A breezy week for films screening locally, with two pet video fests, lots of bargain movies for the kids, and the wretched-looking Harold and the Purple Crayon hitting theaters. And to balance that off with a little grimness, there's Children of Men at the Trylon.
Special Screenings
Thursday, August 1
Peter Rabbit (2018)
Emagine Willow Creek
This is no Spider-Man Spider-Verse movie. $3. 12 p.m. More info here.
Moonstruck (1987)
Grandview 1&2
Nic Cage ain't no freakin' monument to justice. He. Lost. His. Hand. Also Sunday. $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Cleopatra (1934)
The Heights
Old Hollywood pageantry! $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Wallace and Gromit
JD Rivers’ Children’s Garden
There are a bunch of these movies, not sure which one is screening. Free. 8:35 p.m. More info here.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Parkway Theater
Preceded by a dance contest, set to Jamiroquai, of course. $9/$12. Dance contest at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Trolls Band Together (2023)
Riverview Theater
I could have sworn this came out like five years ago. $1. 11 a.m. More info here.
The Lego Movie (2014)
Target Field Station
Will Arnett ranks higher on the list of on-screen Batmen than anyone wants to admit. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Shark Warning (2024)
Trylon
A movie about a killer shark—finally! $8. 1 p.m. More info here.
If You Label Me, You Negate Me: Nightlife and Identity in Moving Image
Walker Art Center
A collection of short films about queer nightlife. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday, August 2
Pet Video Fest
CHS Field
Not just cats anymore! $10/$15. 8 p.m. More info here.
PAW Patrol: The Movie (2021)
Corcoran Park
I said "ACAB" the last time this showed and that one guy got so mad in the comments. Free. 8:35 p.m. More info here.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Emagine Willow Creek
Meatballs falling from the sky? Preposterous. All week. $3. 11 a.m. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
Not sold out... yet. $13/$19. 8 p.m. More info here.
Paprika (2006)
Riverview Theater
Just like the Japanese Breakfast song. Also Saturday. $5. 10:30 p.m. More info here.
Attack of the Meth Gator (2024)
Trylon
Suck it, cocaine bear. $8. Friday-Saturday, Monday-Tuesday 5 p.m. Sunday, Wednesday 1 p.m. More info here.
Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981)
Trylon
A high school girl becomes a yakuza chairman. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:30 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, August 3
Ponyo (2008)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
A G-rated The Shape of Water? $16.35. Saturday-Sunday 3 & 7 p.m. Monday- Wednesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Grease (1978)
Lake Harriet
It is, I am told, "the word." Free. 8:35 p.m. More info here.
Cat Videofest 2024
Main Cinema
The CHS fest may take in all pets, but this is for the cat video purists. $12. 1 p.m. Sunday 1 & 4:10 p.m. Wednesday 7:10 p.m. More info here.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Main Cinema
Just how big is he? $10. 10 p.m. More info here.
Ratatouille (2007)
Parkway Theater
Hampered by its anti-critic bias. $9/$12. 1 p.m. More info here.
Mississippi Speed Record: An Epic Adventure (2024)
Riverview Theater
Paddlin' the full Mississip' in a 23-foot canoe. $15-$50. 10 a.m. More info here.
Sunday, August 4
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Emagine Willow Creek
There's another one? $9. 12 & 5 p.m. Wednesday 11:50 & 5:20 p.m. More info here.
Children of Men (2006)
Trylon
As good as I remember it, every time I watch it. $8. 5:45 & 8 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Monday, August 5
Bucket of Blood (1959) + Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Emagine Willow Creek
Two horrific comedies from different eras. $10. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Elemental (2023)
Linden Hills Recreation Center
"The perfect metaphor for Leftist views of diversity," say the watchdogs at Worth It or Woke, who seem like the sort of level-headed folks who refuse to read their toddlers books about sharing. Free. 8:30 p.m. More info here.
Vanya
Main Cinema
A reworking of Chekov's Uncle Vanya, filmed live at the National Theatre. $20. 7 p.m. Wednesday 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, August 6
Migration (2023)
Harrison Recreation Center/Riverview Theater
A family of ducks accidentally visit NYC—and learn a little something about themselves. Harrison: Free. 8:30 p.m. More info here. Riverview: Also Wednesday. $1. 10:30 a.m. More info here.
Heaven Adores You (2014)
Main Cinema
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of this documentary about Elliott Smith on his birthday. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, August 7
Turandot
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
An encore screening of Zeffirelli's 2016 staging of the Puccini opera $16.35. 1 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2021)
The Commons
Very cute. Free. 8:30 p.m. More info here.
Bullitt (1968)
Grandview 1&2
It really is a great car chase. $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
North Loop Green
This is the one with the sorcerer's stone in it. Free. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tape Freaks August
Trylon
It's gotten really popular! Sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Firing Squad
Christian prisoners in Indonesia get even more Christian.
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Absolutely not.
Kneecap
Members of a Belfast rap trio strive to preserve their native language.
