It's the time of year that the "quality" movies are parceled out, which could mean dry Oscar fare or genuinely worthwhile grown-up movies. Among this week's releases, I'm personally looking forward to Sentimental Value, from director Joachim Trier, who had a bit of a breakthrough a couple years back with The Worst Person in the World.
And if you scroll down to our "Ongoing" section, you'll find new reviews of Bugonia (finally) and It Was Just an Accident.
Special Screenings
Thursday, November 20
Union (2024)
East Side Freedom Library
A documentary about grassroots labor organizing at the Staten Island Amazon center. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Grandview 1&2
Yes, Jon Voight used to be cute (and non-fascist). $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Sting (1971)
Heights Theater
Why’s there so much ragtime in a movie set during the 1930s? $15. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Friday, November 21
Annie Colère (2021)
Alliance Français
A pregnant woman in ’70s France joins the fight for legalized abortion. Free; donation requested. 6 p.m. More info here.
The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979)
Trylon
A cool thing about getting channel 5 out of New York in the ’80s is that you got to watch the same kung fu movies that Wu-Tang did. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Shaolin vs. Lama (1983)
Trylon
Yu Ting struggles to learn the Buddha Finger technique. $8. Friday-Saturday 9 p.m. Sunday 5 p.m. More info here.
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Walker Art Center
Joan Crawford bends the hell outta some gender. $6/$8. 7 p.m. Saturday 2 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, November 22
Live at the Met: Arabella
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Lagoon Cinema/Marcus West End
Hey opera sickos, check it out! $26.65. Noon. More info here.
The Polar Express (2004)
Emagine Willow Creek
An inadvertently creepy Christmas classic. Also Sunday. $10.60. 2 p.m. Wednesday 6:15 p.m. More info here.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
Parkway Theater
Let me get this straight: They’re turtles, but they’re also teenagers, mutants, and ninjas? That’s a lot! $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Parkway Theater
Would you people keep it down? I’m trying to watch the movie. $10/$15. Midnight. More info here.
Three on a Match (1932)
Trylon
A “rip-roaring pre-code shocker.” Presented by the Cult Film Collective. $8. 5:30. Sunday 1:15. More info here.
Sunday, November 23
Found Footage Fest: Porcelain VHS Treasures
Heights Theater
Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher share their latest finds. $20. 4 & 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Clerks (1994)
Roxy’s Cabaret
You know who else worked at a New Jersey convenience store in the ’90s? (Me.) Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
School in the Crosshairs (1981)
Trylon
A psychic schoolgirl learns that her classmate plans to steal a student government election. And that’s not all! $8. Sunday 7 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9 p.m. More info here.
Monday, November 24
Branded to Kill (1967)
Alamo Drafthouse
The Seijun Suzuki masterpiece that got him blackballed. $13.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
You’re Next (2011)
Emagine Willow Creek
A slasher in a lamb mask wreaks havoc. $8.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, November 25
The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
Alamo Drafthouse
Alamo has this on its calendar, but the link says it's not showing and doesn't let you buy tix. Search me! 8 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, November 26
Trains, Planes, and Automobiles (1987)
Parkway Theater
Just in time for Thanksgiving. $9/$12. Music from Meatraffle Ska at 7 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
Jay Kelly
Finally, a movie about the movie business!
Middle Class
A new Indian family comedy.
120 Bahadur
An Indian war drama.
Rental Family
Who can resist Brendan Fraser in his “loveable big guy” era?
Sentimental Value
So, Stellan Skarsgard is actually the worst person in the world?
Sisu: Road to Revenge
The killer Finn is back again. (Pronounce that “aginn” and it rhymes.)
Wicked: For Good
Reading the plot synopsis made me dizzy. Too. Much. Plot.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Bugonia
Even when I like a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, I feel kinda played—there’s just something so smugly conniving about his glib riffs off our cultural moment, as though he’s figured out exactly how much nihilist grotesquerie titillates Americans without turning them off. But I can’t deny how thoroughly he rips a simple idea to shreds once his jaws clench down. Here, Lanthimos chomps on the paradox of how conspiracy theorists can acutely diagnose societal ills while veering so ludicrously off base when it comes to assigning blame. Jesse Plemons is Teddy Gatz, a beekeeper whose mother is in a coma because she participated in a clinical trial run by pharmaceutical behemoth Auxolith. Putting two and two together, Teddy arrives at the obvious conclusion that this is all part of an extraterrestrial plot to destroy humanity. With often reluctant help from his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, providing what little heart the movie has), Teddy kidnaps Auxolith’s glam girlboss, who is, of course, Emma Stone. Down as ever for whatever Yorgos flings at her, Stone particularly excels at the effortless doublespeak of the affluent, as she displayed in The Curse. I mean, rich people do sound like aliens when they talk to us. Begonia succeeds primarily as a series of tense moments—Teddy’s interrogations of Michelle, a visit to Teddy’s home from a cop with a creepy past, Michelle’s attempts to turn Don against his cousin—but I appreciate how Lanthimos undercuts what could be an absurdist catharsis with a grim coda. And corporate queen Stone, head back, singing along to “Good Luck, Babe!” as her Range Rover cruises down the highway, is an indelible image of our age. A-
Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc
Eleanor the Great—ends November 20
Frankenstein
