Honestly, the two films in wide release that I'm most excited about this week are 50 and (almost) 40 years old. Jaws is Jaws, and you deserve to see it in a theater at least once. Sign o' the Times, the Prince concert film that was all but lost for years, is also headed to theaters. I saw a private screening shortly after Prince's death (won't say where because they might get in trouble) and we were standing up to cheer when Sheila E. finished her drum solo. Also: Cat! Glover!
As for new releases Caught Stealing and The Roses... well, scroll down and find out.
Special Screenings
Thursday, August 28
Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023)
Bassett Clark Park
I made an ACAB joke about Paw Patrol in this column once and someone got so pissed in the comments. Free. 8 p.m. More info here.
Spring Breakers {2012}
Emagine Willow Creek
Good essay from Paul Thompson, who likes the movie more than I do. $11.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Taste of Cherry (1997)
Grandview 1&2
If you care, I saw this at the Edina last week and it’s still among my least favorite Kiarostamis. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Heights Theater
What a cast! $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Loring Park
Time yet again for another bike-in movie at the park. Free. 8 p.m. More info here.
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Parkway Theater
Still so jealous of how much better teen movies were in the late ’90s than they were in the ’80s. $9/$12. Music from Leslie Vincent at 7 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Riverview Theater
Recommended for fans of Shrek (2001). $1. 11 a.m. More info here.
Girl Climber (2025)
Riverview Theater
Emily Harrington climbs Yosemite’s El Capitan. $7. 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday, August 29
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Alamo Drafthouse
Leave Heather Langenkamp alone! $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
La petite vadrouille (2024)
Alliance Française
My French is a little rusty but I believe this means “the little vadrouille.”
$10 donation requested. 6 p.m. More info here.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Lake Hiawatha Park
George Will called it “the greatest movie.” Free. 7:55 p.m. More info here.
Jumanji (1995)
Lake Phalen Beach
The original, fwiw. Free. Dusk. More info here.
High and Low (1963)
Main Cinema
Based on the classic Mort Walker/Dik Browne comic stri—what? Oh, I'm sorry. Also Saturday. $13. 3:45 p.m. More info here.
Stray Dog (1949)
Main Cinema
Toshiro Mifune is a rookie cop who goes undercover after his gun is stolen. Also Saturday. $13. 9:45 p.m. More info here.
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
Trylon
Anthony Quinn is a boxer told he can no longer fight. $8. 7 p.m. Saturday 8:15 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Patterns (1956)
Trylon
Rod Serling’s searing critique of corporate capitalism. $8. 9 p.m. Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 4:45 p.m. More into here.
Saturday, August 30
After Hours (1985)
Alamo Drafthouse
Guys are always so mean to Teri Garr. $10.99. 3 p.m. More info here.
Ran (1985)
Alamo Drafthouse
Kurosawa’s classic version of King Lear. Both screenings sold out. 11 a.m. Wednesday 6 p.m. More info here.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Bryant Square Park
This one does kinda rok. Free. 7:55 p.m. More info here.
The Iron Giant (1999)
East Side Sculpture Park
Note to Brunch Buds readers: This is currently Redacto’s favorite movie. Free. 8:15 p.m. More info here.
Torch Song Trilogy (1988)
Emagine Willow Creek
Harvey Fierstein just wants to be loved, is that so wrong?
$11.15. 2 p.m. 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.
CatVideoFest 2025
Riverview Theater
That’s right, the Riverview is still Catvideofesting. $5. 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, August 31
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Alamo Drafthouse
Pretty sure this is the one with the Order of the Phoenix. $10.99. 12 p.m. More info here.
La Haine (1995)
Grandview 1&2
After a night of rioting, three French buddies wait to hear if their cop-battered friend is OK. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Clue (1985)
Roxy’s Cabaret
Yes, but which ending will it be? Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Great Escape (1963)
Trylon
Weird coincidence—I just watched the 30 Rock episode where Jack “great escapes” his girlfriends yesterday. $8. 6:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Monday, September 1
Casino (1995)
Alamo Drafthouse
As in “Schemin’ like De Niro in…” $10.99. 3 p.m. More info here.
Screen Unseen
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
Secret movie night! 7 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Batman (1989)
AMC Southdale
Monday is now apparently Batman night at Southdale? Second week in a row they've showed it. $18.99. 4 p.m. More info here.
Batman Returns (1992)
AMC Southdale
Also second week in a row. $18.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
After Hours (1985)
Edina 4
In case you don’t feel like driving out to Woodbury. Also Wednesday. $12.15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Urban Legend (1998)
Emagine Willow Creek
In my day, horror movies were all about coming up with high concept ways of murdering teenagers and we were happy about it. $7.60. 7:30. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
Your guess is as good as mine. 7 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Tuesday, August 19
Raw (2016)
Alamo Drafthouse
So this is why vegetarians don’t eat meat. $10.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Mean Girls (2004)
Parkway Theater
Don’t worry, it’s the original. $9/$12. Music from Elour at 7 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, August 27
Preparation for the Next Life (2025)
Alamo Drafthouse
An Uyghar immigrant and an American soldier fall in love. Free. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Ghost Hunting (2017)
Bryant Lake Bowl
Palestinians dramatize their former lives as Israeli prisoners. Part of Mizna’s Insurgent Transmissions series. $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Lagoon Cinema
The Lagoon is doing a P.T. Anderson retrospective to prep you for his latest, One Battle After Another. $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tape Freaks
Trylon
As always… Sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Blind: A Phil Robertson Tribute
The inspiring story of one man, one beard, and one god.
