An incredible fringe benefit of the release of Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest, which I expected to disappoint me but not in the way that it did (more on that at a later date), is that the Main is screening the basically perfect Akira Kurosawa crime drama it's based on, High and Low, along with another of the director's gritty urban movies, Stray Dog.
Scroll down for reviews of the new Ethan Coen movie, Honey Don't!, The Naked Gun, Americana, and Weapons, which I finally got around to and didn't like as much as you, probably, because I guess I'm just a dick.
Special Screenings
Thursday, August 21
Trolls Band Together (2023)
Emagine Willow Creek
The trolls take on poptimism. $3. 11 a.m. More info here.
Trash Humpers (2009)
Emagine Willow Creek
As seen in Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (2023). $11.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Grandview 1&2
There’s more to Laura Palmer than we saw on TV. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Heights Theater
In middle school, there is nothing I found funnier than a guy who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt. $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Office Space (1999)
Loring Park
It’s a bike-in movie! Honestly, my favorite thing about Office Space is that Canibus and Biz Markie covered “Take This Job and Shove It” for the soundtrack. Free. 8:15 p.m. More info here.
High and Low (1963)
Main Cinema
Based on the classic Mort Walker/Dik Browne comic stri—what? Oh, I'm sorry. $13. 6:45 p.m. Saturday-Monday 3:40 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Stray Dog (1949)
Main Cinema
Toshiro Mifune is a rookie cop who goes undercover after his gun is stolen. $13. 9:50 p.m. Saturday & Monday 7 p.m. Sunday 12:45 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday 4 p.m. More info here.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (2023)
North Mississippi Regional Park
As I am wont to do, allow me to point out the start time. Free. 8:10 p.m. More info here.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Parkway Theater
John Carpenter really got Kurt Russell. $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Shrek (2001)
Riverview Theater
Wait, they’re working on a Shrek 5? $1. 11 a.m. More info here.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Riverview Theater
Tried reading this book once but I was too old. $5. 9:15 p.m. Friday-Saturday 10 p.m. More info here.
Casablanca (1942)
Trylon
Good news! They’ve added another screening. Bad news! It’s already… Sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
20.0 Megaquake (2025)
Trylon
Starring a Baldwin. (Not A. Baldwin.) $8. 5 p.m. More info here.
Friday, August 22
Cool Runnings (1993)
Central Village Park
Wild how much the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team captured the world's imagination. Free. Dusk. More info here.
Wicked (2024)
Corcoran Park
Have you seen how horrifying the AI-desecrated Wizard of Oz at the Sphere is? Free. 8:10 p.m. More info here.
The Ceremony (1971)
Trylon
A Nagisa Ôshima twofer opens with this study of a respectable family with dark secrets. $8. 7 p.m. Saturday 9 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Boy (1969)
Trylon
A 10-year-old pretends to be hit by cars for cash. Nice work if you can get it. $8. 9:30 p.m. Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, August 23
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972)
Alamo Drafthouse
The first installment in the legendary samurai series. $10.99. 11 a.m. Wednesday 4:30 p.m. More info here.
KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
Alamo Drafthouse/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Sing along with the Netflix hit. Alamo: Sold out. 4:30 & 7:30 p.m. Sunday 4:30 & 7 p.m. More info here. Emagine: Also Sunday. $10.60. Showtimes and more info here. Marcus: Also Sunday. More info here.
Caught Stealing (2025)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
An advance screening of the new Darren Aronofsky movie. $16.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended (2003)
Emagine Willow Creek
Now with even more footage of hobbits jumping on beds. Also Sunday & Wednesday. $10.60. 1:30 & 6:45 p.m. More info here.
CatVideoFest 2025
Riverview Theater
The Riverview may just screen this every weekend as long as they’re allowed. Also Sunday. $5. 10:30 a.m. More info here.
Sunday, August 24
Clue (1985)
Alamo Drafthouse
A movie based on a board game? Get some new ideas, Hollywood! $10.99. 4 p.m. Tuesday 6:45 p.m. More info here.
Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Alamo Drafthouse
I think this is the one with the Goblet of Fire. $10.99. 12 p.m. More info here.
YUNGBLUD. ARE YOU READY, BOY? (2025)
Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
WELL, ARE YOU? Emagine: $16.60. 3:50 p.m. More info here. Marcus: 3:15 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Taste of Cherry (1997)
Grandview 1&2
Sexy title... for a movie about a suicidal Tehran man searching for someone who will bury him. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
SLC Punk! (1998)
Roxy’s Cabaret
If I told you nothing but that this starred Matthew Lillard, Annabeth Gish, and Devon Sawa, you could probably guess the year it was released. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Trylon
That’s one way to stop Nazis. $8. 7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Monday, August 18
Ghostbusters (1984)
Alamo Drafthouse
A libertarian classic. $20. 6:45 p.m. More info here.
Hackers (1995)
Alamo Drafthouse
Revisit the idealist early days of the Net. $13.99. 9:45 p.m. More info here.
Batman (1989)
AMC Southdale
Thinking back wistfully on a time when a Batman movie was a novelty. $18.99. 4 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Batman Returns (1992)
AMC Southdale
Michelle Pfieffer remains a hard act to follow. $18.99. 10 p.m. More info here.
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) in 3-D
Emagine Willow Creek
Julie Adams was such a babe. Sold out. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Heights Theater
It’s no Sullivan’s Travels. $16. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Migration (2023)
Pearl Park
A duck-out-of-water story. Free. 8:05 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, August 19
Frailty (2002)
Alamo Drafthouse
Bill Paxton’s directorial debut. $10.99. 9:35 p.m. More info here.
Mighty Ducks (1992)
Jackson Park
A piece of local history. Free. 8 p.m. More info here.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Riverview Theater
Recommended for fans of Shrek (2001). $1. 11 a.m. More info here.
Wednesday, August 27
The Doom Generation (1995)
Alamo Drafthouse
Gen X cynicism at its most whateverist. $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
S/He Is Still Here: The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary (2024)
Cloudland
A look at the life and work of the Throbbing Gristle singer and trans icon. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Fall Guy (2024)
The Commons
Ryan Gosling, you are no Lee Majors. Free. 8 p.m. More info here.
The Visitor (1980)
Emagine Willow Creek
“An ancient intergalactic warrior arrives on Earth to put a stop to a demonic child's plot to reproduce Satan's next generation of evil.” Well then! $7.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
Black Swan
Maybe my favorite Aronofsky? (Low bar.)
Eden
Ron Howard’s story of utopia gone wrong.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Just think, if he hadn’t got laid he’d be a 60-year-old virgin by now.
Hell House LLC: Lineage
No found footage this time around.
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-
Ne Zha 2
Not to be snobby, but I wish I’d seen this animated Chinese hit before it was rereleased dubbed.
Ponyo
A G-rated Shape of Water?
Primitive War
U.S. soldiers battle dinosaurs in Vietnam. Hey, I'm just repeating what I read.
Relay
Starring Riz Ahmed, who is really great in The Night Of, which I'm just now catching up on.
The Shadow’s Edge
A bloody action flick with Jackie Chan and Tony Leung.
Trainwreck
Oh, you certainly did have a moment, Amy Schumer.
Trust
Sophie Turner is an actress hiding out from the aftermath of a scandal in a remote cabin. What could go wrong?
