I did something unprecedented this Monday: I wrote up THREE ongoing film series for Event Horizon. This summer you have the opportunity to see road trip flicks at the Trylon, 70mm classics at the Heights, and late-20th-century blockbusters about manhood at the Walker. Do you even realize how good you have it?
In general, this is a great week to catch up with movies you feel like you should have already seen. Lawrence of Arabia? The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance? Wild Strawberries? 2001: A Space Odyssey? The Red Shoes? I mean, come on!
I've also got reviews up this week for three new releases: Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, The Invite, and Rose of Nevada. Scroll on down to check those out.
Special Screenings
Thursday, July 9
Dog Man (2025)
Emagine Willow Creek/Riverview Theater
This movie is everywhere this summer. Emagine: $8. 11 a.m. More info here. Riverview: $2. 10:45 p.m. More info here.
Over the Edge (1979)
Emagine Willow Creek
Kurt Cobain said this Matt Dillon movie "pretty much defined my whole personality." $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Stand By Me (1986)
Grandview 1&2
Lord do boomers love romanticizing their childhoods. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
West Side Story (1961)
Heights Theater
Starring famed Latina Natalie Wood. $19. 7 p.m. More info here.
Happy Gilmore (1996)
Hiawatha Golf Course Clubhouse
Starring the officiant from Taylor Swift’s wedding. Free. 9 p.m. More info here.
Paddington (2014)
Marcus West End
It’s no Paddington 2, but then again, what is? $3. 11:30 p.m. More info here.
Goodfellas (1990)
Parkway Theater
Never heard of it. $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
Riverview Theater
A castle that can walk? Now I’ve seen everything! $7. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Sing (2016)
Sibley Manor Apartments
And so St. Paul’s Movies in the Parks begins. Free. Dusk. More info here.
Domino (2005)
Trylon
Is this Keira Knightley vehicle a lost classic? $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday, July 10
Cool Runnings (1993)
Bottineau Park
Glad our children are still learning about the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. Free. 9 p.m. More info here.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Emagine Willow Creek
Yeah man, I just don’t know. $8. Weekdays 11 p.m. Weekends 10 p.m. More info here.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Heights Theater
See Mark Wahlberg’s fake dick in 70mm. $19. 6 p.m. Saturday 7 p.m. More info here.
Vampire’s Kiss (1989)
Heights Theater
You could say that this is the movie where Nicolas Cage really became Nicolas Cage. $13. 9:45 p.m. More info here.
The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants (2025)
Marcus West End
Hope they find him. $3. Sunday & Tuesday 10:45 a.m. Monday & Wednesday 11:35 a.m. Thursday 11:30 a.m. More info here.
The Red Spectacles (1987)
Trylon
A surrealist, dystopian Japanese neo-noir. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:15 p.m. Sunday 12:30 & 2:45 p.m. More info here.
Willow (1988)
Walker Art Center
A lil guy becomes a big hero. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, July 11
Excalibur (1981)
Alamo Drafthouse
More like “Sexcalbur.” (Because there’s lots of nudity. Or so I was told when I was 11.) $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
AMC Rosedale 14/ AMC Southdale 16/Emagine WIllow Creek/Marcus West End
Excellent voice work by the Fanning sisters. Through Wednesday. Showtimes, prices, and more info here.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)
East Side Sculpture Park
It holds up. Free. 9 p.m. More info here.
UFC 329: McGregor vs Holloway 2
Emagine Willow Creek
Whatever. $27. 8 p.m. More info here.
The Red Shoes (1948)
Howard Conn Theater
Are there any movies about ballerinas with happy endings? (Your answer may not contain the words “John Wick.”) Presented by Cinema Ecclesia. $12.50. 10:30 a.m. More info here.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Heights Theater
Everyone should see this on 70mm at least once in their lives. $19. 1 p.m. Sunday 1 & 6 p.m. More info here.
