Nothing too exciting on the new movie front this week, though I am curious about Lurker and Boys Go to Jupiter. Two locally made films—one vintage, one fresh—will be screening this week as well, along with the usual wide selection of older films.
Special Screenings
Thursday, September 4
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
Alamo Drafthouse
It’s always sweater weather for Freddie. $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024)
Capri Theater
With a discussion led by Fancy Ray. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wicked (2024)
The Commons
No one can stop you from singing along outside. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
Emagine Willow Creek
So bummed that Park Chan-wook turned scab. $11.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
La Haine (1995)
Grandview 1&2
Le malaise des banlieues, n'est-ce pas? $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Willow (1988)
Trylon
A star turn for famed ewok/leprechaun Warwick Davis. $8. 7 p.m. Saturday 9 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Top Secret! (1984)
Trylon
Airplane! but make it spies. $8. 9:30 p.m. Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m. More info here.
Friday, September 5
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Alamo Drafthouse
I don’t remember anything about the movie, but I remember the Dio song. $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Bad Boys (1995)
Harriet Island Target Stage
Really though, what are you gonna do? Free. Dusk. More info here.
Re-Animator (1985)
Main Cinema
Bringing corpses back to life causes unanticipated problems. OK, maybe they could have been anticipated. Presented by Midnight Mayhem. $11. 10 p.m. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
Movies are better when you can scream at them. $13/$19. 8 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, September 6
Catvideofest 2025
Riverview Theater
If it’s the weekend, it’s time for cat videos at the Riverview. $5. 10:45 a.m. Sunday 10:30 a.m. More info here.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Roxy’s Cabaret
In America, plant eat you. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, September 7
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Alamo Drafthouse
Sorry but I feel like the new movie is gonna suuuuck. $18. 4 p.m. More info here.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Emagine Willow Creek
Released 40 years ago. Which means you must be how old? $10.60. 3:30 & 6:10 p.m. Wednesday 6:15 p.m. More info here.
Blow Out (1981)
Grandview 1&2
One of the great Philadelphia movies. $14:44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
All Through the Night (1942)
Trylon
Bogie lets the Nazis know they messed with the wrong gangster. $8. 7:30 p.m. 7 & 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Monday, September 8
The Faculty (1998)
Emagine Willow Creek
Ah, the Kevin Williamson era. Sold out. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Blow Out (1981)
Edina 4
In case you don’t feel like going to St. Paul. Also Wednesday. $12.15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Patti Rocks (1988)
Main Cinema
This MN indie flick was a hit at Sundance back in the day. $11. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, September 9
Unholy Communion (2025)
Parkway Theater
A new indie film about the murder of a Catholic priest in a small town in Minnesota. Hey, that’s where we live! $10/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, August 27
Secret Movie Night
Emagine Willow Creek
What can it be? $11.60. 7 p.m. More info here.
Inherent Vice (2014)
Lagoon Cinema
Paul Thomas Anderson gets his Pynch on. $12.50. 7 p.m. More info here.
Almost Famous (2000)
Trylon
Cameron Crowe romanticizes his youth. Presented by Sound Unseen. Sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Bengal Files
A new Indian historical drama.
Boys Go to Jupiter
An animated feature with the hippest voice cast: Demi Adejuyigbe, Eva Victor, Julio Torres, Sarah Sherman. And so on.
The Conjuring: Last Rites
Has the Conjuring couple met their match?
The Guardian Demon
A new Vietnamese horror flick.
Hamilton
Revisit the misadventures of America’s favorite monarchist banker.
The Legend of Hei II
The sequel to the Chinese animated hit.
Light of the World
A cartoon about Jesus.
Little Hearts
Seriously, just the tiniest hearts you’ve ever seen.
Lurker
An obsessive retail worker finds his way into a pop star’s inner circle.
Madharasi
A new Indian action thriller.
Splitsville
Population: you.
The Threesome
Not to be confused with Threesome (1994).