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Americana
This non-linear revisionist Western has it all: a white child insisting he’s the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, Eric Dane getting shot in the throat with an arrow, Halsey firing a shotgun while dressed like Laura Ingalls, an abusively patriarchal trad clan battling some comic but not clownish Native American militants led by Zahn McClarnon, Sydney Sweeney as a stammering waitress at a roadside diner who falls for a right-handed goof named Lefty, Simon Rex for some reason—you get the idea. They’re all chasing after a stolen Indian artifact (what’s the Lakota word for MacGuffin?), and writer/director Tony Tost’s script is so good-hearted about its bloody quirk I kept rooting for it till I reached the end and was supposed to have deeper feelings for what I'd just witnessed than I could summon up. Still, Americana is almost certainly the best film by someone who has written a book for Continuum’s 33 ⅓ series on classic albums (about Johnny Cash’s overrated American Recordings, fwiw). B
Cloud—ends Thursday
Eddington
If you’ve ever wondered what Ari Aster would make of Covid, Black Lives Matter, and our all-too-online modern existence… why? Why would you ever wonder that? Aster’s films are airless, carefully arranged dioramas, which is OK when you work in horror, where self-contained formalism can be part of the point, but unacceptable when you’re using the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath in Minneapolis as a plot point for your dim satire. Joaquin Phoenix, in Doc Sportello stumblin’ ‘round mode, is an Arizona sheriff (styled to resemble Dennis Weaver, which is funny, I admit); he’s so miffed that he has to mask up that he decides to unseat the town’s smug mayor, Pedro Pascal. With seemingly every encounter between townsfolk mediated by screens, misinformation proliferates, bodies pile up, and everyone, from dumbass cops to woke protesters, embodies their worst selves. That, apparently, is How We Live Now. But what’s so soul-deadening about internet life isn’t just how it leads us to act out in cartoonish ways; it’s how it encourages us to perceive our fellow humans from a single, simple vantage point, to strip their actions of all context, and to make that point, Aster would have had to give us some three-dimensional characters to begin with. Plodding loudly toward its preordaining conclusion, Eddington is as cynical and misanthropic as dumb people have always said the Coen brothers are; worse still, its cynicism and misanthropy are flaunted as intellectual and spiritual achievements. And Aster really needs to get over his mommy issues. C
East of Wall—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-
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
Sketch
My comically exaggerated exasperation aside, I don’t hate kids’ movies. I just think most of ’em are for, well, kids. But Seth Worley’s goofy but genuinely creepy Sketch was a pleasant surprise. Tony Hale is raising two children after his wife’s death: Amber (Bianca Belle), who’s channeling her anger into drawings of cartoonishly vicious monsters, and Jack (Kue Lawrence), the protective brother who just wants everything to be the way it was. When Amber’s drawings get dumped into a magical lake, her visions come to life, and many of these predators of crayon, marker, and chalk target a boy who teases her (the perfectly annoying Kalon Cox). There’s something a little too much of the pitchman about Worley—the screening I attended ended with an ad for an app that can bring your own kid’s drawings to life. But without edging into trauma dump territory, his script feels emotionally astute to me, and its characters more like actual kids than most onscreen young’uns. Parents really do need to take it easy when naming their babies though—this cast also includes a Jaxen, a Genesis, and a Leigha. B+
Sorry, Baby—ends Thursday
Eva Victor takes some getting used to. As a screen presence, they often hold back cryptically behind a half-smile or throw other actors off the beat with their own rhythms, capturing how awkwardness feels to be around, rather than how it's typically performed on screen. Yet to say Victor seems like a person who learned to talk from the internet is description, not criticism; we’ve had decades of actors who learned to talk from TV or magazines or other movies after all. Victor also wrote and directed Sorry, Baby, which takes some getting used to as well. Partly it’s the non-chronological storytelling, which feels unnecessary and therefore affected, but it’s also because Sorry, Baby is the story of a sexual assault, and how to talk about it, or around it, when the words you have to communicate seem to distort what you’ve experienced. What anchors the film is the friendship between Victor’s Agnes and Naomi Ackie’s Lydie, and how it shifts over time. Often the humor is too broad for the scenario (Agnes’s nemesis Natasha, played by Kelly McCormack, feels especially sitcommy), and Sorry, Baby can also feel too crafted, with Victor creating moments—a stranger commiserating with Agnes after a panic attack, a postcoital cuddle ruined by a discussion of the future, a heart-to-heart about life’s cruelties with your friend’s infant—that feel deliberate, arranged, artistic. But all these moments, along with the halting discussion between Agnes and Lydie immediately after the assault, all work, and isn’t great filmmaking about believing in the illusion even when you know how the trick is done? A-
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-
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
To a Land Unknown—ends Thursday
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