Persepolis (2007)
Main Cinema
RIP Marjane Satrapi. $7/$15. More info here.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Open Eye Theater
Print the legend. Presented by the Picturegoer Club. $10. 6 p.m. More info here.
Tight & Nerdy (2025)
Parkway Theater
A doc about the world’s only Weird Al-inspired burlesque group. Followed by Q&A and burlesque performance. $15-$25. 1 p.m. More info here.
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Walker Art Center
Michael Mannimore Cooper. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, July 12
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Grandview 1&2
Winona and Angelina in a mental institution. Also Thursday. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Mamma Mia! (2008)
Emagine Willow Creek
That’s Italian for “my mother!” Also Wednesday. $13. 3:30 & 6:20 p.m. More info here.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Heights Theater
The only way to see it—70mm. Through Tuesday. $19. 7 p.m. More info here.
Independence Day (1996)
Roxy’s Cabaret
Better late than never? Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Trylon
Getting old really do be like this sometimes. $8. 5 & 7 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9 p.m. More info here.
Monday, July 13
Baahabuli: The Epic (2025)
Alamo Drafthouse
Before RRR, S.S. Rajamouli made this two-parter, now edited into a single—well, like it says, epic. $10.99. 2:15 p.m. More info here.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Alamo Drafthouse
Don’t fuck with dinosaurs. $20. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Lego Movie (2014)
AMC Southdale
Your kids have to find out about Chris Pratt sometime. $3. 11 a.m. & 2 p.m. More info here.
Ladybird (2017)
Edina Mann
Saoirse Ronan is our 36th First Lady. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
Green Room (2016)
Emagine Willow Creek
A brutal one. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Smurfs (2025)
Kenwood Park
Rihanna in her greatest film role yet. Free. 9 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, July 14
The Faculty (1998)
Alamo Drafthouse
Not to be confused with Disturbing Behavior. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
The Wild Robot (2024)
Riverview Theater
Note to Brunch Buds readers: This is Redacto’s favorite movie. $2. 11 a.m. More info here.
Wednesday, July 15
Carlito’s Way (1993)
Alamo Drafthouse
Pacino and De Palma, together again. $13.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
Buffet Infinity (2026) + Man Eating P***y (2026)
Alamo Drafthouse
A wild found-footage montage and the story of a man who eats… putty, I guess? $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
The Greatest Showman (2017)
The Commons
Hugh Jackman is an enormous singing snowman who… Oh, sorry, showman. Free. 9 p.m. More info here.
The Beirut Trilogy (1976-1983)
Main Cinema
Three short documentaries by the great Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Fab. $5-$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Survive Style 5+ (2004)
Heights Theater
Five unexpectedly intertwined vignettes. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Batman Begins (2005)
Lagoon Cinema
The very first Batman movie ever. $11. 4 & 7 p.m. More info here
Thursday, July 16
Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street (1996)
East Side Freedom Library
Documentary about urban redevelopment and community in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Out of the Blue (1980)
Emagine Willow Creek
Starring the great Linda Manz. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Granada
A movie based on an amusement park ride? Now I’ve seen everything! Presented by Taste the Movies. Sold out. 6 p.m. More info here.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Parkway Theater
Love that we’re getting so many opportunities to see this in theaters this summer. $9/$12. Performance by Carnage the Executioner at 7 p.m. Film at 8 p.m. More info here.
Fargo (1996)
Riverview Theater
Yes, some of you really do talk like this. $7. 10:15 p.m. More info here.
Slap the Monster on Page One (1973)
Trylon
A right-wing newspaper owner sets out to pin a murder on a leftist politician. Presented by Archives on Screen Twin Cities. $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
Hoppers (2026)
Victory Park
A girl becomes a robot beaver. Free. 8:55 p.m. More info here.
Die Hard (1988)
Walker Art Center
It’s Christmas in July! $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Dhamaal 4
Y'all, I am way behind.
