Yes, I've still been going to movies, to take the edge off, and writing about them to preoccupy my mind. We all have our ways of coping. Below find reviews of Dead Man's Wire, Send Help. The Testament of Ann Lee, and The Voice of Hind Rajab.
Special Screenings
Thursday, January 29
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Emagine Willow Creek
Yes, it's the Robert Redford meme movie. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
This Is Not a Drill (2025)
Main Cinema
Activists battle Big Oil. Part of the Great Northern. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Parkway Theater
Bill Murray vs. shark. $9/$12. Music from Little Man at 7 p.m. Movie at 8. More info here.
Wattstax (1973)
Trylon
In 1972, Stax Records threw a helluva party in Watts, L.A. Presented by Archives on Screen. $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Perfect Neighbor (2025)
Walker Art Center
Oscar-nominated doc about a deadly dispute, including police bodycam footage. Free for Walker members only. 6 p.m. More info here.
Sorry Baby (2025)
Walker Art Center
Eva Victor's excellent debut as a writer/director/actor. Full review here. Free for Walker members only. 8 p.m. More info here.
Friday, January 30
Blood for Dracula (1974)
Alamo Drafthouse
RIP Udo Kier. $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Alamo Drafthouse
A little rockist for my tastes, but perfect soundtrack and Tara Reid is brilliant here. $13.99. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Dalva (2022)
Alliance Française
A 12-year-old learns to be a kid again after she’s taken from an abusive environment. Free; $10 donation requested. 7 p.m. More info here.
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Heights Theater
Hey, this movie is about us. $13. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Tracing Sacred Steps: The Cinematic Experience (2025)
Main Cinema
An experimental film based on the tradition of the Ring Shout. Part of the Great Northern. $5. 5:30 p.m. More info here.
Harvest (2025)
Main Cinema
A Black Minnesota woman learns to hunt. Part of the Great Northern. $5. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
Marcus West End
Ever wish they would just Mini-OFF? Times, prices, and more info here.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Parkway Theater
Will you people keep it down? I’m trying to watch the movie. $10/$15. Midnight. More info here.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Trylon
In 35 mm and selling out fast. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:30 p.m. Sunday 3 & 5:30. More info here.
Saturday, January 31
Twin Peaks: Episodes 14-17
Alamo Drafthouse
Lotsa One-Armed Man in these episodes $10.99. 11 a.m. More info here.
Queering Cinema Short Film Fest
Capri Theater
A selection of short films from queer Minnesota filmmakers. $10. 6 p.m. More info here.
UFC 325: Volkanovski vs. Lopes 2
AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
Ugh, not another sequel. $27. 8 p.m. More info here and here.
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
Heights Theater
That’s too many beavers! $13. 10 p.m. More info here.
A Life Illuminated (2025)
Main Cinema
A doc about Marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder’s undersea bioluminescence research. Part of The Great Northern. $15. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Bring Them Home (2024)
Main Cinema
The Blackfoot people struggle to return wild bison to their land. Part of the Great Northern. $15. 8:45 p.m. More info here.
The Hobbit Marathon
Marcus West End
If eight and a half hours of The Hobbit sounds like fun to you. Noon. $18. More info here.
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Mia
Nooo Ray Milland don't kill Grace Kelly she's so sexy ahh. Free. 2 p.m. More info here.
Lurker (2025)
Walker Art Center
A fan gets a little too close to a star. Free for Walker members only. 1 p.m. More info here.
Come See Me in the Good Light (2025)
Walker Art Center
Documenting the last days of poet Andrea Gibson as she lives with cancer. Free for Walker members only. 3 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, February 1
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Alamo Drafthouse
David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto are on opposite sides of WWII. $10.99. Noon. More info here.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1991)
Alamo Drafthouse
Totally forgot that they remade this with the Redgrave sisters. $10.99. 3:30 p.m. More info here.
