The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival opens next Wednesday—yes, it's earlier than usual—and I'll have a full preview next week. In the meantime, I've got reviews of the indie baseball flick Eephus (a little disappointing) and Jason Statham's A Working Man (no The Beekeeper) below.
Special Screenings
Thursday, March 27
Inland Empire (2006)
Emagine Willow Creek
I guess this is now officially David Lynch's final theatrical release. $11.60. 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. More info here.
The Room (2003)
Grandview 1&2
A modern classic. Also Sunday. $14.15. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Suspicion (1941)
Heights Theater
Is Cary Grant trying to kill Joan Fontaine for her money? $16. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Hidden Sound of Tango (2023)
Main Cinema
A man restores a storied guitar and organizes a performance of tango greats. $17. 7 p.m. More info here.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Trylon
Eight screenings, all sold out. Thursday-Saturday, Monday-Tuesday 7 p.m. Sunday 11:30 a.m., 3 p.m., 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Friday, March 28
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Alamo Drafthouse
Naomi Watts understands exactly how to act in a David Lynch movie. $10. 8 p.m. Saturday 12 & 3:35 p.m. Sunday 6 p.m. Monday 7:30 p.m. Wednesday 2:55 p.m. More info here.
Le Cours de la vie (2023)
Alliance Française
A screenwriter is reunited with her first love, who is now a director. $10 donation suggested. 7 p.m. More info here.
Julie Keeps Quiet (2024)
Main Cinema
A teen tennis prodigy struggles as her coach is under investigation. $17. 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, March 29
Inland Empire (2006)
Alamo Drafthouse
In case you missed it at Willow Creek. $10. 11 a.m. More info here.
Imagine Dragons: Live From the Hollywood Bowl (2025)
Emagine Willow Creek
Unfortunately, they seem to be pretty decent guys? $16.60. 3 p.m. More info here.
The Mummy (1999)
Emagine Willow Creek
The movie that almost killed Brendan Fraser. $10.50. Also Wednesday. 12 & 5:30 p.m. More info here.
Bushido (2024)
Main Cinema
A samurai committed to a quiet life ponders whether to seek vengeance. $17. 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Barbie (2023)
Mia
Never heard of it. Free. 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! With live shadow cast performance by Transvestite Soup. $10/$15. Midnight. More info here.
Vive L’Amour (1994)
Walker Art Center
A newly restored early film from the great director Tsai Ming-liang. $6/$8. 2 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, March 30
Chuck Chuck Baby (2023)
Emagine Willow Creek
A British romantic kitchen-sink musical? That’s a lot. 2 p.m. $11.60. More info here.
Cypress Hill & the London Symphony Orchestra: Black Sunday Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2005)
Emagine Willow Creek
Classy! $16.60. 5:30 & 8 p.m. Monday & Wednesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Meeting With Pol Pot (2024)
Main Cinema
Three foreign journalists are set to interview the murderous Cambodian dictator. $17. 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Monday, March 31
The Velvet Vampire (1971)
Emagine Willow Creek
A low-budget exploitation classic. $7.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Licorice Pizza (2021)
Heights Theater
Alana Haim dates a bunch of losers, settles for a teenager. $18. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, April 1
It Follows (2015)
Alamo Drafthouse
A horror movie about a syllogism? $8.95. 8 p.m. More info here.
i kinda regret making this film: a film screening and celebration
Eagles #33
Local filmmakers share some of their least favorite efforts. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, April 2
The Elephant Man (1980)
Alamo Drafthouse
“No, Blanche. I’m worried that Michael Jackson won’t be able to buy the remains of the Elephant Man.” $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Life Is Beautiful: A Letter to Gaza (2023)
Bryant Lake Bowl
Not the Roberto Benigni movie. Part of Mizna’s Insurgent Transmissions series. $5-$15 sliding scale. 7 p.m. More info here.