Twinless
This movie (about “twinless twins”?) is too high-concept for me to figure out.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Blind: A Phil Robertson Tribute—ends Thursday
Caught Stealing
What a slog. Austin Butler (weirdly channeling Barbarino-era Travolta at times) is Hank Thompson, a hunky bartender on the Lower East Side who coulda been a star ballplayer if he hadn’t rammed his IROC into a tree as a kid. His neighbor (Matt Smith with a mohawk that would’ve got him hooted off St. Mark’s Place in 1998, which is when this movie takes place for some reason) asks Hank to look after his cat; soon Russian mobsters start pummeling Hank, and Hasidic hitmen are on his trail too. The film veers between bloody ha-ha and bloody oh-no without settling on a style, and if you try to miss its “last good days of New York” thesis, don’t worry, Darren Aronofsky will get the Twin Towers into every shot he can. Maybe Charlie Huston’s 2005 novel of the same name works on the page, but nothing in his lackluster adapted script suggests how, and though Butler does have charisma you’d never know it from his performance here. Still, Aronofsky haters (we are legion) will be relieved that the film keeps his auteurist tics in check, so no women are tormented to the brink of insanity and beyond—which doesn’t mean no women get a bullet to the head. C
Coolie—ends Thursday
Eden—ends Thursday
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
F1
Well of course this is Top Gun for race cars—you thought Joseph Kosinski was gonna go back to directing Tron movies and Halo ads? What matters is that F1’s on-track action is as gripping as Top Gun: Maverick’s mid-air feats, and there are moments that had me, a non-gasper, gasping. The acting bits are not entirely as bad as those TG:M’s Oscar-nominated screenplay made us endure. And if your attention may wander in these off-track moments, at least F1 (I am not calling it F1: The Movie—I got my own Google problems to worry about) leaves us at leisure to compare and contrast Tom Cruise’s smugness with Brad Pitt’s: eternal youth vs. staved-off decline, skill vs. savvy, unnerving intensity vs. indolent swagger. Yes, ideally, Pitt’s Sonny Hayes would learn as much from his younger colleagues as he teaches them, but instead it’s the wily old driver who touches the lives of everyone he encounters—he’s kind of a Magical Caucasian. Chastened hotshot Damson Idris learns not to showboat for the press. Kerry Condon overcomes his mistrust of Sonny’s arrogance long enough to bed him. And team owner Javier Bardem, who took a chance on Sonny, sees his long shot pay off, defeating the machinations of evil-as-ever Tobias Menzies. And they say Hollywood doesn’t make movies for aging white guys who feel like their talents have gone unacknowledged anymore. B-
Honey Don’t!
Theoretically, I appreciate that Ethan Coen’s lesbian wife and new filmmaking partner Tricia Cooke has brought out the horndog in the ol’ feller. Turns out men and women alike want to see Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza fuck—who knew? (Everyone knew). But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna giggle every time I see a dildo. I was no fan of Cooke/Coen’s first film together, the “brisk and harmless” Drive-Away Dolls (to quote myself), but I figured they were still working out a few, erm, kinks in their collaborative style. Nope—what you see is what they want you to get. Here Qualley is a high femme Bakersfield PI whose investigation into an auto fatality leads her to a drug-smuggling church run by a self-involved Chris Evans as people die all around her—accidentally, gruesomely, comically, pointlessly, and at great length (often all at once). But while Qualley does look great in her ’40s outfits (those red heels are her), I’ve yet to discern the star quality directors keep projecting onto her, she struggles to master the rushed deadpan the Coen(ish) patter requires, and every time I hear her do a southern accent, all I can think is, “Ma’am, you are no Holly Hunter.” B-
The Last Class—ends Thursday
Leaving Mom—ends Thursday
The Naked Gun
Such is the ridiculous state of the film industry that the success of Akiva Schaffer’s spirited tribute to the laff-a-minute cop spoofs of his teenage years (and mine!) might well determine whether we get another silly comedy in theaters ever again. (Could we even get a gagfest like this if it hadn’t piggybacked off existing IP?) Liam Neeson can hardly compete with Leslie Nielsen’s granite deadpan—he’s having fun here, as is Pam Anderson, and they want us to know it. (Also, mazel tov, kids.) And we’re having fun too, so sometimes we will ourselves to laugh at bits (“Take a seat.” “No thanks, I have one at home.”) with some nostalgia for our inner tween’s sense of humor. But lighten up, tell your adult brain to STFU, and this is a fun ride. The plot is some nonsense to do with a sonic frequency that transforms people into creatures of pure id, all the better for comic fight scenes that the movie does best. Show it to a 12-year-old who doesn’t know it’s a homage and they’ll never stop quoting it. B+
