OK, La Bola Negra was completed long before Tuesday's Blue Wave, and Heated Rivalry, now showing in theaters in two-episode chunks, was already a sensation. But if I can place side-by-side pics like the ones above, fuck it, I'm claiming a culture-war victory.
Added a review for Wildwood below. And if you haven't seen, I'm gathering up all my capsule reviews here.
Special Screenings
Thursday, November 5
Swingers (1996)
Alamo Drafthouse
I’d be happy to leave this one back in the ’90s. $13.99. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
V for Vendetta (2005)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/B&B Bloomington/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Natalie Portman shaves her head. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
Rammstein: Live in Mexico City (2026)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
Just what it says. $15. 6 p.m. Saturday 2 p.m. More info here.
Soul Patrol (2026)
Capri Theater
A doc about the Vietnam War’s first all-Black special ops team. $5-$20. 7 p.m. More info here.
Frogman (2022)
Emagine Willow Creek
A found-footage horror film with a cult following. $13. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Frogman Returns (2025)
Emagine Willow Creek
Stick around for the sequel. $13. 8:30 p.m. More info here.
The Hunt (2012)
Grandview 1&2
People have got it in for Mads Mikkelsen. $13.19. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Last Temptation of Becky (2026)
Marcus West End
There are three Becky movies? $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
American Theater (2026)
Riverview Theater
A canceled director stages a drama about the Salem witch trials. $15. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
The More the Merrier (1943)
Trylon
A Jean Arthur/Joel McCrea screwball comedy set amid a D.C. housing shortage. $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday, November 6
Southland Tales (2006)
Alamo Drafthouse
The Rock has never been better. $10.99. 2 p.m. More info here.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie The Commentary Track (2026)
Heights Theater
Honestly, I have a lot of questions I hope they answer. 4:30 p.m. Saturday 2 p.m. Sunday 1:45 p.m. Wednesday 4:30 p.m. Thursday 7 p.m. $10/$13. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
Come yell at some local short films. $18/$25. 8 p.m. More info here.
Bitterroot (2024)
TriLingua Cinema
A Hmong man cares for his mother in rural Montana. $5. 5:45 p.m. Saturday 6:20 p.m. More info here.
American Doctor (2026)
TriLingua Cinema
A powerful documentary about American physicians treating Gazan victims of the Israeli invasion. $5. 8 p.m. Saturday 4:10 p.m. More info here.
Red Dawn (1984)
Trylon
Teens defend America from Commies. $8. 7 p.m. Saturday 9:15 p.m. Sunday 12:30 p.m. More info here.
War Games (1983)
Trylon
I have never stopped thinking about how the dad in this movie butters his corn on the cob. $8. 9:15 p.m. Saturday 4:45 & 7 p.m. Sunday 2:45 p.m. More info here.
Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
Walker Art Center
Featuring the most gripping corporate community feedback meeting ever captured on film. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, November 7
Stray Kids World Tour "Run It" Live Viewing
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Marcus West End
This boy band has so many members! $27. 2 & 6:15 p.m. AMC: More info here. Marcus: More info here.
Back to the Future (1985)
Emagine Willow Creek
If this movie was made today the kid would go back to the '90s. Also Sunday & Wednesday. $11. Noon & 6:15 p.m. More info here.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
North Garden Theater
Believe me, it holds up. $10. 6 p.m. More info here.
The Lorax (2012)
TriLingua Cinema
Green propaganda. Free. 10 a.m. More info here.
Gift (2023)
Walker Art Center
The film that grew into Evil Does Not Exist, with composer Eiko Ishibashi performing her score live. $12-$18. 7 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, November 8
The Magnificent Ambersons (1943)
Alamo Drafthouse
Ban cars. $10.99. Noon. More info here.
Blood Simple (1984)
Grandview 1&2
The Coens start their career with a bang. $13.19. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
In the Lab Actor Showcase
Main Cinema
Fourteen scenes starring 28 local actors. $14. 7 p.m. More info here.
