 5:25 & 8 p.m. More info here. Marcus: $6.51. 9 p.m. Friday-Saturday 10 p.m. More info here. Parkway: $9/$12. 8 p.m. More info here.
Coraline (2009)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
So, how's the Neil Gaiman fandom holding up these days? AMC: Also Friday. $19.62. 5 & 7:30 p.m. More info here. Emagine: $15. 12 & 6 p.m. Friday 1 & 6 p.m. More info here.
Channel 666
Bryant Lake Bowl
A selection of Halloween-appropriate rare and retro media. $9/$13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Sabaton: The Tour To End All Tours (2024)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
Heavy metal Swedes! AMC: $15. 8 p.m. More info here. Emagine: $20. 6:20 p.m. More info here.
The Exorcist Extended Director's Cut (1973)
Emagine Willow Creek
More like The Extra-cist. $11. 1 & 6 p.m. More info here.
Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Grandview 1&2
Will you people keep it down? I'm trying to watch the movie. $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Ringu (1998)
Main Cinema
He was always my favorite Beatle. $11. 7 p.m. More info here.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Marcus West End
Your last chance to see it in theaters this year, I'm guessing. $10.25. 4:30 p.m. More info here.
Hausu (1977)
Trylon
A Trylon Halloween tradition. $8. 7 & 9 p.m. Friday-Saturday 9:45 p.m. Sunday 1 p.m. More info here.
Friday, November 1
The Great Dictator (1940)
Alamo Drafthouse
Timely! Through Sunday. $10. 3:50 p.m. More info here.
The Parallax View (1974)
Alamo Drafthouse
The '70s at their paranoidest. Sold out. 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
We could all use a good scream right about now. $13/$19. 8 p.m. More info here.
Beijing Watermelon (1989)
Trylon
A Tokyo shop owner meets a Chinese student. From the director of Hausu. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 3 & 5:45 p.m. More info here.
Olympic Efforts
Walker Art Center
A selection of short films about how regional sports reflect the cultures that give rise to them. $12/$15 or free if you wear a sports jersey. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, November 2
One Direction: This Is Us (2013)
Emagine Willow Creek
RIP Liam. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024) Early Access
Emagine Willow Creek
A sneak peek at a new adaptation of the classic children's book. $11. 4 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Cannibal! The Musical (1993)
Main Cinema
Pre-South Park Trey Parker and Matt Stone do their thing. $10. 10 p.m. More info here.
Chicken Run (2000)
Parkway Theater
And thus begins the Parkway's "talking animals" series. $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, November 3
John Wick (2014)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
Love that this was supposed to be called Scorn, but Keanu kept calling it John Wick in interviews and that had to use that (much better!) title. AMC: $16.35. 5 & 7:30 p.m. Wednesday 7 p.m. More info here. Emagine: $12.50. Sunday & Wednesday 1 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis (2001)
Emagine Willow Creek
As in "not Fritz Lang's"—this one's adapted from the manga. Also Monday. $12.50. 6 p.m. More info here.
The Sound of Music (1965)
The Heights
A benefit for the Groveland food shelf. $15. 1 p.m. More info here.
Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert
Orpheum Theatre
Selections from the animated series, with a soundtrack from a live orchestra. $30-$105. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Shanghai Express (1932)
Trylon
Chinese rebels capture a British officer on a train. Good for them! $8. 8:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 8:45 p.m. More info here.
Monday, November 4
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Alamo Drafthouse
This guy can teach you how to make a chainsaw noise. $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
They Live (1988)
Alamo Drafthouse
John Carpenter's subtle satire of modern America. $11.50. Monday, Wednesday 4:20 p.m. Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Tenebrae (1982)
Emagine Willow Creek
Did a horror novelist inspire a serial killer? $6. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
The Heights
Can't think of a better theater in town to see this in. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, November 6
The Roof (2006)/Ambiance (2024)
Bryant Lake Bowl
Two films about Palestine. Presented by Mizna as part of its Insurgent Transmissions series. $5-$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Twister (1996)
Emagine Willow Creek
You'll believe a cow can fly. $9. 1:15 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Anna Karenina (2012)
Grandview 1&2
Choo choo! $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Tape Freaks November
Trylon
Is Tape Freaks sold out again? Tape Freaks is sold out again. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
Absolution
Liam Neeson is a "brooding, aging gangster." Ah, cast against type again.
Amaran
An Indian historical drama.
Anora
I am more scared of Russian gangsters than of any other criminals.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
An Indian comedy-horror film.
Emilia Pérez
A musical about a trans crime boss who wants to start a new life. That's a lot!
Godzilla Minus One
Takashi Yamazaki's human-scaled approach to the Big Guy hardly makes for as effective a postwar drama as some have said—it feels like more of a nice gesture than a real story. But it does provide a workable narrative framework for ideas about Japan. He gives us the sense of a country that’s just crawled out of its wreckage only to get knocked back on its ass; our heroes meet the threat with a mood of “shit, not again.” Godzilla himself? Oh, he’s scary as hell. He’s nimbler than usual, his tail whipping with ferocity and velocity, and though the Bikini Atoll tests didn’t awaken him, they did mutate him, giving him awesome powers like nuclear breath. Yamazaki gets how to build anticipation: His Godzilla powers up before he goes nuclear, and before he appears the fish he’s been hunting float up to the surface of the sea. Ginza gets leveled as it has never before been leveled, but wisely, Godzilla Minus One allows a creature who rises from the depths of the sea to show what he can do on his own turf—or his own surf, I guess. Some theaters are also showing Godzilla Minus One/ Minus Color. B
Hitpig!
A bounty-hunting pig has a change of heart.
Here
The book is incredible. This will not be. At least not in a good way.
KA
Lotta new Indian movies this week. This one's a thriller.
Lucky Baskhar
Another Indian movie!
Lost on a Mountain in Main
A 12-year-old boy fights to stay alive in the wilderness. Wonder if he makes it.
Singham Again
Not again!!!
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
It’s nice to be pandered to occasionally, so in the run up to the release of this redundant sequel I’ve enjoyed hearing how Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega geeked out on set about their shared love of Soy Cuba, as well as the Letterboxd promo where Ortega tried to sell Catherine O’Hara on The Passion of Joan of Arc. But then there were the CarMax, Denny’s, and Progressive ads reminding us the real reason why beloved films of the past can never die: $$$. And the movie itself? Well, with Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin’s quaint Maitlands having moved on via an unexplained “loophole,” the Deetz clan—Ryder's Lydia (now a famed ghost hunter), O'Hara's Delia (now an established NYC artist), and Ortega as Lydia’s sullen daughter Astrid—reunites for the funeral of its patriarch Charles (l’affair de Jeffrey Jones is navigated around cleverly). From the re-maniacal Michael Keaton and Ryder’s unstable goth mom to newcomers Justin Theroux as Lydia’s weaselly beau and current Burton GF Monica Bellucci as a soul-sucking spook, everyone here is game, and yes, there is involuntary singing and goopy mayhem. But while this silly little romp through a familiar world consistently errs on the side of goofball exuberance, the storylines race around frantically in search of a reason to happen. As for Ortega, she was good enough in the 2021 school shooting film The Fallout that I hope she frees herself from the afterlife of 20th century IP at some point and shows us what she's got. And I couldn’t help but be haunted by the fact that if he’d made the original a few years later, Burton would probably have cast Johnny Depp instead of Keaton. 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+
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-
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+
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
