If you're not too busy catching up on Oscar nominees, I highly recommend you check out at least a movie or two from Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour this weekend. And below, I also reviewed Scarlet.
Special Screenings
Thursday, February 12
My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
Alamo Drafthouse
Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz square off against each other. $20. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Annie Hall (1977)
Emagine Willow Creek
La-di-da. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Granada
Will spaghetti be on the menu? Presented by Taste the Movies. $169. 6 p.m. More info here.
Blade Runner (1982)
Grandview 1&2
This movie happened seven years ago. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Verdict (1946)
Heights Theater
Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre—a classic duo. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Garden of Eden (1928)
Main Cinema
A woman with dreams of becoming an opera singer winds up taking a wild Monte Carlo vacation in this pre-Code sex comedy. Preceded by the 1925 German short film Kipho. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Parkway Theater
Oh I guess Valentine’s Day is a-comin’ up, huh? $9/$12. Music from Diane at 7 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Friday, February 13
Pretty in Pink (1986)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Edina Mann/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Richard Butler, fantastico! Through Monday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
Josh Groban: Live from Union Chapel (2026)
AMC Southdale
Not really “live”—this is a 2025 concert. Through Sunday. $15. 4 p.m. More info here.
The Bodyguard (1992)
East Side Freedom Library
Preceded by a singles mixer. Will you-oo-oo always love someone you meet hee-ere? Presented by TriLingua Cinema. $10 donation requested. Mixer at 6 p.m. Movie at 7 p.m. More info here.
Smurfs (2025)
Marcus West End
Smurfs. Through Monday. $3. 12:30 p.m. More info here.
Vampire Hunter D (1985)
Trylon
Sometimes we all just need a little vampire hunter D, amirite? $8. 7 & 8:45 p.m. Sunday 3 & 4:45 p.m. More info here.
The Razor’s Edge (1985)
Walker Art Center
Two friends try to live their lives during the Lebanese Civil War. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, February 14
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Alamo Drafthouse
There’s more to the Laura Palmer story. $10.99. 8 p.m. Monday 3:30 p.m. More info here.
The Met in HD: Cinderella
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
I don’t really know anything about opera. What’s this one about? Also Wednesday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
Eric Church: Evangeline vs. The Machine Comes Alive (2026)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
Read my review of his actual concert here. $20. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Kid (1921)
Capri Theater
One of Chaplin’s sweetest films, with music from Philip Shorey and the Curse of the Vampire Orchestra. Preceded by the 1917 Chaplin short, The Immigrant, with original score from the Poor Nobodys. $27.30. 3 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Casablanca (1942)
Emagine Willow Creek
Claude Rains steals Ingrid Bergman away from Humphrey Bogart. $11. 3:45 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
I Can Only Imagine 2 (2026)
AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
The MercyMe saga continues. An advance screening. AMC: $13.99. 5 p.m. More info here. Emagine: $13. 5 p.m. More info here.
The Princess Bride (1987)
Heights Theater
Hey, it’s Valentine’s Day! $13. 11 a.m. Sunday 11:30 a.m. Monday 7 p.m. More info here.
Blue Moon (2025)
Heights Theater
Ethan Hawke taking work away from short actors. $13. 4 p.m. Sunday 2 p.m. More info here.
Why Not? (1977)
Main Cinema
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a French threesome. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 2 p.m. More info here.
Doña Herlinda and Her Son (1982)
Main Cinema
Guillermo del Toro plays the mother of a gay Mexican man. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 7 p.m. More info here.
Winter Kept Us Warm (1965)
Main Cinema
Canada’s first gay film. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 9 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, February 15
The Apocalypse of St. John (2026)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Marcus West End
The Book of Revelation, the movie. Through Tuesday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Emagine Willow Creek
How much did that Super Bowl commercial suck, huh? Also Monday & Wednesday. $11. 3:50 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Wings of Desire (1987)
Grandview 1&2
Peter Falk has some advice for lovelorn angel Bruno Ganz. Also Thursday. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Arch (1968)
Main Cinema
Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 1 p.m. More info here.
The Girls (1978)
Main Cinema
Two Sri Lankan girls meet a tragic end. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 4 p.m. More info here.
Floating Clouds (1955)
Main Cinema
A bleak love story set in the ruins of postwar Japan. Part of Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour. $14. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Thing (1982)
Roxy’s Cabaret
Am I the only one who thought Kurt Russell looked like Steve Bannon in that Super Bowl commercial? Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Midnight Express (1978)
Trylon
Never smuggle drugs out of Turkey! $8. 6:30 p.m. Sunday 7 & 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Monday, February 16
Fruits Basket -prelude- (2026)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
A feature-length episode of the anime series. $13.99. 7 p.m. More info here.
AMC Screen Unseen
AMC Southdale 16
What could it be? $7. 7 p.m. More info here.
Blade Runner (1982)
Edina Mann
If you don’t feel like going to St. Paul to see it. Also Wednesday. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Emagine Willow Creek
The Tom Savini remake. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
NTL: Hamlet
Main Cinema
Hiran Abeysekera plays the Dane. $20. 7 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
Monday is the night of movie surprises. $6. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, February 17
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Alamo Drafthouse
I feel like Barry Jenkins’ follow up to Moonlight doesn’t get talked about enough anymore. $7. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Nadja (1994)
Alamo Drafthouse
The story of Dracula’s daughter. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, February 18
13 Going on 30 (2004)
Alamo Draffhouse
Seventeen years of a woman’s life are horrifically stolen from here. $20. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Chase Atlantic: LOST IN HEAVEN (2026)
Emagine Willow Creek
Hate to be a “never heard of ’em” guy, but… $17. 6 p.m. More info here.
