I suppose I should mention that the Showplace ICON in St. Louis Park has closed, and has since reopened as West End Cinema, part of the Marcus Theatres chain. Meanwhile, we're still waiting to hear when Alamo Drafthouse in Woodbury will reopen.
As for da movies... Lumières Françaises returns to the Main this week, and this year the French festival includes a showcase called "Images of Africa." Plus I really cannot stress enough how amazing the DNA and Kid Creole (and OK James Chance) performances are in Downtown 81. And if you're curious, I reviewed Maxxxine below—just scroll down to the Ongoing section.
Special Screenings
Thursday, July 11
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Grandview 1&2
Divorce makes the members of an insufferable Brooklyn family even more insufferable. Also Sunday. $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Driver's Seat (Identikit) (1974)
The Heights
This Elizabeth Taylor-starring adaptation of a Muriel Spark novella broke audience brains at the time. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Death Race 2000 (1975)
Parkway Theater
The year 2000 was a crazy time, what with all the totalitarianism and cross-country races and killing pedestrians. $9/$12. 7 p.m. More info here.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Riverview Theater
One of the few multiverse movies I endorse. $1. $10.30 a.m. More info here.
Blowing Wild (1953)
Trylon
A recently restored western starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, filmed in Mexico by Argentine director Hugo Fregonese. Presented by Archives on Screen. $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Color Purple (2023)
Victory Memorial Parkway
The un-Spielberged version. Free. 8:59 p.m. More info here.
Friday, July 12
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Emagine Willow Creek
If you'd rather drive out to Willow Creek to see it. All week. $3. 11 a.m. More info here.
The Sandlot (1993)
Hiawatha School Recreation Center
Boomer nostalgia and millennial nostalgia, together in the same movie! Free. 8:59 p.m. More info here.
Red Island (2023)
Main Cinema
A curious boy comes of age in '70s Madagascar. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 7 p.m. Monday 4 p.m. Wednesdsay 1 p.m. More info here.
Sisterhood (HLM Pussy) (2023)
Main Cinema
A video posted to social media strains the friendship of three girls. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 9:40 p.m. Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Clue (1985)
Riverview Theater
Which ending will it be? Also Saturday. $5. 10:30 p.m. More info here.
Altered States (1980)
Trylon
No sensory deprivation for me, thanks! Presented by the Cult Film Collective. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:15 p.m. Sunday 3 & 5:15 p.m. More info here.
Downtown 81 (1981)
Walker Art Center
An essential snapshot of the Lower Manhattan scene at the start of the '90s, starring Jean-Michel Basquiat as a painter and Debbie Harry as a fairy. The live clips of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, James White (aka James Chance) and the Blacks, and Arto Lindsay with DNA are absolutely not to be missed. Also Saturday. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, July 13
Princess Mononoke (1997)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek
Miyazaki at his most brutal. $16.35. 3 p.m. Sunday 3 & 7 p.m. Monday- Wednesday 7 p.m.. More info here.
The Goonies (1985)
Emagine Willow Creek
Your childhood was a lie. Also Sunday. $11. 12 & 6 p.m. More info here.
She Is Conann (2023)
Emagine Willow Creek
A feminist revamp of Conan. $10. 4 p.m. More info here.
Dear England
Main Cinema
A filmed version of a National Theatre performance of a play about soccer. $20. 11 a.m. More info here.
Black Girl (1966) + Borom Sarrett (1963)
Main Cinema
Two absolutely essential early short films from Ousmane Sembène. Tuesday 4 p.m. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 11 a.m. More info here.
Sembène (2015)
Main Cinema
A documentary about the life and career of the great Senegalese novelist and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 1:45 p.m. Tuesday 1 p.m. More info here.
Marguerite's Theorem (2023)
Main Cinema
The life of a brilliant young mathematician changes suddenly. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 4 p.m. Monday 1 p.m. Wednesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Widow Clicquot (2023)
Main Cinema
The story of the woman who revolutionized the champagne industry. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Rapture (2023)
Main Cinema
A midwife is tangled in a web of deceit. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 9:30 p.m. Monday 7 p.m. More info here.
Elemental (2023)
Matthews 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. 8:55 p.m. More info here.
Substrate (2024)
Trylon
In this locally made film, a woman returns home after her estranged mother's death. $8. 5 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, July 14
A Real Job (2023)
The Main Cinema
A look at the lives of French schoolteachers. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 1 p.m. Wednesday 4 p.m. More info here.