Kanał (1957)
Trylon
The Polish resistance fights Nazis in the Warsaw sewers. $8. 5 & 7 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9 p.m. More info here.
Monday, November 9
Being Heumann (2026)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
The story of disability rights activist Judith Heumann. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Edina Mann
Sorry I hate when a movie title is a pun on a character’s name. Also Wednesday. $10.90. 7 p.m. More info here.
Doctor Butcher M.D. (1980)
Emagine Willow Creek
Also known as Zombie Holocaust. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
A Star Is Born (1954)
Heights Theater
The best version. $16. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie (2026)
Marcus West End
What can it be? $6. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, November 10
Paper Tiger (2026)
Alamo Drafthouse
An advance screening of the new James Gray movie, with a livestream Q&A. $13.99. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Alamo Drafthouse
Is this about Kissinger? $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Concessions (2026)
Heights Theater
Laughs and tears as a movie theater closes up. $16. 7 p.m. More info here.
Why We Dance (2026)
Main Cinema
A film about the preservation of traditional Tribal Nations dance. $5. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, November 11
Crocodile Dose (2026)
Alamo Drafthouse
Three teens go on a drug spree. Preceded by the short film EE (2026). $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Secret Movie Night
Emagine Willow Creek
A secret movie, chosen by a local notable. $12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Deer Hunter (1979)
Lagoon Cinema
Just in time for hunting season. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Soul Patrol (2026)
Main Cinema
A second chance to catch the new doc. $9. 4:30 p.m. More info here.
Contempt (1963)
Main Cinema
Fritz Lang makes a film version of The Odyssey. $18. 7 p.m. More info here.
A Fat Wreck (2016)
Trylon
The 10th anniversary of this punk doc includes a new interview with Dillinger Four. Preceded by the short film Changes: The Story of Sugar (2026). Presented by Sound Unseen. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, November 12
Ratatouille (2007)
Granada Theater
A Taste the Movies event. This meal better be prepared by an actual rat. $169. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
La Bola Negra
Queer love during the Spanish Civil War.
The Cat in the Hat
I am just now learning about the "viral 'Cat in the Hat' trend."
Drummer Boy
Two brothers fight on opposite sides of the American Revolution. Angel Studios? You guessed it.
Ghost Soldier
Jim Caviezel protects local families from evil corporations
Heated Rivalry
The hit hockey romance is now in theaters. I thought this was the kind of show you watched, uh, alone at home.
Ramayana: Part 1
This Indian epic is getting a big push stateside.
Rocky (1976)
A dimwitted turtle owner loses a fight.
Summer Holidays
An Indian family drama.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Coyote vs. Acme
When a fed-up Wile E. Coyote belatedly recognizes that defective Acme products are the source of all his woes, he seeks out Kevin Avery (Will Forte), a lawyer who specializes in settling animated clients’ product-liability cases fast and cheap. But the fired-up Coyote, along with Avery’s idealistic niece (Lana Condor), decide to stick it to The Man. Or rather, The Rooster—as Acme’s CEO, Foghorn Leghorn reveals himself as the evil bully we always knew he was, and it’s a hoot to watch him intimidate his lawyer, an obligingly game John Cena. If much of the comedy here leans on nostalgia, the old bits remain good ones. And while there’s a reason classic Looney Tunes didn’t exceed 10 minutes, Bugs and Daffy and Porky and Tweety all turn up at opportune moments. The human/toon interaction is as seamless as it should be, with Forte a serviceable enough straight man that I won’t compare him to Bob Hoskins. Though having avoided mentioning Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as long as I could, I couldn't help but notice that this film flirts with the other’s idea of cartoons as manic chaos agents but never quite plunges in. As for the anti-corporate storyline, it could be a critique of animal testing if it wanted to. (It’s a stretch, I say, I say, a stretch to claim it’s metaphorically calling out Big Tech’s beta-testing.) What stage of capitalism have we reached when a solid piece of entertainment like this becomes a cause célèbre simply because biz pinheads nearly binned it as a tax write off? I’m just glad it gives today’s kids the opportunity to learn who Peter Lorre was the same way that I did. B+