A Room With a View (1986)
AMC Southdale 16
This movie has a lot more dick than I'd remembered. $15. 3 p.m. Monday 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Titanic (1997)
Emagine Willow Creek
As a wise man once said, you can’t turn the Titanic around overnight. Also Wednesday. $11. 2:15 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Heights Theater
The Roald Dahl classic, in a mix of stop-motion and live action. $13. 11 a.m. More info here.
Future Council (2025)
Main Cinema
Child climate activists take a journey across Europe. Part of The Great Northern. $15. Noon. More info here.
Lowland Kids (2025)
Main Cinema
Two teens grow up on a Louisiana island threatened by climate change. Part of The Great Northern. $15. 2 p.m. More info here.
Mean Girls (2004)
Roxy’s Cabaret
The original, of course. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Cat People (1982)
Trylon
Paul Schrader’s very ’80s remake of the horror classic. $8. 8 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Monday, February 2
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2 (2012)
Alamo Drafthouse
This is the last one, right? $22. 7 p.m. More info here.
Blood for Dracula (1974)
Emagine Willow Creek
Damn, twice in the same week. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
What could it be? $6. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, February 4
Dracula (2026)
Alamo Drafthouse
An advance screening of what appears to be, yes, another Dracula movie. $13.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tape Freaks
Trylon
Yes, once again it’s… sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, February 5
Acts of Reparation (2024)
Capri Theater
A Black woman and white man travel south to explore their families’ histories. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Something’s Gotta Give (2003)
Emagine Willow Creek
RIP Diane Keaton. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Killers (1964)
Heights Theater
Lee Marvin and John Cassavetes are hitmen in this classic Don Siegel noir. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Titanic (1997)
Parkway Theater
Curse you, Billy Zane! $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Arco
A 10-year-old travels to the past—and damages his time-traveling device.
Fish, Fists and Ambergris
Martial arts ensue after a Vietnamese fishing village's prized relic is stolen.
Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir
A Paris Hilton doc and a Melania Trump doc in the same week? May as well get it all over with at once.
Iron Lung
A convict explores a desolate moon with an ocean of blood in a post-apocalyptic future.
Islands
A washed up tennis pro gets involved with wealthy tourists.
The Lego Movie
Re-released in 3D, presumably because everything is so awesome right now.
Melania
Will we finally learn what the beluga whale was thinking? Also, great roundup here of what Slovenians think of their most famous export.
Moses the Black
Omar Epps is a gang leader, just out of prison and out to avenge a friend.
Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi
An Indian remake of a Malaysian comedy.
A Private Life
Jodie Foster is a psychiatrist investigating a patient's death.
Send Help
Sam Raimi the schlock lover and gross-out king is back, and he hasn’t had this much fun since Drag Her to Hell—there are moments of eyeball-gouging here worth the price of admission alone. Rachel McAdams is nerdy office worker Linda, a spreadsheet wiz who’s been screwed over by her new boss, fratty nepo baby Bradley (Dylan O’Brien). En route to a Thailand business meeting, their plane crashes (an understatement—Raimi gleefully rips apart the aircraft and its occupants), with only Linda and Bradley surviving. Naturally, Linda, a Survivor fanatic, thrives in their new island home, while Bradley struggles. If that makes Send Help sound like a late entry in the eat-the-rich movie trend of a few years back, well, kinda, yes, but Raimi is less overwrought and, well, European about class conflict. McAdams is an underutilized comic actress who deserves more roles like this and O’Brien builds off his success in last year’s Twinless—if modern Hollywood wasn’t so inherently tedious he’d have Glen Powell’s career, though selfishly I’d rather have him making the movies he does. (It’s also the second movie in a row where he shows his butt.) Send Help is the best kind of horror comedy, where rather than fearing what awful thing might come next, you look forward to it. What you might dread instead is that the movie could stumble into opposites-attract territory, with Linda and Bradley learning a little something about each other and finding l-u-v. Rest easy. Raimi didn’t save up all his Dr. Strange money just to piss it away on a romcom. A-