That’s Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, if you must. As opposed to “Mary Shelley’s,” I suppose, though to be fair del Toro approximates the original novel more faithfully than most adaptations. In spirit, at least—he takes liberties with the story, most cleverly in making it so the Creature (Jacob Elordi) can never die. But he also ladles on an excess of motivational cues. F’rinstance, Victor Frankenstein’s father, the old Baron (Charles Dance), beats his son, which is why the doctor rejects the Creature so violently, you see. Frankenstein also juices up the conflict between Victor and Creature with several layers of jealousy: Mia Goth’s Elizabeth, Victor’s fiancé in the book, is here engaged to his brother William, and, as del Toro heroines will, she falls for the Creature. And while the addition of Christoph Waltz as Victor’s angel investor Heinrich Harlander is, I suppose, meant to highlight that our latter day mad scientists are funded by even madder financiers, his is one subplot too many. While Frankenstein has a vivid pop goth sheen, it lacks any real poetry or madness; humanist softie that he is, Del Toro even arranges a final reconciliation between the maker and his creation. And though it’s fun as hell to watch the Creature wreck shit, flinging people about with Hulk-like ferocity, his look is kinda wanting: He’s just a big, stitched together guy, kind of a jacked, overgrown Gollum. B
Good Fortune—ends November 20
It Was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi’s first film since Iran lifted its hideous sanctions against him is a manic riff on Death and the Maiden that dips a toe in black comedy without ever diving in—fitting for a movie so openly about hesitation it doesn’t shy away from mentioning Godot. Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) is an Azerbaijani mechanic who was once tortured in an Iranian prison. When a one-legged man (Ebrahim Azizi) stops at his garage one night, Vahid is convinced that this is his torturer. At first, that is—the next day, after he snatches the guy and begins to bury him alive, he has second thoughts. And so he enlists a whole crew of victims, including a bride, a groom, a wedding photographer, and her short-fused ex, to confirm his hunch. As they hem and haw, Iran’s bribe-ridden authorities persistently rial and dime them at every turn; a good-hearted Vahid even winds up assisting his prisoner’s family. At time you almost forget that these people are haunted by an experience they will never escape. Hollywood loves to assure us that a vengeful spirit exists inside us all, just waiting for an excuse to be unleashed. Ever the humanist, Panahi disagrees. Yes, this crew is inept and indecisive when it comes to revenge, he seems to say, but wouldn’t you be too? A-
Karen Kingsbury’s The Christmas Ring
Nuremberg
Nuremberg promises us both a stirring old-school courtroom drama and a keen psychological battle of wits, and on both counts it only half delivers. After WWII, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) is determined to take down imprisoned Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) in a fair trial. The film practically plays up the devious Göring as a Hannibal Lecter figure, and his would-be Will Graham is psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), sent to find out what makes the runner-up Führer tick. As Jackson, Shannon has the needed gravitas and pride, and the skills to nuance the thunderous Oscarish moments. The supporting cast is good as well: Colin Hanks always makes a good pinhead, John Slattery would have regular work if they still made war pictures like they used to, and Richard E. Grant is quietly effective as the Brit who saves Jackson’s ass. Malek is fine, but he really needs to learn not to constantly smirk. Anyway, I was there to see Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring, and he delivered the same precise hamminess he brings to the title role as The Pope’s Exorcist or Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder. He doesn’t render Göring human—that would be silly. But he does create a well-rounded film character, and that’s all Nuremberg requires. B
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
Roofman—ends November 20
Probably not a good movie, and certainly not an honest one, Roofman is as desperate to be liked as its main character, serial McDonald's robber and escaped convict Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum). After ingeniously smuggling himself out of the clink, Manchester hides out in a Toys "R" Us and inconveniently falls for a store employee because she’s played by Kirsten Dunst. He follows her to church (calling himself John Zorn, heh heh), wins over her daughters and fellow churchgoers, and creates a new life for himself that can’t possibly last. And you know what, gosh darn it? I did like Roofman in spite of my (spiteful) self. Because Tatum is charming, especially when he’s playing with kids or flirting with Dunst, who is infallibly wonderful. Because the movie is relatively free of condescension to ordinary folks who find community at church and because it assumes that there’s a cineplex audience out there willing to root (with reservations) for a guy who robs fast food chains and big box stores. Let’s not go crazy here, though. Though relatively effective, the handheld camera is an affectation, a sign that director Derek Cianfrance wants Roofman to be a more credible movie than it is. But Tatum doesn’t have what it takes to truly plumb the pathological side of Manchester’s need to be loved. Still, if you’re in the mood for a crowd-pleaser turned tear-jerker or just want to see a liberal amount of Tatum’s bare ass, happy holidays. B
Sarah’s Oil
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Bruce sure knows how to sabotage synergy, don’t he? The Boss released the long craved “Electric Sessions” of his lo-fi acoustic classic Nebraska (as part of a pricey box set) just in time for fans to watch Jeremy Allen White’s onscreen Springsteen complain about how those versions suck. And the artist was right to stand his ground against the big, bad money men at Columbia and insist that they release the haunted tapes he’d four-tracked on a TEAC 144 at his Colts Neck crash pad. Still, watching a guy write in a notebook and sing in his bedroom isn’t particularly cinematic. And you know what’s even harder to dramatize? The depression that Springsteen slipped into during this period, which writer/director Scott Cooper tries to explain via black and white flashbacks to a childhood dominated by an emotionally distant, physically abusive dad (Stephen Graham, doing his best as a psychological bogeyman). Jeremy Allen White, whose alleged charisma remains imperceptible to me, mostly plays Bruce as a sullen non-entity, and though he’s got the hunched shoulders and stretched, stiff neck down pat, half of the white guys in Jersey look more like the Boss than Allen does. But the big problem is that Cooper can’t match the eloquence with which Bruce Springsteen has written, sung, and spoken about his relationship with his father. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere may be as earnest as its subject, yet it's telling that a movie about a guy demanding that an album cover not even feature his photo lets someone prefix “Springsteen” to its title to make the film more marketable. C+
Train Dreams—ends November 20