Caught Stealing
What a slog. Austin Butler (weirdly channeling Barbarino-era Travolta at times) is Hank Thompson, a hunky bartender on the Lower East Side who coulda been a star ballplayer if he hadn’t rammed his IROC into a tree as a kid. His neighbor (Matt Smith with a mohawk that would’ve got him hooted off St. Mark’s Place in 1998, which is when this movie takes place for some reason) asks Hank to look after his cat; soon Russian mobsters start pummeling Hank, and Hasidic hitmen are on his trail too. The film veers between bloody ha-ha and bloody oh-no without settling on a style, and if you try to miss its “last good days of New York” thesis, don’t worry, Darren Aronofsky will get the Twin Towers into every shot he can. Maybe Charlie Huston’s 2005 novel of the same name works on the page, but nothing in his lackluster adapted script suggests how, and though Butler does have charisma you’d never know it from his performance here. Still, Aronofsky haters (we are legion) will be relieved that the film keeps his auteurist tics in check, so no women are tormented to the brink of insanity and beyond—which doesn’t mean no women get a bullet to the head. C
Jaws
They made a movie based on that Dickie Goodman record?
Leaving Mom
A poor Vietnamese barber struggles to care for his mother, who has dementia.
The Roses
I’m not gonna pretend I remember much about Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner going at each other 36 years ago in The War of the Roses, a movie that mostly existed because people really liked them together in Romancing the Stone. But I do recall its core conceit—how quickly passion flips to hatred—which this reboot/revamp/do-over/whatever avoids with laborious determination. Tony McNamara’s screenplay, which dodges predictability so assiduously it rarely has much fun, is dedicated to the even more cynical proposition that marriage can turn even the most thoughtful humans into monsters. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch are Ivy and Theo, married Brits bemused by life in the U.S., where friends give them guns as gifts; while his career as an architect craters, hers as a chef skyrockets. A self-aware modern liberal man, Theo consciously resists toxic resentment as he takes on childcare duties, and the duo’s shared ironic sensibility allows them to bicker cordially for most of the film. Until this all collapses into violent farce, that is, at which point it’s like Scenes from a Marriage turning into Punch and Judy. Docked a notch for letting Kate McKinnon do her “Ooh, am I sexy or creepy, who can say, ooh” shtick along the way. B-
Run
Whaddya know, a new Uwe Boll movie.
Hridayapoorvam
Looks like a heartfelt Indian family drama.
Sign o’ the Times
An incredible “live” concert film that you've really go to experience in a theater.
Sundarakanda
"Nara Rohith Assures Sundarakanda will offer unlimited fun." Well there you have it.
The Toxic Avenger
A gory remake of the low-budget classic with Peter Dinklage as the hero.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
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
Elio—ends Thursday
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
F1
Well of course this is Top Gun for race cars—you thought Joseph Kosinski was gonna go back to directing Tron movies and Halo ads? What matters is that F1’s on-track action is as gripping as Top Gun: Maverick’s mid-air feats, and there are moments that had me, a non-gasper, gasping. The acting bits are not entirely as bad as those TG:M’s Oscar-nominated screenplay made us endure. And if your attention may wander in these off-track moments, at least F1 (I am not calling it F1: The Movie—I got my own Google problems to worry about) leaves us at leisure to compare and contrast Tom Cruise’s smugness with Brad Pitt’s: eternal youth vs. staved-off decline, skill vs. savvy, unnerving intensity vs. indolent swagger. Yes, ideally, Pitt’s Sonny Hayes would learn as much from his younger colleagues as he teaches them, but instead it’s the wily old driver who touches the lives of everyone he encounters—he’s kind of a Magical Caucasian. Chastened hotshot Damson Idris learns not to showboat for the press. Kerry Condon overcomes his mistrust of Sonny’s arrogance long enough to bed him. And team owner Javier Bardem, who took a chance on Sonny, sees his long shot pay off, defeating the machinations of evil-as-ever Tobias Menzies. And they say Hollywood doesn’t make movies for aging white guys who feel like their talents have gone unacknowledged anymore. B-
Honey Don’t!
Theoretically, I appreciate that Ethan Coen’s lesbian wife and new filmmaking partner Tricia Cooke has brought out the horndog in the ol’ feller. Turns out men and women alike want to see Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza fuck—who knew? (Everyone knew). But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna giggle every time I see a dildo. I was no fan of Cooke/Coen’s first film together, the “brisk and harmless” Drive-Away Dolls (to quote myself), but I figured they were still working out a few, erm, kinks in their collaborative style. Nope—what you see is what they want you to get. Here Qualley is a high femme Bakersfield PI whose investigation into an auto fatality leads her to a drug-smuggling church run by a self-involved Chris Evans as people die all around her—accidentally, gruesomely, comically, pointlessly, and at great length (often all at once). But while Qualley does look great in her ’40s outfits (those red heels are her), I’ve yet to discern the star quality directors keep projecting onto her, she struggles to master the rushed deadpan the Coen(ish) patter requires, and every time I hear her do a southern accent, all I can think is, “Ma’am, you are no Holly Hunter.” B-
The 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
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)
Trust—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