Evil Dead Burn
So weird that Evil Dead is now a franchise.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
A David Wain movie is an extremely known quantity. How funny you’ll find it, the ways in which you’ll find it funny, which actors will pop by, credited and un- —these factors are preordained. In the scattershot Zucker Brothers tradition (though the sensibility is crass in a hip way rather than a crude way), basically every line is a joke, or arrives in the form of a joke, and maybe a third of ’em land, though all the jokes have to be told regardless because my third may not be yours. As far as plot goes: When her boyfriend unexpectedly hooks up with his “celebrity sex pass,” Jennifer Aniston, the titular Gail (Zoey Deutch) takes off for L.A. with her gay friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), where to settle the score she decides she has to bang John Hamm. Along the way they’re befriended by a would-be agent (Ben Wong), a paparazzo (Ken Marino), and John Slattery (John Slattery) and you start to realize (Daughtry Gail? Otto? Hey, wait a minute…) this is also a Wizard of Oz parody. There are also goons out to recapture Important Documents for a wicked witch (Sabrina Impacciatore). It’s all an amusing mess, and everyone is game, especially Deutch, adorably wide-eyed but never naive or virginal. B
The Invite
We all know couples like Angela and Joe. As played by Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogan, they’re perpetually bickering over things you can’t believe either cares all that much about, as though following a preordained script. We’re less likely to know a couple like Hawk and Pina, embodied by two of our most ageless actors, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz. The older couple has frequent, explosive sex upstairs, which irritates Joe, intrigues Angela, and becomes a topic of intense discussion when Hawk and Pina come downstairs one night for dinner. Over the course of one exhausting, hilarious, and loquacious evening, Joe and Angela are forced to confront some truths about their relationship. Joe falls back on wisecracks, Angela turns positively giddy at the thought of experiencing orgasms like Pina’s, and composer Devonte Hynes’s strings ratchet up the tension throughout. I can’t say I wholly agree with the film’s final assessment of their relationship—for all its pyrotechnics, the Will McCormack/Rashida Jones script doesn’t give us much beyond the surface, even when it purports to peek underneath. But what a surface it is. Norton is on a nice later career run and Cruz is just a fuckin’ movie star whatever she does. And as for Wilde the director, she makes a few awkward shot choices but the screwball-paced dialogue guides us through a (mostly) single-set film that’s rarely stagey and only as claustrophobic as it’s meant to be. I’m ready to pretend Don’t Worry Darling never happened if she is. A-
Lenin
I thought all the Beatles biopics were coming out at the same time?
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
A doc about the popular poet.
Moana
I have never seen a Disney "live-action" adaptation and I ain't about to start now.
Rose of Nevada
Of all the young guys in movies these days who look like Callum Turner and George McKay, Callum Turner and George McKay are two of the better ones. Director Mark Jenkin had a promising if narrative-averse breakthrough in 2022 with the folk horror tone poem Enys Men. And the setup here—two young men sail on a cursed Cornish fishing boat that transports them back in time—isn’t just intriguing, but makes for a solid metaphor of how dying towns survive on the backs of the youth who remain behind. But excuse me if Rose of Nevada is a little too vibes-first for Mr. What Happens Next? here. Once the two men develop opposing reactions to their fate—Turner’s Liam sees this as an opportunity to become the family man he never was, while McKay misses his present-day family and is desperate to return—we’ve learned about all we’re going to from these characters. All that remains to be experienced is atmospherics, film presence, spooky tension, and storms at sea. Which ain’t nothing. B
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Alpha—ends July 9
Backrooms