Metamorphosis—Short Films
Main Cinema
Four short films from the Francophone regions of the African diaspora. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 4 p.m. More info here.
Marinette (2023)
The Main Cinema
The story of the French women's soccer pioneer, Marinette Pichon. Part of Lumières Françaises. $12. 7p.m. More info here.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Parkway Theater
For the American version, they wanted to rename Totoro "Craig." $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
Birth (2004)
Trylon
A 10 year old tells Nicole Kidman he's the reincarnation of her husband. Nice try, kid. $8. 7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9 p.m. More info here.
Monday, July 15
Killer Crocodile 2 (1990)
Emagine Willow Creek
For fans of Killer Crocodile. $6. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Watch Terrible Films Club
56 Brewing
What terrible film will it be this month? Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
The Heights
A much different take on the French emperor's life than Ridley Scott's $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Stevens Square Park
Not to be confused with Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon. Free. 8:55 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, July 16
Abominable (2019)
Riverview Theater
Some (animated) kids find an (animated) Yeti. Also Wednesday. $1. 10:30 a.m. More info here.
Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)
Lyndale Farmstead Park
That panda, always with the kung fu. Free. 9 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, July 17
Best in Show (2000)
The Commons
Dog people are wacky. Free. 8:50 p.m. More info here.
The Florida Project (2017)
Grandview 1&2
I've loved everything else by Sean Baker but this one annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe I should revisit. $12. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Eega (2012)
Trylon
A murdered man seeks vengeance when he is reincarnated as a fly. Presented by Trash Film Debauchery. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
Fly Me to the Moon
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in some kind of NASA screwball comedy or something?
June Zero
A dramatization of the Eichmann trial.
Kill
Commandos battle bandits on a train to New Delhi.
The Lion King
I love how Mufasa's explanation of the circle of life is that it's OK for lions to eat their prey because when the lions die they help the grass grow so the smaller animals can eat. Pretty self-serving!
Longlegs
It's Nicolas Cage vs. Maika Monroe in this much-hyped serial killer flick.
Sarfira
An Indian man wants to start his own airline.
Touch
An Icelandic widower searches for his first love.
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
The Bikeriders
Sixty years after Scorpio Rising and, hell, 40 years after the Village People, it’s unclear why writer/director Jeff Nichols is being lauded for acknowledging that there’s a homoerotic subtext to biker gangs. At the center of The Bikeriders is a tug of war over the affections of a chiseled sociopath named Benny (Austin Butler), a struggle between his wife Kathy (Jodie Comer) and his mush-mouthed but wily gang leader Johnny (Tom Hardy). But in part because Benny’s such a cipher, Nichols’s adaptation of Danny Lyon’s 1968 photobook can’t make much drama out of this conflict, so instead The Bikeriders drifts in that familiar subcultural underworld way from glory days to druggy, violent decline. Despite an occasional Goodfellas homage, Nichols doesn’t zero in on the social dynamics of the gang, as Scorsese invariably does with his milieux, which is a shame because plenty of the members, especially Michael Shannon and Norman Reedus, have some terrific individual moments. That this is often an engrossing watch regardless owes to Hardy’s squinty inscrutability and Comer’s commonsensical perspective. Wid her “oh jeez” Chicawgo accent and everygal resolve, Comer steals the movie. It’s just not always clear where she wants to take it. B
Blue Lock The Movie - Episode Nagi -
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
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+
I Saw the TV Glow (read the full review here)
Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun once again reconfigures the trans coming-out narrative as a horror story, as open to peril as to promise. Two teens growing up in the ’90s bond over a Buffy-style show; as the edges of supposed fiction and supposed reality blur, the knowledge they gain about their potential selves brings suffering, whether they accept or retreat from that insight. A jarring remix of ’90s kid culture, recollected in something less than tranquility, I Saw the TV Glow reinstates the TV as the box of ominous mystery it once was, solid enough not just to represent other worlds, but to contain them. The weird is familiarized, the familiar is enweirdened. And in Brigette Lundy-Paine and Justice Smith, Schoenbrun has two leads who know how to communicate within Lynchian blend of heightened mood and flattened affect. A-
Janet Planet