Fjord—ends November 5
Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971)—ends November 8
Klara for the Sun—ends November 5 because critics were mean to it
Naza—ends November 5
“After Oct. 7th,” an Israeli soldier tells journalist/filmmaker Yuval Abraham, “everyone kept saying: ‘There are no innocent people in Gaza.’” NAZA (the term is a euphemism that Israeli military and intelligence use for civilian casualties, a shortening of “nezek agavi,” or collateral damage) documents the horrific results of that thinking. From rooftops overlooking Tel Aviv, always at night, Abraham interviews 24 anonymous soldiers and intelligence officers, their faces obscured and voices digitally altered, as they discuss the IDF’s decision to attack civilian targets, sharing their personal rationalizations but expressing no regrets. Critically evaluating what’s at its core a work of journalism can feel downright obtuse—what does it mean to debate the aesthetic merit of a significant exposé? Yet Abraham and Rachel Szor, who previously captured the brutality of West Bank settlers in their Oscar-winning doc No Other Land, make striking artistic choices. They understand the power of cinematic distance: With the camera focused on modern, bustling, dazzling Tel Aviv, watching its inhabitants going about their lives, Gaza feels both a world away and perpetually present, especially as televisions blare recriminations and denouncements from Netanyahu and other Israel leaders—the same people who will condemn Naza and call for a prosecution of its makers and its sources. A-
The Odyssey—read full review here
What we tend to forget about The Odyssey is that it’s maybe 10% cool mythological shit like one-eyed giant cannibals and sinister witches and gods punishing impudent mortals and like 90% about exchanging gifts with your hosts and telling very long stories to impress them. What’s remarkable about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is that it honors this aspect of the epic while delivering the supernatural adventure film moviegoers want. Yet as always, Nolan is so transparent in his ideology you can almost believe he’s making an argument, when like any storyteller he’s just using fiction to justify his beliefs. Which, as always, is that we are always one well-told tale away from chaos. Whether the gods are real or not, warns the David Brooks of the cineplex, if we don’t honor them we will undermine the customs that hold our society together. Hey man, I just came here for the Cyclops. B+
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, as writer/director Noah Segan takes ostentatious pains to remind us throughout the nonetheless endearing character study. John Turturro is the titular thief, an easygoing Bronx elder who cares attentively for his comatose wife, plies his trade while causing as few waves as he can, and smooths over any rough patches by slipping you a few high-denomination bills. But then he robs the wrong target (a highly connected jerkoff played to the douchey hilt by Will Price) and, well, you know how that goes. Hey, did you know that New York is the greatest city in the world? And did you know it used to be so much better? From its thirdhand soundtrack funk score to its broad borough-by-borough characterizations to its cute oldguyisms (they say “Esty” for “Etsy” etc.), this movie lays it on t-h-i-c-k. Is there Steve Buscemi? You know it, bud. But Turturro’s presence holds it together; he’s just one our greatest onscreen hangs, somehow a more calming presence the more evidently he’s masking his melancholy. And I can’t help but cherish the moments of screentime he shares with Giancarlo Esposito, who plays his onetime foe and now ally in the police department. You really expect me not feel a certain way at the sight of an aged Buggin’ Out and Pino Frangione seated calmly side by side on a subway? B
Possible Love—ends November 5