Trap
A new M. Night Shyamalan movie? More like Crap then.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
No really, what we gonna do about this? Rebooted in 2020 with Moroccan-Belgian directing duo Adil & Bilall honoring the bludgeoning legacy of Michael Bay, this franchise sticks to the basics: Two Miami cops banter and shoot people until it’s time to blow up something big. But the fourth installment in the series adds (ugh) heart, as Will Smith’s Mike and Martin Lawrence’s Marcus have to clear the name of their dead captain (Joe Pantoliano) after a cartel-adjacent thug (Eric Dane, aiming for sociopathic and hitting somnolent) posthumously frames him as dirty. In between wisecracks and explosions, I couldn’t help but wonder why these movies bum me out so much. Is it the abrupt shifts from comedy to sentimentality to brutality? The way they accentuate Smith’s most unattractive qualities as an actor (especially a smug self-righteousness)? The dreary sense that this is all people are really looking for from movies? I can’t deny that Bad Boys: Ride or Die does give the people what they want—the ladies behind me were practically giddy when an alligator ate the character they’d hoped he would. But if I had to pick, I’ll go with die. C
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Inside Out 2
Inside Out’s model of the human psyche was something only Pixar could have dreamt up (derogatory): Your brain is an office staffed with project managers jockeying for control of your emotional responses. Despite the corporatized determinism at its core, the 2015 movie worked dramatically because its story of a Minnesota girl named Riley played off adult sympathies for distressed children in the sort of pitiless, heart-wrenching way that only Pixar can (complimentary, I think?). In this noisy, chaotic follow up, Riley enters adolescence and a new emotion, Anxiety, shows up to the job. The upstart feeling stages a coup, literally bottles up Joy and other inconvenient emotions, and constructs Riley’s sense of self based wholly on the perception of others. There’s so much focus on the internal conflict here that Riley becomes a puppet yanked too and fro, and the emotional dynamics make no sense even on their own terms. C+
Longlegs
There’s good dread (the kind you feel about what might happen next during an effective atmospheric build up) and then there’s bad dread (the kind that makes you feel that things are just going to keep getting sillier after someone mentions Satan for the first time). The two duke it out to a draw in writer/director Osgood Perkins’s debut, which—hype and box office and Nicolas Cage aside—cries out not for hyperbole but for weak critical fudge words like “ambitious” and “uneven.” Performances are solid all around, from Elevated Scream Queen Meika Monroe as an intuitive and emotionally reserved FBI agent to Blair Underwood making a welcome return as her boss to Alicia Witt doing what she can as a harbinger of the silliness to come. As for Cage, he’s (for the most part) genuinely creepy rather than merely Cagey. But echoes of thrillers past (notably The Silence of the Lambs) do not prove flattering. Me, I left deflated rather than spooked. B-
Oddity
What’s most unsettling about Damian McCarthy’s clever little puzzle of a thriller is that you can’t quite guess what the picture’s supposed to look like until all the pieces are in place—though you can be pretty sure once that big wooden statue of a man with a gaping mouth shows up that he’ll have a prominent position. Carolyn Bracken plays twins. One is murdered early in the film while restoring her creepy old house with no cell phone reception. The other is a blind psychic shopkeeper who traffics in the arcane and is displeased when the dead sister’s husband, a doctor at a mental hospital that seems to indulge in some 19th century therapeutic practices, takes up with a pharmaceutical rep less than a year after his wife’s death. The plot is a little baggy, a few of the characterizations too broad, the climax a little creaky. But we could use more modest little creepshows like this and fewer grand statements about horror. B+
Thelma
A nonegenarian (June Squibb) gets scammed online and then tracks down the evildoers to get her money back—it’s kinda like The Beekeeper if Phylicia Rashad hadn’t needed Statham to avenge her. Squibb is generally wonderful as the plucky old gal, but despite some cute moments the whole shebang still felt a little too “hooray for the aged” overall. For me, that is. Everyone seems to love this movie. Maybe my experience was flavored by an excessively enthusiastic MSPIFF crowd? Or maybe I really do expect too much from movies? B-
Twisters
Twister may not be quite the summer classic that anyone who wasn’t old enough to vote in 1996 thinks it is, but it knew what it was and what it was supposed to do. This not-really-a-sequel (unless every movie about a shark is a Jaws sequel) is a bigger mess than a small Oklahoma town after an EF5. It can't really be about climate change because blockbusters have to be carefully nonpartisan, but it can’t not be about climate change because why else (as everyone in this movie is constantly saying) are there more tornadoes than ever. The goofiest part is that the chasers keep abandoning storms to instead rush into threatened towns to "help," i.e. telling everyone to get away from windows and get into the basement, which, sorry, but if you live in tornado alley and don't already know that you deserve to get swooped up into the sky. As Normal People and Hit Man showed, both Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell are better actors than they are movie stars. He needs to find another auteur to cast him against type instead of passing off his permasquint and smackably handsome grin as charisma; she needs to star in a Jane Austen adaptation or a Paddington sequel or something because I don’t believe she could find Oklahoma on a map. This will make enough money that neither of those things will ever happen, and I bet director Lee Isaac Chung never makes another Minari either. Meanwhile we’ll probably lose the National Weather Service. C+