New York Cat Film Festival 2026
Lagoon Cinema
Just what it says. $15.50. 7 p.m. More info here.
Harold and Maude (1971)
Parkway Theater
RIP Bud Cort. $9/$12. Music from Dan Israel at 7 p.m. Music at 8 p.m. More info here.
Wuthering High (2015)
Trylon
Emily Brontë as teen drama, with James Caan for some reason. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, February 19
Salt of the Earth (1954)
East Side Freedom Library
Mexican zinc miners go on strike. Presented by TriLingua Cinema. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
The First Wives Club (1996)
Emagine Willow Creek
Look out, husbands! $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Big Steal (1949)
Heights Theater
Robert Mitchum is a cop framed for robbery. $16. 7 p.m. More info here.
Fanon (2025)
Main Cinema
This biopic of revolutionary theorist Franz Fanon opens this year's Black Europe Film Festival. $12. 6:45 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Best Man (1999)
A romcom for Valentine's Day and Black History Month.
Cold Storage
A parasitic fungus leaks from a military base? I miss having problems like that.
Crime 101
Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo reunited (without superpowers).
Funky
A new Indian comedy. (I think? Not a lot of info on this one.)
Goat
Can a goat become a sports legend?
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
Sam Rockwell travels back in time to save the world from AI.
Love and Basketball (2000)
What else is there in life?
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
Sorry, I hate this title.
The Observance
A woman wakes up from a coma to learn that her family has joined a cult.
The Rose: Come Back to Me
The story of Korean band's rise to fame.
Scarlet
Damn, Hamlet is everywhere these days. In this Japanese revision, the vengeful prince is a princess named Scarlet, who no sooner confronts her murderous uncle than she awakens in the Otherworld, the land of the dead. Its a desolate place where bandits rule and a silent dragon emerges from the sky occasionally to reduce the dead to nothingness with an electrical storm. Here she’s aided and annoyed by a 21st century medic who can’t understand why her thoughts be bloody. Though Scarlet may be melancholy, she hardly dithers like Shakespeare’s hero—her tragic flaw is that she’s too vengeful, and the real question isn’t whether she’ll have her revenge, but whether she’ll let her rage destroy her. As is often the case with writer and animator Mamoru Hosoda, best known for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, the spectacle here can overpower the story. But that doesn’t trip Scarlet up because spectacle is what Hosoda’s after—an animated take on the traditional Hollywood epic, filled with epic battles and pulsing crowds. A-
Step Back, Doors Closed
Sounds like a Zoomer Before Sunrise. There are worse ideas.
“Wuthering Heights”
Can it be worse than Saltburn? Do I even wanna find out?
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Ali (2001)—ends February 12
Arco
Arco is a boy from the distant future, where people live in fantastical homes on stilts, high above the Earth, and have developed the ability to travel through time. He’s too young for such a journey, so he steals his older sister’s rainbow cape and the gem that powers time travel and winds up in a less-distant future–about 50 years from now. Things have and haven’t changed—the world looks similar, except that domes go up around houses to protect them from extreme weather, and working parents communicate with their children via hologram while robots do the caretaking. Here Arco meets a lonely girl named Iris, and they develop a cute friendship; she sketches the world he describes to her while he tries to teach her the language of birds. But three weird brothers find Arco’s jewel, potentially leaving him stranded. While pleasant enough, this Ghibli-derivative toon from French illustrator Ugo Bienvenu never quite lives up to the promise of its intricate world-building. The human faces are oddly inexpressive and the dubbed voices—especially those of Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea—don’t help any. Cute and thoughtful, but curiously inert. B
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 desftruction of military hardware. B
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. Bugonia 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-
Glory (1989)—ends February 12
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+
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
Return to SIlent Hill—ends February 12
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-
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-
Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier may be the kindest great director of his generation and its most gently devastating—a sort of Scandinavian Ozu. In Trier’s latest, Stellan Skarsgård is Gustav Borg, a once-heralded filmmaker who hasn’t worked in 15 years. Gustav was also, you won’t be surprised to learn, a terrible father who abandoned his wife and his two daughters: Nora (Renate Reinsve) still resents his absence, while the younger Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) seems to have made her peace. Gustav returns on the day of their mother’s funeral and offers Nora a part in his new film, which reckons with their family’s dark past. When she rejects his offer, he instead casts Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who gradually realizes she’s wrong for the part. All this could be the stuff of high drama or broad comedy, but Trier generally keeps both extremes at a low simmer. Reinsve, as the daughter reluctantly recognizing herself in her father, is no less an incarnation of millennial neurosis here than in The Worst Person in the World, while Skarsgård exercises his charm and authority lightly but firmly, regret battling stubbornness in his every action. At the center of the film is the Borg home, a creaky old storehouse of memories that allows Trier to exercise his easy way with chronology. The film slips into the past then fast-forwards, creating the sense that the past is always just beyond our reach, even while we’re firmly stuck in the present. A
Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience
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