Mi-ok and Sang-woo meet cute. Sort of. After she drops her wedding ring in the dark outside of a funeral, he gallantly flips on the headlights of his Porsche to find it. He’s tall, handsome, rich, and married to Ye-ji, a pretty, stylish documentarian who’s in town making a film about the aftermath of an industrial plant’s layoffs two years earlier. Mi-ok’s husband, the taciturn, haunted Ho-seok soon catches the filmmaker’s eye—he’s the subject her doc needs, she senses. Ye-ji befriends Mi-ok after the laborer’s wife proves a surprisingly articulate interview, and soon the two couples are awkwardly socializing across the class divide, until Mi-ok and Ye-ji become intimate with each other’s husbands in unexpected ways. And everything that the camera doesn’t surveil is peeped by 10-year-old Cheol, Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s son, whose unspoken anxieties manifest in a twitchy nose and a reluctance to participate in taekwondo. Writer/director Lee Chang-dong’s brilliant study of class in Korean society, the ethics of telling someone else’s story, the complex ways labor shapes our identities, and the varieties of marital love is nuanced at times, but also willing to be obvious, as though to remind us that life isn’t always subtle. As Ye-ji, Cho Yeo-jeong (the rich mom in “Parasite”) is a case study in the limits of good intentions, Zo In-sung’s Sang-woo is the sort of privileged guy who’s charming as long as he’s getting his way, and Sul Kyung-gu draws us into Ho-seok’s dark moods without striking a false note. But the film belongs to Jeon Do-yeon, the star of Lee’s Secret Sunshine (2007). As Mi-ok, she’s unexpectedly enlivened by Ye-ji’s camera, witty enough to cover up an embarrassing revelation with a blithe aphorism like “This is like a house from a novel I haven’t read,” savvy enough to recognize the limitations of her new friendship. You want a pull quote? “As insightful about the power dynamics of documentary filmmaking as You Can See Everything, more astute about the mechanics of desire between two couples than The Invite, and eight full minutes shorter than The Odyssey.” A
Resident Evil
If video game movies we must have (not like we get to decide) better this gory schlock slapstick than the klutz existentialism of the tedious Exit 8. (Both share a plot point—pregnant girlfriend—if that means anything.) Zach Cregger keeps it simpler here than in Barbarian or Weapons, which means Resident Evil is a little dumber than those (derogatory) but also means Resident Evil is a little dumber than those (complimentary). Austin Abrams (the addict from Weapons) is our dumbass hero, a driver dispatched with a high-priority delivery to the hospital in snowy Raccoon City. His cargo, I sincerely hope you won’t be astounded to learn, is the crucial ingredient needed to synthesize an antidote to a man-made contagion sweeping the land. Symptoms typically include zombie catatonia, grasping tentacles, and blob-like absorption of other humans, but there are also acid-puking ghoulies and one tubby fella with an exploding, critter-infested gut. The script could occasionally try a tiny bit harder (how much Abrams muttering “fuck” do we need?) but in a world of forced MCU quippery that’s a venial sin. And in keeping with the source material, the stakes are both enormous (the end of the world!) and virtually negligible (game over). B
Sense and Sensibility
We can debate our preferred Pride and Prejudice or wonder why no Emma has surpassed Clueless, but for most people Ang Lee’s 1995 film is Sense and Sensibility. Director Georgia Oakley’s damp, darkened, lived-in Jane Austen faces this challenge head-on—perhaps too deliberately—battling our memories of sun-dappled landscapes and cute bonnets with a lowkey naturalism. Tossed out of their home by an elder half-brother after their father’s death, the Dashwood sisters set about finding husbands, as Austen heroines must do. The elder Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is constrained in her relations with her beloved Edward (George Mackay, putting his woodenness to good use) by her good sense, while a romantic sensibility allows the younger Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) to be swept away by the dashing Willoughby (a suitably caddish Frank Dillane). Edgar-Jones has a face made for period pieces, but there’s something inappropriately waifish and younger sisterly about her Elinor, and she struggles to achieve an outward representation of her propriety. Creed-Miles fares better, in part because Oakley favors her sensibility to Elinor’s sense—I often felt the director might prefer to be mucking around in something a little more Brontëan. In fact, this affair can feel unduly heavy when Fiona Shaw’s Mrs. Jennings isn’t around to liven things up, but we do get a real warmth between the sisters, and the two dance scenes are such standouts Oakley really should do a musical next. In short, no one gets in the way of the source material, and the film gets the job done. After all, how many truly terrible Austen adaptations that don’t star Dakota Johnson are there? B