More film-studenty than anyone impressed at director Kane Parsons’s tender age of 20 wants to let on, this unexpected budget horror hit is ambiguous enough for us all to project our own sense of entrapment on its unrelentingly yellow liminal space. Postmodern capital, the male psyche, miscellaneous trauma, the internet—whatever’s recursively hemming you in, we all feel lost within some labyrinth right now, and much credit to Parsons for tapping into that timely sensibility. But movies, pesky damn things, will have characters, and stories, and dialogue, and, well… Chiwetel Ejiofor (as an extremely divorced furniture store owner) and Renate Reinsve (as a therapist I personally would not recommend) do what they can with some leaden dialogue by Will Soodik, who does not have youth and inexperience as an excuse. Doesn’t help that Parsons ratchets up the drama whenever a bit of the ol’ flattened affect would accentuate the eeriness. Backrooms is an A minus haunted house padded out into a B minus movie, so let’s just say… B
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Calamity—ends July 9
Disclosure Day
In this movie we believe aliens exist, empathy is strength, TV brings people together, truth wins out in the end, some kind of vague god-related thing—I’m sorry, but what are we doing here? Spielbergologists will no doubt thematically connect this latest, closest encounter with the extraterrestrial to his past work in ways that are meaningful to them, but for this skeptical admirer it was two-plus hours of drab auteurist tics livened occasionally by technical feats no other living (or maybe dead) director could execute. Plotwise, former cybersecurity wiz Josh O’Connor has the proof of a government/corporate coverup, and he’s ready to tell the world. He’s somehow linked with Emily Blunt, a weather gal for a Kansas City TV station who’s gifted with mystical abilities by ETs. Both leads are swell, even if Blunt’s attempts at naïveté aren’t wholly convincing and O’Connor can’t always summon enough shades of earnest to avoid monotony, But Colin Firth and Coleman Domingo, as rival spymasters of sorts, find no pleasure in their roles, and Eve Hewson, as O’Connor’s girlfriend, a former novitiate, dispenses religious doubts with a sense of obligation that shortchanges both spirituality and science—and hell, fantasy as well. And then there’s the finale. Ultimately, your view of Disclosure Day may come down to whether you find Spielberg’s nostalgic faith in the transformative power of mass spectacle touching or deluded—or, let’s face it, self-aggrandizing. B-
The Furious
If you judge a martial arts movie by how many "remember that part where?"s come up in conversation afterwards (and what better measure is there?), Kenji Tanigaki’s ingenious and gory slugfest really racks 'em up. This review could easily degenerate into just a list of those moments if I didn’t want to give too much away, so let me just mention as a for instance the scene where one attacker has a knife at the throat of our hero—who’s resting on the back of another guy who has a knife at the throat over our other hero. The plot, for better or for worse, concerns a mysterious, mute handyman (Xie Miao) and an investigative journalist (Joe Taslim) whose daughter (a spunky Yang Enyou, who gives as good as she gets) and wife (Jeeja Yanin), respectively, are kidnapped by child traffickers with connections to the upper echelons of society. Up to the rescue of the imprisoned tykes, Tanigaki serves up some inventive mayhem, but The Furious earns its name with the finale, which revs into fifth gear as the two good guys face off against three baddies (and I promise you won’t be able to guess which). Here’s the kind of fight choreography that makes you wonder why we settle for such flat, rote combat in so many action flicks. I mean, the damage that these gentlemen can do with their legs alone is astonishing. A-
I Love Boosters—ends July 9
Every time I see a movie with Keke Palmer or LaKeith Stanfield in it, I think about how much of our time directors waste by making movies without Keke Palmer or LaKeith Stanfield in them. In Boots Riley’s Seussian celebration of art, communism, and Oakland, Palmer’s Corvette is part of a crew of high-end shoplifters, along with Naomi Ackie’s Sade and Taylour Paige’s Mariah, who draw the ire of girlboss designer Christy Smith (Demi Moore). Aided by Poppy Liu as a Chinese factory worker, Eiza González as a dirtbag leftist, and a device powered by dialectical materialism, they struggle to forge a global, multi-racial, working-class alliance. The film’s design team, led by Everything Everywhere All at Once costumer/Tierra Whack collaborator Shirley Kuratais, is playing a game no one else even knows the rules of, and the whole shebang is funny as hell. Of course, if you slow down and try to puzzle it all out… wait, why are you doing that? If I have a better time at the movies this year, I’ll be a very lucky man indeed. As for Stanfield—I’m not gonna give it away, but he’s in this. Damn is he in this. A