The directorial debut of acclaimed playwright Annie Baker is an uncommonly nuanced telling of a not uncommon movie subject—the life of a sensitive and intelligent child raised by a caring but woo-woo parent. Julianne Nicholson is the single mom, and Zoe Zigler is her 11-year old daughter, Lacey, and both are terrific. The film is structured by the entrance and exit of three people in Janet’s life: a boyfriend named Wayne, an old friend named Regina, and a spiritual puppeteer named Avi given to high flown pronouncements. Possessive of her mother, Lacy resents each of these interlopers, with various degrees of appropriateness. (I wouldn’t want Avi anywhere near my mom either.) But along the way, without the clamor of any hackneyed cinematic epiphanies, the girl develops an awareness of her mother as a flawed but real person, a woman Baker presents to us without blame but without excuses. A-
Kinds of Kindness
Well, he couldn’t have called it Cruels of Cruelness now, could he? Critics are referring to Yorgos Lanthimos’s new three-fer as a triptych because he’s European, but the Greek provocateur’s follow up to Poor Things is a simple old anthology film—the ironies slam shut on each of these three diverting vignettes with such self-pleasured finality that you half-expect a closing word to follow from Rod Serling, or even the Cryptkeeper. Lanthimos recycles a seven-actor cast headed up by Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons over the course of each mini-film, and if the stories don’t intersect, they do share a consistent worldview. Lanthimos tips his hand as soon as the production credits hit the screen, as Eurythmics’ propulsive “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” among the more cynical hits of a cynical decade, thumps out of the speakers before we see a single image of the film. Used, meet users. Abused, meet abusers. It’s a dark place, the Yorgosphere: sexual in an unsexy way, with all manner of kinky couplings and triplings and even quadruplings shown or implied, and violent in a way that’s both graphic and cartoonish, the stuff of squeams and giggles. Sometimes everything’s a joke and other times you laugh because the mood is too grim not to be funny. But perhaps only the most committed Lanthimophile has ever wanted to watch three of the director’s movies in one sitting. B
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Thanks in part to Andy Serkis’s unparalleled gift for portraying a motion-captured being with nuance and sympathy, screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver somehow created a non-laughably epic saga out of an intelligent simian’s rise to power with their rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy. At least that’s how I remember it—this fourth installment (with frequent Jaffa/Silver collaborator Josh Friedman taking over the script) is so ape-by-numbers I’m kinda afraid to rewatch its predecessors. The plot concerns a struggle over the legacy of Serkis’s honorable Caesar (along with some nasty human weaponry), and as ever, the chimps are curious, the gorillas brutal, the orangutans wise, the humans deceptive. Despite a few fine action scenes, Kingdom is as humorless as the trilogy but without its grand sweep, as misanthropic but without its capacity to imagine looming disaster. I’ve always been leery of how these films toy with the eco-nihilist claim that Earth is better off without humans, but this sort of IP busywork does make me think twice. Will ape and human someday learn to live together in peace? Who gives a fuck? C+
MaXXXine
Live by the fanboy, die by the fanboy. Former Ti West enthusiasts are in such an indignant huff about the conclusion of the director’s horror/porn trilogy you’d think he just dropped the The Godfather: Part III of meta-trash. But that just shows how much they overrated the two very good predecessors to this more-than-entertaining-enough finale—and how obsessed everyone has become with whether a series can (ugh, dreadful phrase) “stick the landing.” After all, isn’t the whole point of championing (once?) disparaged B-genres that they prize style and enthusiasm and straight-up entertainment over the bland artfulness of three-act Hollywood craft? Here, Mia Goth, the titular (insert Beavis snicker) Maxine Minx and the Final Girl from XXX, now a genuine porn star, has landed her first serious acting role. But her past… yes, if you guessed that it returns to haunt her, you get the idea. If the conclusion conceptually satisfies the thesis of West’s world (horror and porn have always driven film innovation and resisted American fundamentalism) but doesn’t quite satisfy audiences, well, sometimes theses be like that. But West vividly recreates the atmosphere of ’80s L.A. during the Night Stalker murder spree, the gore is first-rate, and almost every scene is stolen by a supporting performance: Elizabeth Debicki as a no-bullshit director, Bobby Cannavale as a cop given to tough-guy cliché, Giancarlo Esposito as a badass agent with a natural, and Kevin Bacon in full sleaze mode. If that doesn’t make for a diverting enough summer 1:45 for you, maybe termite art just ain’t your thing.
Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot
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-