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
Verity
“I can’t tell if you’re just very calm or you’re in shock,” Josh Hartnett’s Jeremy Crawford says to Dakota Johnson’s Lowen Ashleigh as she mops blood off her face following a grisly traffic accident, and who among us hasn’t wondered the same about a Dakota Johnson character before? (Lowen later admits, “I have resting bored face.” We get it, girl. You can’t act.) In this eye-roll of a Colleen Hoover adaptation, Lowen, a struggling novelist, has been recruited to finish the work of best-selling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), who has been rendered mute and immobile by an accident. (OR HAS SHE?) Lowen stays with the Crawfords in their fancy Vermont home while working on the book. Lowen discovers a SECRET JOURNAL wherein Verity confesses to CRIMES! (OR DOES SHE?) Lowen masturbates in a tub. Lowen repeatedly says “wow” in that dopey, unfazed way we’ve come to expect/dread from Johnson. While I’d blame Hoover for the plot, which would have gotten her laughed out of the 19th century by bona fide Gothic credibility-stretchers, Michael Showalter’s diffident direction, which aspires to no stylistic flair at all, is the real culprit—it’s like he’s trying to keep this dumb thing on the rails, which takes misunderstanding the assignment to all new levels of incomprehension. And now, if you’ll promise to believe me when I say there’s little or nothing more where this comes from, I’ll leave you with the only good line in the movie: “You deserve to rock in your sad little robot bed, you selfish Machiavellian cunt.” C-
Whalefall—ends November 5
Wicker
Wild Horse Nine
It’s 1973 and a rheumy, cadaverous, yet jaunty skull of a man, dressed gaudy and inescapably American, taunts two pretty young Chilean leftists in an airport, predicting the worst for their beloved new Marxist president. Later in the film, Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) will share even grimmer visions of Salvador Allende’s fate—he’s a CIA lifer who helped take out Lumumba in the DRC and Árbenz in Guatemala before that, even JFK back home, and he knows how this shit plays out. In addition to blurting out coup details, Chris is also increasingly forgetful and working on a tell-all memoir, upsetting his boss (Steve Buscemi again, looking here like a stateside Gary Oldman), and his partner/buddy Lee (Sam Rockwell, squinting in a My Name Is Earl daze and saying “fuck” a lot). Chris and Lee travel to “Easter Island” to see “the big heads”—or rather, Rapa Nui to see the Moai, as the culturally sensitive keep reminding them—bantering for banter’s sake all the while. So yeah, it’s a Martin McDonagh movie, convinced as ever that the more men obfuscate through digression and anecdote and overall verbal irrelevancies the more they reveal about their relationships with each other. But though Malkovich gives it his all, this time I’m not so sure. For starters, fuck the CIA. We’ve all fallen for onscreen scumbags in the past, but McDonagh forgets to make these guys intriguing enough that we overlook how reprehensible they are. It’s like he thinks that the fact that they’re speaking the lines he wrote for them is enough to make us care. Like hell it is. Rapa Nui does look gorgeous though. B-
Wildwood