Leviticus
A small Australian town dominated by a fundamentalist sect has found a monstrous way to rid itself of gay teens: Following a creepy ritual, a demonic being in the image of the person you most desire appears and murders you. Writer/director Adrian Chiarella ratchets a good deal of tension from this scenario. Teens Naim and Ryan (Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen), already navigating the non-supernatural push and pull of a furtive, budding relationship, now have to wonder if the being who looks like their lover is actually a murderous entity. Both leads are compelling, but the mood is less scary than glum. As is the fashion with horror movies these days, Leviticus doesn’t give a shape to sublimated fears but instead literalizes terrors we’re already conscious of. “What if ‘conversion therapy’ psychologically tortured and killed kids?” isn’t a hypothetical, after all—it does just that. B-
Maddie's Secret
The best thing about John Early’s directorial debut is his own performance as Maddie Ralph, a sweetly obliging woman whose bulimia resurfaces when her online cooking videos unexpectedly go viral. That star turn—stylized yet credible—allows Early to execute a precisely calibrated balance of melodramatics and laughs. It’s a pointed contrast to the supporting characters: Maddie’s Secret serves us the sort of supporting actors you might expect from a hip comedy (Kate Berlant as a horny, obsessive lesbian, Conner O’ Malley as a sleazy food show producer, and so forth) while Kristen Johnson flaunts a virtuosic lack of subtlety as Maddie’s horrific mom. Maddie’s Secret occasionally feels like a tonal exercise, a challenge to see how thoroughly Early can sentimentalize bad taste without toppling into camp or kitsch, though that's no small feat. People with actual eating disorders should proceed with caution, of course, though I’m plenty curious what they make of all this. B+
Michael
This is the story of a sweetly eccentric young fellow who merely wants to collect exotic animals, visit children in hospitals, and share his incredible talents with the world. With the help of agent (and, incidentally, the film’s executive producer) John Branca (Miles Teller), our hero wriggles free of his abusive, domineering father (Colman Domingo) and embarks on his first solo tour in 1988, finally his own man—presumably it was all smooth sailing from there. A glitzy extended ad for the disgraced superstar’s estate, Michael follows in the footsteps of the modern music biopic not only as a form of brand management, but as a means of score-settling—from NWA to Elton John, every star wants to be a victim nowadays. Michael has a made-to-order villain in Jackson paterfamilias Joseph, but with his grotesque prosthetics and Nixonian hunched shoulders, Domingo is actually more cartoonish than Mike Myers is in his brief borscht-belt turn as CBS head Walter Yetnikoff. The lesson of Michael Jackson’s life is that the further you retreat into escapist fantasy the more inescapably your neuroses surface, and that plays out with his fandom: The more irreparably Jackson’s reputation is tarnished, the more his worshippers demand a portrait of a saint’s life. And so they get as lousy a movie as they deserve. Shout out to Janet Jackson, who refused to participate and therefore simply doesn’t exist in this Michaelverse. C
Obsession
I’ll say this for the “must see” horror flick of the summer—you should probably see it. Which is more than I say about most of the lukewarm bloodbaths (some of them not even Oz Perkins’s fault) that are regularly touted as the best thing to happen to the screen since the chainsaw. Michael Johnston’s Bear is so hapless he can’t acknowledge his crush on pal/co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) even when she asks him about it point blank. So, like so many doomed losers before him, he makes a magical wish for her love, an overturning of the natural order that goes wrong is ways both predictable and un-. Like any effective horror movie, there are all sorts of psychosexual subtexts you can tease out of this scenario—the (male) anxiety that true love is smothering, the (again male) desire to efface female personality—but though YouTube-weaned auteur Curry Barker has a genre-adept’s knack for pacing and execution, Obsession doesn’t have much conceptual play. But it also doesn’t give us the easy “slay girl” catharsis of, say, Companion, and what truly sets it apart is Navarrette’s committed performance of a woman trapped in a man’s fantasy. B+
Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu
Tuner—ends July 9