Free Leonard Peltier (2025)
Main Cinema
MSPIFF officially kicks off with a new documentary about the unjustly imprisoned Indian rights activist. Part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. $15/$52. 7 & 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tape Freaks
Trylon
Sold out? Sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Audrey’s Children
The story of the founder of Ronald McDonald house.
Bob Trevino Likes It
Two people strike up an unlikely friendship.
Death of a Unicorn
Jenna Ortega is falling into the quirk trap.
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
Liza who?
L2: Empuraan
An Indian action-thriller.
The Penguin Lessons
“An Englishman experiences personal and political changes after adopting a penguin during a turbulent time in Argentina's history”? Oh hell yeah, Landmark Theatres are back, baybee!
Quy Nhap Trang
There is literally no English language description of this movie online. Your guess is as good as mine—better if you speak Vietnamese.
Tippi Toes Recital: Tippi and Friends
I think this is a movie?
The Woman in the Yard
Danielle Deadwyler deserves better than Blumhouse product.
A Working Man
Suspecting that I underrated the silly-but-effective/effective-because-it’s-silly Jason Statham vehicle The Beekeeper last year, I went into the grim-visaged Brit’s latest vengeance romp determined not to not-get-fooled again. (It doesn’t help that they screen these things for a smattering of critics in the afternoon rather than plopping us into a rowdy crowd of comped civilians at night.) But sorry The Beekeeper fans—this is no The Beekeeper. In his new outing with director David Ayer, Statham is a black ops solider turned construction foreman whose name I’m not going to bother to look up; when the daughter of his kindly Latino bosses gets snatched, he reluctantly goes back to his old ways. As always, the baddies—tastelessly attired Russian gangsters, a bald Black meth kingpin who sits on an ornate metal throne in the back of a redneck bar—are colorfully sketched if never unforgettable. But if I can get with Statham belonging to an absurdly mysterious org (of beekeepers!) and uncovering an even wilder conspiracy, A Working Man is too grubby and self-righteous to be sheer dumb fun. Whenever someone asks him why he cares about the girl he’s rescuing, Statham mentions that he has a daughter of his own, and I couldn’t help shake that A Working Man believes that the worst thing about trafficking young women is that it upsets girl dads. C+
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Assessment—ends Thursday
Becoming Led Zeppelin
I’d hoped that the sensory bludgeoning of IMAX Zep would be ideal Super Bowl counterprogramming, but this all-too-authorized doc (no sex or drugs or mudsharks) is way scarcer on live footage than I’d been led to believe. Well, actually there’s lots of footage (and hell, I’d watch silent film of John Bonham slapping and stomping) but too much of it is set to the studio recordings. The ’60s studio recordings, that is—Becoming Led Zeppelin is true to its name, wrapping up with the band’s Royal Albert Hall homecoming in 1970, which I’d honestly rather watch in full rather than listen to so much jawing from three elderly Brits who really need to get over a certain 1968 Rolling Stone review already. (At least give me visuals of the wonderfully sloppy Eddie Cochran covers that are instead relegated to the credits.) Those studio LPs do sound great over a cineplex soundsystem, of course, but first you’ve got to wade through 45 minutes about skiffle and life as a ’60s session man in London. Some of that's engaging enough, but sorry I did not pay $20 to see and hear Lonnie Donegan and Lulu in The World’s Most Immersive Movie Experience. B
Black Bag
I’m not saying Steven Soderbergh’s second release of 2025 offers nothing more than well-dressed attractive people in swank settings trying to outwit one another for 90 minutes—but if it did, would that be so awful? Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are married spies George and Kathryn; he’s a stone-faced expert at ferreting out lies and she’s, well, Cate Blanchett. When George is tasked with discovering who leaked a sinister program to Russian dissidents, he invites the suspects (including Kathryn) to a dinner party where the chana masala is laced with a truth drug, with hilarious (and violent) results. That scene is neatly mirrored by an “I expect you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today” finale—screenwriter David Koepp, who’s made a living off Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and late-model Indiana Jones sequels, has clearly always wanted to wed le Carré and Agatha Christie. (There’s also just a touch of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Soderbergh’s digital camerawork, with its occasional glares and bends and blurs, isn’t exactly made for the big screen, but it does have its nice touches, like the long introductory shot that follows Fassbender from behind into the bar where he learns of his mission, or a fishing boat shot from below the waterline. In George, the director has a character just as clinical and masterful as he himself can be, yet for all the geopolitical intrigue and lives on the line, the stakes feel comfortably low. Above all, this is a parlor game, and our only concern is whether its hot married leads will get back to having hot married sex. A-
Captain America: Brave New World
The Captain America movies are where the MCU gets “serious,” where comic book idealism clashes with the dark side of U.S. history, where unfettered heroism encounters the restraining forces of bureaucracy. With Anthony Mackie inheriting the shield, Brave New World adds race to that equation. After shouldering endless Steve Rogers comparisons, Mackie's Sam Wilson gets a little speech where he wonders if he'll ever be enough, while for contrast we have Isaiah Bradley (Carl Bradley), an older Black super soldier who’d been imprisoned by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) nearly gets us into a war with Japan (couldn’t be China—Disney needs that big overseas market) over adamantium, a new substa—ah, you know, don’t worry about it. Since in the real world, an authoritarian prez is seeking to purge the military (and everywhere else) of non-whites while saber-rattling with the nation’s historic allies, theoretically the film’s themes should resonate, at least in a half-assed pop culture thinkpiece kinda way. But this slapdash entry is more concerned with callbacks to the MCU D-list like the Eternals and 2008's The Incredible Hulk. Its one big reveal (unless you’re genuinely wondering, “Will Liv Tyler appear?”) was torpedoed by the need to fill seats: This would have been 10 times more fun if we didn’t know Ford was gonna Hulk out at the end, but the theaters would have been ten times emptier if the trailers didn’t spoil that. Brave New World is about one thing only: The MCU struggling to justify its continued existence. C
A Complete Unknown (read the full review here)
Timothée Chalamet’s relative success here—he gets that Bob Dylan himself has always been a guy performing as Bob Dylan—is just one reason that James Mangold’s new biopic is so relatively un-embarrassing. The source material also helps: Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! is a thoroughly researched and reported account of Newport ’65 that’s preceded by an even-handed evaluation of what was at stake. Wald represents the ethos of the folk scene with a respect that rockist triumphalists could never see past their ingrained generational narratives to allow, and the film’s climax, Dylan’s amplified defiance of the Newport folkies, doesn’t feel as triumphant as we might expect. Dylan comes off less as a genius coming into his own than a cornered, confused guy lashing out at whoever comes closest; when his pal Bobby Neuwirth asks him point blank who he wants to be, it’s hard not hear a hollowness in the defiance of Dylan's reply: “Whoever they don’t want me to be.” When he returns to visit Woody Guthrie one last time after Newport, reflecting on what he’s done and lost, Bobby Zimmerman is now as completely Bob Dylan as Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. How does it feel? Not great, Bob. B
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
Eephus
Baseball movies and sentimental nostalgia go together like peanuts and crackerjack. So maybe director Carson Lund decided to lean into the inevitable with this pleasantly lazy film about two amateur New England ball teams squaring off in the last game before their field is replaced by a new school. The film is named for an offspeed pitch that’s so unexpected it seems to suspend time, we’re told (just like baseball, we’re also told), and it certainly knows its milieu, with '70s Red Sox wackadoo Bill Lee even showing up to get three outs. If it’s ultimately too long, well, so’s a baseball game. But unlike baseball, Eephus lacks moments of unduplicable magic, though it tries to conjure them up. We’re introduced to a cast of oddballs on and off the field, but they feel more like types than individuals—one guy’s drunk, one guy’s fat, one guy’s angry, etc.—and in the end, Lund shows us how he feels about these fellas rather than showing us how they feel about each other. B-