Sometimes a lovingly handcrafted fantasy epic is just a lovingly handcrafted fantasy epic. Gifted minor cause célèbre status by the AI backlash, the latest (forgivably CG-tweaked) spectacle from the stop-motion aesthetes at Laika has some critics complaining about about a lack of cultural resonance, but hell, I’ll take any respite from the Pixar ideology factory, thank you kindly. After her brother Mac is carried off to the Unpassable Woods by a murder of crows (that can’t be good, right?), a headstrong girl named Prue ventures in after him, trailed by a nerdy RPG pest named Curtis (whose redemption arc was honestly the biggest drag on the movie for me). There Prue encounters as many stalemated factions as Europe in 1914: snooty bureaucrats, disinterested mystics, good-hearted bandits, and several subsets of birds. Trouble’s a-brewin’ in the person of the Dowager Governess Alexandra (voiced by Carey Mulligan, who hasn’t been this good since An Education), who has mustered a coyote army and hopes to resurrect her dead son. A startling mood-setting opening, a cute biker’s-eye tour of twee Portlandia, and a brutal climactic battle where you can see every blow land stand out strongly enough that you can drift along with the meandering plot. Adapted from lead Decemberist Colin Meloy’s children’s book, it’s your basic storytime stuff—learning that adults are flawed, finding the courage to fight for what you believe in, getting help from a talking rat—but when the visuals are this cool, maybe that’s enough. A-
You Can See Everything
Do Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim provide insight into the opaque mens rea of luminous fraudster Elizabeth Holmes? Does their film “speak … uncannily to the pathos and destabilizing confusions of the present moment”? Is it “a secret history of the tech industry”? To quote the great philosopher Lou Costello, “I! DON’T! KNOW!” Before it’s timely or significant or groundbreaking or whatever superlative you want to hurl, You Can See Everything is fun, challenging us to keep our psychological balance as we’re consistently wrongfooted. Like all documentaries, You Can See Everything strives for a narrative that approximates the truth. And like all fiction,You Can See Everything revels in the pleasure of being duped. (We’re not the first moderns to endure an epistemic crisis, after all; let’s hope we’re not the last.) Yet it feels uniquely of its moment, in the way a great horror flick reflects our most persistent fears in titillating ways. Fielder (or “Fielder”) plays the skeptic or dupe as the story requires, his increasing obsession with what Holmes is “really” thinking a synecdoche for our collective fascination with the unknowable about celebrities. Here’s proof that you can have a real-world parasocial relationship, and for once I understand the pleasure that rubberneckers must derive from true-crime podcasts. Fielder is Odysseus strapped to the mast as he sails past the sirens, taking a long gaze into an abyss that stares back into him with impossibly enormous blue irises, and he learns nothing—except maybe that you can never trust a guy who consumes YouTube at 2x speed. But you already knew that, right? A
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
It’s a surefire plot: a big tough guy is tasked with caring for an infant. Yet Mahershala Ali and director Bassam Tariq, reuniting after fleeing Disney’s fumbled Blade reboot, don’t play this dilemma for laughs. Ali’s Latif is a devout Muslim and a hitman who has struck a fragile ethical balance that allows him to reconcile these roles. When his wife dies, and the refrigerated breast milk is gone, Latif frantically searches for a way to feed his formula-allergic infant, while also caring for a teen daughter (terrific newcomer Adia) with a nascent furry streak (“That squirrel porn nonsense is clouding your heart,” he tells her) and a son (Jahleel Kamara) who’s developing an unsettling taste for first-person shooters and Rambo movies. To top it off, Latif is tasked with protecting his boss’s skeevy, worthless son (a thoroughly reprehensible Abubakr Ali) from a self-righteous Christian cult leader (John Cho, with a grill) who suspects the sleazeball of child trafficking. Latif considers himself a protector, but as his job increasingly endangers his family, he doubts his uprightness. DP Katelin Arizmendi exploits the film’s digital sheen, moving us through a grimy Houston and brilliantly capturing the varied palettes of Black faces with extreme close ups. And Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is the rare American film that takes faith seriously. Most that pretend to (Angel Studios schlock, say) fashion it into a sentimental weapon of self-righteousness, but the world of Latif’s mosque feels like a real place filled with real people. Oh, and the action scenes do kick ass. A-