Shelter
If it's January, it's Jason Statham.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
There’s a silly ongoing online debate that no, I will not join, about whether the Avatar movies have any “cultural impact.” But I can say that watching the first 10 minutes of each new sequel is like seeing your in-laws’ extended family over the holidays: Everyone looks kind of familiar but damned if you can be expected to remember their names, let alone what their deal is. And you know what? I like that. When you’re not actually watching an Avatar movie, nobody expects you to think about Avatar at all, and what more can you ask from a talented megalomaniac’s misguided passion project? James Cameron still can’t plot for shit, and even more than its two predecessors, Avatar: Fire and Ash is just one damn thing after another. (It hardly fits his grandiose vision, but what Cameron is narratively suited for, with his cliffhangery series of captures and escapes, is an old-fashioned serial.) So… do those damn things still look cool? Sigh, yes, they still look cool. We’re introduced to the Mangkwan, a more vicious race of Na’vi who shoot flaming arrows and practice dark magic, ruled by the sinewy, feline Varang (Oona Chaplin, whose hissing skills rival even Zoe Saldana’s). There’s a billowy, translucent trading vessel that floats through the air. Nasty squids with pincers haunt the ocean depths. So while all the usual caveats apply— Cameron’s ideas about indigenous peoples remain ideologically suspect, the younger actors still sound like they’re doing voice work for a tepid Scooby-Doo reboot, the whole thing’s just too damn long—Avatar remains your best one-stop-shop for state-of-the-art ecotopian fantasy and the righteous destruction of military hardware. B
Dead Man's Wire—ends January 29
Gus Van Sant hasn’t lost his gift for crafting a stylish, entertaining, thoughtful, and “commercial” movie. But the reason that last adjective is in quotes is ‘cause movie commerce ain’t what it used to be—forget Good Will Hunting, this well-made film won’t even do My Private Idaho numbers. Writer Austin Kolodney gives Van Sant a helluva story to work with: Tony Kiritsis was an Indianapolis guy who became a minor media folk hero in 1977 after he kidnapped and wired a shotgun to the head of the president of a loan agency he was convinced had swindled him. And the movie is packed with great performances. Dacre Montgomery is tensely understated as kidnap victim Richard Hall, Colman Domingo is a dulcet radio DJ who Kiritsis insists on telling his story, and Al Pacino is Richard’s dad, who won’t apologize to Tony even if it’d save his son’s life. This deep into the era of internet celebrity, it’s intriguing to see Van Sant revisit many of the themes of fame and TV he toyed with 30 years ago with To Die For. But I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was off about Bill Skarsgård’s entertaining enough performance as Kiritsis until Van Sant showed us clips of the real guy over the credits. He’s just as schlubby as you’d expect, but these days they don’t let guys who look like that star in movies, “commercial” or otherwise. B+
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-
Hamnet
There’s no reason this should work. Hamlet isn’t “about” the death of Shakespeare’s only son, and even if the play was his way of processing that calamity, what’s that to us? But while I feared the biographical fallacy would run amok through (cursed phrase incoming) Chloé Zhao’s first film since Eternals—movies have a tedious habit of treating works of art as riddles we decode to understand an artist’s life—Hamnet honors the complexity of human creativity. It helps that the central figure isn’t Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, here to make the girlies weep once more), but his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley), a “forest witch” (as the villagers say) who takes to motherhood intensely, with a protectiveness born out of her visions of dark foreboding. With the aid of DP Łukasz Żal’s muddy tones and chiaroscuro interiors, and an allusive yet plainspoken script co-written with Maggie O'Farrell (author of the novel that serves as source material), Zhao creates a credible Elizabethan world, and Buckley’s performance, ranging from the subtle flickers of a smile to wracked howls of grief, is all-encompassing. The final segment—the premiere of Hamlet itself—is the emotional equivalent of juggling chainsaws, yet Buckley’s commitment anchors a conceit that could as easily elicit snickers as sniffles. In her expression we watch as the stuff of life—mourning, family drama, the unworthiness we feel in the face of personal tragedy—is subsumed into something greater than its components. A