Jurassic World Rebirth
Well, at least now we know why the dinosaurs went extinct—they couldn’t hunt for shit. I mean, one predator here not only fails to gobble up a child hiding under a life raft, but the loser can’t even pop the raft. Godzilla director Gareth Edwards and original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp (who I’ll just note is also responsible for the Indiana Jones duds The Dial of Destiny and The Crystal Skill) were called upon to right this series seven installments in, but the best they can dream up is an island of mutant dinosaurs like the Distortus Rex and the Mutadon. Plotwise, a team of mercenaries organized by Scarlett Johansson (who must have serious gambling debts or something) is dispatched to collect blood samples from the three largest breeds of dinosaurs, a key ingredient in a cure for heart disease. En route, the adventurers rescue a family that’s crossing the Atlantic on a sailboat, because the pictures needs children to imperil. The pro-forma backstory these characters are given is worse than none at all—a friend of Johansson’s Zora Bennett was blown up by a Yemen car bomb so she’s ready to retire, Mahershala Ali’s Duncan Kincaid lost his son so he wants to protect children (he’d let them die otherwise?). But it’s hard to care what happens to these people unless you’re just opposed in principle to the idea of make-believe humans being eaten by make-believe dinosaurs. C
Relay—ends Thursday
The Roses
I’m not gonna pretend I remember much about Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner going at each other 36 years ago in The War of the Roses, a movie that mostly existed because people really liked them together in Romancing the Stone. But I do recall its core conceit—how quickly passion flips to hatred—which this reboot/revamp/do-over/whatever avoids with laborious determination. Tony McNamara’s screenplay, which dodges predictability so assiduously it rarely has much fun, is dedicated to the even more cynical proposition that marriage can turn even the most thoughtful humans into monsters. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch are Ivy and Theo, married Brits bemused by life in the U.S., where friends give them guns as gifts; while his career as an architect craters, hers as a chef skyrockets. A self-aware modern liberal man, Theo consciously resists toxic resentment as he takes on childcare duties, and the duo’s shared ironic sensibility allows them to bicker cordially for most of the film. Until this all collapses into violent farce, that is, at which point it’s like Scenes from a Marriage turning into Punch and Judy. Docked a notch for letting Kate McKinnon do her “Ooh, am I sexy or creepy, who can say, ooh” shtick along the way. B-
Superman (read the full review here)
James Gunn’s flagship reboot of the DC film universe has its moments. In its best scene, a smug Clark Kent insists on a candid interview—as Superman—with co-worker/girlfriend Lois Lane, and the ace journalist he’s dating pulls no punches, getting in as many good hits as any of Lex Luthor’s henchfolk. David Corenswet’s Clark/Kal/Supes is all-too-human, with a real temper and self-regard bubbling up from beneath his Midwestern aw-shuckistude. He’s well-matched by Rachel Brosnahan, a purely 21st century Lois Lane who avoids Rosalind Russell throwback vibes as she fields modern problems like work-life balance and how to fly Mr. Terrific’s spacecraft. Yet the rest of Superman never matches the energy of that interview; in fact, Gunn foolishly splits Clark and Lois up on separate adventures. As we enter a world of intra-dimensional pocket universes and Metropolis-(Cleveland- actually) gobbling black holes, Superman gets loud and ugly and digital and, well, MCUish. And sorry, but there’s just too much Krypto. B-
Weapons
Zach Cregger is no Oz Perkins (complimentary). Still, “17 children left their homes in the middle of the night and they never came back” is the easy part, and without giving too much away to the “I’ll wait for streaming” crowd, the explanation struck me as anticlimactic and a little goofy. As with Barbarian, Cregger works better with premises and characterization than with “what’s behind that door,” and, ugh, old ladies still creep him out. Still, Weapons as a manic meditation on grief, kind of an energy-drink-fueledThe Sweet Hereafter, with each adult is wrapped up in their own world—the kids’ teacher (Julia Garner) makes it all about herself, Josh Brolin is a dad doing his own research, and Alden Ehrenreich is a hapless cop who distracts himself by targeting a homeless swindler. So, how do you grade a film that zips from ominous to amusing to dumb to creepy-despite-itself to arrive at a truly galvanizing ending. Let’s try… B