Flow
Every house cat stalks through its domain like some fierce jungle predator indifferent to any challenge. Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis calls that supposedly independent beast’s bluff, tossing a kitty into a flood and saying “How tough are you now, huh puss?” Flow is in part a unique hangout movie, a kind a postdiluvian animal Real World where a prickly black cat is forced to coexist on a boat with a wounded secretarybird, an acquisitive lemur, a stolid capybara, and an all too friendly Lab. None of the critters speak—aside from knowing how to work a rudder, they generally behave as animals would. And while the computer animation isn’t exactly beautiful, and can’t avoid an occasional cutscene quality, we pass through computer-generated environments with an unmatched three-dimensional ease that's its own reward. Though we never learn what happened to the humans—Flow is blessedly free of any backstory—there’s also an element of wish fulfillment here. If humans ever do finally off themselves en masse, it suggests, at least the animals we love will find ways to survive. If they learn to work together better than humans did, that is. A-
I’m Still Here—ends Thursday
There’s a lot to admire about Walter Salles’s newest film, which documents the struggle of Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) to learn the truth about what happened to her dissident husband Rubens (Selton Mello) after his abduction by the Brazilian military dictatorship. Mostly there’s Torres’s performance, which projects an astonishing dignity and perseverance. (As a nice touch, Torres's mother, Fernanda Montenegro, the jaded teacher from Salles’s 1998 breakthrough Central Station, plays the older Eunice.) Salles’s timing couldn’t be better: Surely the film’s Oscar nominations (Best Picture and Best Actress for Torres) owe something to the mood of “it can happen here?” now belated descending upon the privileged in the U.S. But as a director Salles lacks the historical sweep required to tell a multi-decade story, and the film loses direction in it's final third. I'm Still Here exists for a worthy goal, bearing witness to the fact that repressive regimes someday come to an end—sometimes even with a single lifetime. But it’s more testimonial than art. B
Mickey 17
More like Mickey Infinity. (Because it’s too long.) I will say, I’ve never seen a better Jerry Lewis-indebted anticolonialist sci-fi tragicomedy. Then again I’ve never seen a worse one either. For whatever it’s worth, Mickey 17 is sui generis—unlike its protagonist (Robert Pattinson), an "expendable" on a longterm space mission who is resurrected via 3D printer after each harrowing death. (It’s a metaphor! For capitalism!) Robert Pattinson is entertaining as both the schlubby title character and the much cooler Mickey 18 (as both the Julius Kelp and the Buddy Love, if I may), the latter hatched prematurely when 17 is believed gobbled up by some spectacularly designed wormy creatures with whom he develops a strange rapport. Bong Joon-hoo’s cheap gags and obvious critiques hit as often as they miss, yet your enjoyment of Mickey 17 relies primarily on how long you can tolerate Mark Ruffalo’s Trump impression and Toni Collette doing her usual rubberfaced mugging. Mostly Mickey 17 leaves me to wonder why the tonal clashes feel so much klutzier in Bong’s English-language efforts than they do in his Korean films. Do they just go down easier when I have to read subtitles? Or do I just miss Song Kang-ho? B-
The Monkey
I’ve got a conundrum: To accurately convey just how irritating this movie is, I’d have to spend more time thinking about it than is good for my mental health. So I’ll just punt and say if the overpraised Longlegs suggested that Oswald Perkins was a dumb but talented guy, this Stephen King adaptation reminds me that a talent with no idea how to use it is just a fancy hack. The story is simple enough: Twin brothers inherit a cursed toy monkey from their dad and every time they turn its key someone dies in a ridiculous manner. But that’s ridiculous, not ingenious—if the Final Destinations understood their place in the world and just went about their business; Perkins can’t stop reminding you he’s slumming here. I haven’t been so impatient for a movie to end since Argylle, and this one was only 90 minutes long. With its swearing pre-teens, occasionally decent splatter, and elbow-in-the-ribs humor, this may the perfect sleepover movie for none-too-bright 12-year-olds. Thirteen-year-olds might find it a little corny though. C