The Housemaid
Sydney Sweeney is Millie, an ex-con living out of her car who miraculously lands a job as a live-in maid for the wealthy Winchester family. Amanda Seyfried is Nora, the too-perfect wife. Brandon Sklenar is Andrew, a kind Barry Lyndon buff who’s built like an underwear model. There’s also a daughter who looks like she sees dead people. No sooner does Millie sign on than Nora becomes unpredictably moody and vicious. Mysteries abound! Does Nora have an ulterior motive for hiring a hottie with a killer rack? Why does Andrew stick around with his cuckoo wife? Just what is the deal with that dead-eyed kid? If Sydney Sweeney can act, why does she deliver every line in the same flat zoomer mutter, as though she’s just getting the words out of the way? Seyfried has a ball throughout, and Sweeney does wake up for the finale, but trash shouldn’t be this impressed with itself, and the twist—you knew there was one—is undermined by an extended period of explanatory voiceover. Cartoonish about class, which is fine, and about domestic abuse, which is less so, and overall just not enough fun. Next time you think, “They don’t make movies like that anymore,” be careful what you wish for: This is what happens when they try. C+
Is This Thing On?—ends January 29
At last, Bradley Cooper makes the tedious relationship drama we all knew he had in him. A Star Is Born had Gaga; Maestro went down swinging. But this is a grownup movie about grownup stuff for grownups, as filtered through the sensibility of a guy who spent his 40s dating Irina Shayk and Gigi Hadid. (If it tanks, the Times will surely scold us all once again for not going to see serious adult films.) Will Arnett and Laura Dern are Alex and Tess. He’s in finance, she’s a former U.S. Olympic volleyball star, and I’m sure we can all relate to their lives. When we meet the married couple, they’ve decided to separate, though we won’t know why until an argument later in the film where they somberly fling lines like “You checked out first!” at each other. One night, to avoid paying a $15 cover, Will puts his name down on an open mic list, and he is reborn onstage; he’s befriended by other comics and (we’re told) develops a newfound sexual magnetism as he processes his new life confessionally onstage. Arnett capably exudes middle-aged surrender when necessary, and Dern is always a welcome presence, but there’s no sense that these people were together for 26 years. Meanwhile Andra Day and Cooper play one of those couples you always wish would break up already, and guess what? They’re even less fun to be around than in real life. Most annoyingly, Is This Thing On? plays into the noxious idea that art is therapy, and that audiences are obliged to play along as people onstage work through their shit. Why should I pay $15 to hear what a professional should charge $150/hour to listen to? C+
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Marty Supreme
Josh Safie and Ronald Bronstein’s script brings the frenetic energy of postwar Jewish fiction to the story of an annoying little man who is very good at 1) ping pong and 2) getting people to do what he wants. In the course of two and a half hours, Marty Mauser robs his uncle, knocks up a married woman, bangs an aging movie star, opens for the Harlem Globetrotters, loses a mobster’s dog, swindles some Jersey rubes, and screws over anyone who gives him a break. The cast is uniformly great, even (grits teeth) Kevin O’Leary, but this is the Timothée Chalamet show, let’s be real. He gets that Marty’s ego and his willingness to be humiliated all come from the same place, that drive to succeed that either hollows you out or reveals your hollowness. Open wounds from the last war seep out all over this film via Jewish resentment, Holocaust survival, Japanese nationalism. And despite an anachronistic ’80s new wave/pop soundtrack blended with composer Daniel Lopatin’s audition to become this generation’s Giorgio Moroder, the production design is impeccable: No one in this movie looks like they’ve ever seen a cell phone. So smart and frantic and bracing that if you’re not careful you might even mistake its closing scene for a moment of heartwarming redemption. A-
No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook sure knows how to end a damn movie—if at any point you find the macabre comedy of No Other Choice a bit unfocused, rest assured that it will end with as much bleak finality as Decision to Leave, though on a far less romantic note of doom. We begin with handsome paper-factory manager Man-Su (Squid Game album Lee Byung-hun) outside his gorgeous home, grilling eel to celebrate his pretty wife Mi-ri’s (Son Ye-jin) birthday. As they huddle together with daughter and son, and their two dogs dart between their legs in the lovely autumn light, you just know an ax is gonna fall. Sure enough, the new American owners toss Man-Su out on his ear, forcing him to endure a patronizing session where the newly unemployed are coached to chant that their firing is not their fault. But masculinity doesn’t untangle that easily. Battling guilt, jealousy, alcoholism, pride, and sheer purposelessness as he fails to find a new job, Man-Su decides he must murder his competition. Unlike Park’s usual protagonists, though, Man-su has a hard time acclimating to murder. He’s not just squeamish and inept, he’s hobbled by empathy—he might be able to kill these guys, but he can’t stand to see their feelings hurt. Working with cinematographer Woo-hyung Kim, Park’s technique dazzles with acrobatic unpredictability here, with tricky dissolves that wash us nimbly between scenes and perspectives. And by the time Man-Su gets his final reward Park’s kill-or-be-killed metaphor has left all subtlety behind, as it damn well should. A-
One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s universally lauded tragicomic revolutionary epic has a lot on its thematic plate. It’s a movie about rescuing your daughter that’s really about how you can’t protect your kids, about the contrast between the glamour of doomed revolutionary action and the quiet victories of everyday resistance, about a parallel United States that mirrors our police state already in progress. And to white folks (like me and maybe you and probably PTA himself) who just wonder when all this will all be over in the real world, Anderson offers his most self-explanatory movie title since There Will Be Blood. But aside from all that One Battle After Another is just plain engaging and immersive and entertaining the way too many movies that make much more money only pretend to be. As in Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonard DiCaprio is a dopey white guy outclassed by a woman of another race (glad he’s found his niche); his greasy top-knot and Arthur Dent bathrobe will be the stuff of hipster Halloween costumes. Teyana Taylor is iconic in the true sense of the word as insatiable revolutionary Perfida Beverly Hills. (I told you all to see A Thousand and One, but did you listen?) Supremely unruffled as a Latino karate instructor, Benicio Del Toro is the calm center of the film’s most remarkable sequence. As the spirited abductee, Chase Infiniti (who somehow was not herself named by Thomas Pynchon) slowly accrues an echo of Taylor’s screen intensity. And I regret to report that Sean Penn is as brilliant here as everyone says. His Steven Lockjaw is a swollen testicle of a man, incapable of properly fitting into any suit of clothes, a walking study of the psychosis of authoritarianism. Oh yeah, and that climactic car chase is totally boss. A
The Secret Agent
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s exhilarating new film is deceptively titled. Not only isn’t Marcelo, a.k.a. Armando (Wagner Moura), a spy, but The Secret Agent isn’t even exclusively about him. Mendonça follows Moura’s character, an academic whose clash with a bureaucrat has endangered his life under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the late ’70s, because this story brings us in contact with so many others. The gas station attendant who struggles for days to get the cops to retrieve a dead body. The chatty, energetic Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), who knows everyone in town and helps those in need hide. The Angolan refugee Claudia (Hermila Guedes), hoping for true revolution in her homeland. If you’ve seen the film, each of these characters will live on in your imagination afterward, examples of the breadth of humanity that flourishes despite repression. Searching for some record of his mother, who he never met, Armando visits his son, who while living with his mother’s parents has become obsessed with Jaws. Meanwhile, Armando’s enemies find his location and target him for death. Coincidentally, a human leg is discovered in the jaws of a shark; soon urban legend has it that it’s become reanimated and is prowling the town For added chaos, this takes place during carnival. All this and Udo Kier’s final role too. A-
Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Jim Crow vampire flick is a truly rare thing: a wholly self-assured mess. Technically and narratively, Coogler knows exactly what he wants to do, whether or not you can keep up, and each of the performers are just as committed. You get Michael B. Jordan distinguishing the murderous twins Smoke and Stack without resorting to caricature, Delroy Lindo as an aged bluesman. Hailee Steinfeld as a seductive quadroon, Jack O'Connell as an undead banjoist, Wunmi Mosaku as a wise hoodoo woman, Saul Williams as a preacher with a new wave hairdo, and I could just keep going. They all populate a vividly simulated Clarksdale, Mississippi, to which Jordan’s gangsters have returned to open a juke joint soon targeted by bloodsuckers—you could call this August Wilson’s From Dusk to Dawn. There are visual moments that split the diff between cornball and visionary (I truly did not know cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw had this in her) and more ideas—about Black spirituality and its vexed relationship to Christianity, about the social role of music, about integration as a deal with the devil—than your average multiplex sees in a whole summer. And if Coogler never slows down to develop those ideas, they still pack a conceptual wallop that complements the film's lived-in texture. This world is so engrossing that by the time the vamps come calling, I almost wished Coogler would just let his people have their one night undisturbed. But America’s not really like that, is it? A-
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants
The Testament of Ann Lee
Hard not to see Mona Fastvold’s telling of the story of Ann Lee, the woman who brought the Shaker movement to America, as a companion piece to her partner Brady Corbet’s more lauded The Brutalist, which was also built off a Fastvold-Corbet script. Both capture the tension between immigrant outsiders and the ethos of the land they’ve moved to. But Ann Lee is ambitious in a less conventional way, a way I hesitate to call “feminine” but is at least non-masculine, typified in how Ann Lee strives to create a community where Laszlo Toth constructed an accusatory and alienated landmark, and in the film’s flowing structure as well. Though there’s plenty of incident here, there’s not much drama: The “And then… and then…” mode of the religious text that the screenplay takes doesn’t lend itself to that. Fastvold captures the textures of 18th century Britain, the grubby toil and the joyless sex, reminding us that religious extremism once served as a route to agency for the oppressed, and her tone aims for the ecstatic austerity of the Shakers themselves. That’s undercut by a pop sweetness to the hymns and a choreographed precision to the dances that feels stagey; this is a movie musical as much as it’s a representation of the Shaker belief in worship through song. Then again, maybe that genre movie is Fastvold feminizing, even queering, the film epic? Regardless, Amanda Seyfried’s cult leader is both intensely physical and otherworldly; with her luminous eyes, beatifically parted lips, musical Mancunian drawl, and quiet presence, you can see why she has so many followers, despite her “no sex ever” rule. As I overheard one woman say on her way out of the theater, “If celibacy makes you sing like that…” B
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Just hours before I headed out to watch The Voice of Hind Rajab, I saw the latest photo of Liam, the five-year-old Minnesota boy who immigration thugs had shipped off to a Texas detention center, and learned that he’d been ill. So I was prepared for a movie about a six-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car with her dead family and surrounded by Israeli troops during the siege of Gaza to fully wreck me. But emotions are funny things, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s blend of the real and the re-created, so effective in her 2023 documentary Four Daughters, kept pushing me away here. The film takes place in a Red Crescent call center, where workers communicate with the trapped girl and struggle to coordinate, via the Red Cross and bureaucrats from both Israel and Palestine, a safe route for an ambulance to rescue her. While the Red Crescent employees are actors, we actually hear the recorded voice of Hind Rajab herself, a decision that not only makes everything around it seem a little phony, no matter how solid the performances, but raises distracting ethical questions unrelated to those the film centers on. Ben Hania wants us to feel the emotional strain that emergency workers undergo, the shame and guilt and helplessness their situations generate. But all I could keep thinking was “I’m listening to a dead girl’s voice.” Don’t get me wrong—I was still wrecked. But it was the few minutes of actual documentary footage that Ben Hania includes at the end that did it. B
Wicked: For Good—Ends January 29