No Other Land
Maybe the Oscars can be a force for good? Certainly a Best Documentary nomination has helped this acclaimed look at the Israeli displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank belatedly access U.S. theaters, after major distributors ignored it for more than a year. But the struggle for distribution shouldn’t overshadow the film itself, which is much more than just a competent document of brutality. No Other Land is the product of four directors (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor), two Israeli and two Palestinian; the various sources of footage from cameras and phones are brilliantly edited, and the strained friendship between two of the filmmakers—the Palestinian Adra and the Israeli Abraham—is central to the story it tells of the limits of empathy and humanitarian universalism. There are plenty of horrors to catalogue here, and even if months of violent clips from Gaza have desensitized you, watching a settler casually gun down a displaced Palestinian will still make you gasp. Yet it's the everyday cruelty that's most unsettling, the sight of an army pouring concrete into a well and bulldozing the homes of families forced to relocate to caves. Humans really are capable of doing anything to one another, and in cold blood. A
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Dressed like Missy Elliott in the video for "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)," a woman named Shura (Susan Chardy), who has recently returned to her home country of Zambia, is driving home from a party at night when she spots her Uncle Fred’s corpse in the road. That’s how writer/director Rungano Nyoni’s second film begins, with Shura a modern, westernized woman who seemingly wakes up in the middle of an ancient folk tale. But though the absurdist humor persists, the film gets darker as the long funeral preparations wear on and Sura’s female cousins discuss Uncle Fred’s abusive past. As with her previous film, I Am Not a Witch, Nyoni sees much of her nation’s traditions as a smokescreen that conceals how petty male buffoons cling to their power. Chardy is remarkable as the quiet Shura who is forced into action, and Nyoni herself is just as observant as her lead, never overplaying the drama but letting her imagery speak for her as the repercussions slowly sink in. A-
One of Them Days
A Keke Palmer/SZA buddy comedy with an Issa Rae imprimatur, and I waited almost two months to see it? What was I thinking? Then again, what was Sony thinking burying this fun little romp in the doldrums of late winter? Conscientious waitress Dreux (Palmer) and spacey artist Alyssa (SZA) are roommates who get swindled out of their rent by the latter’s no-good boyfriend, and they’ve got an afternoon to rustle up $1,500. Before running afoul of the neighborhood’s baddest bitch and its thug kingpin, the duo barely survive a visit to a blood bank staffed by Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James and risk doing business with a payday loan servicer that’s proud of its readiness to dole out cash and its draconian enforcement policies (motto: “We gotcha—and we’ll getcha!”). The jokes in Syreeta Singleton’s script could occasionally be a little snappier, but the situations are perfect and SZA’s timing is a match for Palmer’s, which is saying something. At a time where every comedy is some blaring high-concept cross-genre nonsense (I’m looking at you, Novocaine), what a relief to laugh a little and hope things turn out all right for a couple of characters you’re happy to have met. Some screenings are now being marketed as Laugh-Alongs, whatever that means. Were we supposed to watch in silence before? B+
Paddington in Peru
The third Paddington installment has all the hallmarks of a Part Three: a new setting, a cast replacement (Emily Mortimer gamely standing in for the much-missed Sally Hawkins), developing characters whose charm has always been that they don’t change, a resolution that could end the story but, if everything works out at the box office, probably won’t. Still, it’s fun to watch Antonio Banderas ham it up as a tour boat captain who is not what he seems, haunted by gold-hungry ancestors (also Banderas). Likewise for Olivia Coleman as a grinning, singing nun who is not what she etc., running a home for retired bears. Paddington, bless him, remains exactly what he seems, causing good-natured mayhem whether he’s failing to operate a photo booth correctly, racing on llamas, or steering a ship. But this is merely cute where Paddington 2 was irresistible. B+
There's Still Tomorrow—ends Thursday
