We have a great silent film scene here in the Twin Cities, with several excellent performers and ensembles composing original scores for old movies. This weekend, for instance, you can catch pianist Katie Condon at the Trylon and the Heights—both in the same day. (This is like when Phil Collins played Live Aid in London and Philadelphia.)
As for new movies, scroll down to find out what I thought of Ari Aster's Eddington and newcomer Eva Victor's Sorry, Baby. Hint: I thought one was really bad.
Special Screenings
Thursday, July 24
The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019)
Emagine Willow Creek
The saga continues. $3. 11 a.m. More info here.
Eastern Promises (2007)
Emagine Willow Creek
That bathhouse fight scene. $11.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Adventureland (2009)
Grandview 1&2
I worked at an amusement park in the ’80s, but I did not hook up with any girls who looked like Kristen Stewart. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Polyester (1981)
Heights Theater
Presented in Odorama, just as John Waters intended. $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tangerine (2015)
Main Cinema
For “Art House Theater Day,” which is definitely a real thing. Anyway, good movie! $11. 7 p.m. More info here.
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023)
Marcus West End
*John Lennon voice* Across the Spider-Veeeerse. 12 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Paddington in Peru (2024)
Powderhorn Park
Hate to say it, but lesser Paddington. Free. 8:50 p.m. More info here.
Shark Terror (2025)
Trylon
Sorry, they’re not even trying with this one. $8. 10 a.m. More info here.
Bad River (2024)
Trylon
A doc about the Wisconsin-based Bad River Band’s fight for sovereignty. Sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Interstellar (2014)
Walker Art Center
The answer to the equation is loooooooove. Also Saturday. $12/$15. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Friday, July 25
Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
Alamo Drafthouse
Admit it, you were wondering about Gru’s origin story. Also Monday-Wednesday. $7. 12 p.m. More info here.
Les Goûts et les Couleurs (2022)
Alliance Française
A young actress gets to work with her idol, who dies while they’re making a film together. $10 donation requested. 6 p.m. More info here.
Clueless (1995)
Como Midway Pavillion
Not the Lakeside Pavilion. Free. Dusk. More info here.
The Wild Robot (2024)
Emagine Willow Creek
AI propaganda. Through Wednesday. $3. 11 a.m. More info here.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Matthews Park
Your child’s brain is teeming with project managers! Free. 8:50 p.m. More info here.
Super Volcano (2025)
Trylon
These superhero movies are getting out of hand. $8. Friday, Monday-Tuesday 5 p.m. Saturday 11 a.m. Sunday 1 p.m. Wednesday 10 a.m. More info here.
Get Your Man (1927)
Trylon
A Clara Bow silent film with piano accompaniment from Katie Condon. Presented by Archives on Screen, Twin Cities. $12. Friday-Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
Trylon
“No, I don’t want to see a pre-Code movie called Merrily We Go to Hell,” you lie. Presented by Archives on Screen, Twin Cities. $8. Friday-Saturday 8:30 p.m. Sunday 4:30 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, July 26
Stray (2020)
East Side Sculpture Park
A Turkish “dog-umentary.” Free. 9;05 p.m. More info here.
Moana 2 (2024)
Fuller Park
I heard that the songs in this are bad. Free. 8:50 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
It’s a secret! $6. 6 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.
Tales (Ghesseh-ha) (2014)
Trylon
An interconnected series of stories about Iranians. Presented by Mizna. $10. 1 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, July 27
Mamma Mia! (2008)
Emagine Willow Creek
I bet there will be singing along. Also Wednesday. $10.60. 1:50 & 4:50 p.m. More info here.
Queens of Drama (2024)
Emagine Willow Creek
A pop singer and a punk are rivals and lovers in this queer French musical. $11.60. 2 p.m. More info here.
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Grandview 1&2
Tweens in love, Wes Anderson-style. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Twin Peaks (1990)
Grandview 1&2
The final three episodes of season one. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Beverly of Graustark (1926)
Heights Theater
A young woman travels Europe disguised as her male cousin. With original accompaniment from Katie Condon. $20. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Wild Robot (2024)
Marcus West End
It's everywhere this summer. Through Tuesday. 12 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Roger Waters This Is Not A Drill: Live from Prague (2025)
Lagoon Cinema/Marcus West End
This fuckin' guy. Lagoon: 1:40 p.m. $15.25. More info here. Marcus: 3:15 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Shock Waves (1977)
Trylon
Peter Cushing is raising an army of Nazi zombies! $8. 6:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 8:45 p.m. More info here.
Monday, July 28
AMC Screen Unseen
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
What could it be? $7. 7 p.m. More info here.
Migration (2023)
Edina 4
A family of ducks goes on a wild vacation. Also Wednesday. $3.96. 10 a.m. More info here.
REC (2007)
Emagine Willow Creek
A Spanish found-footage zombie flick. $7.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
9 to 5 (1980)
Heights Theater
Dabney Coleman! I’m telling ya, that guy was everywhere in the early ’80s. $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, July 29
In My Skin (2002)
Alamo Drafthouse
A woman grows increasingly obsessed with self-mutilation in this French horror film. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Roméo et Juliette
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
That’s French for “Romeo and Juliet.” $16.65. 1 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Catacomb Cinema Club
Bryant Lake Bowl
Scary trivia and a scarier movie. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Dickman Park
*Snickering* Dickman. Free. 8:45 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, July 30
Moana 2 (2024)
The Commons
Mo’ Moana. Free. 8:45 p.m. More info here.
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Edina 4
In case you don’t feel like going to St. Paul. $14.44. 7 p.m. More info here.
BTS Army: Forever We Are Young (2025)
Emagine Willow Creek
Hell yeah I’m a member of the BTS army—the Built to Spill army. $21.60. 7 p.m. More info here.
Streets of Fire (1984)
Emagine Willow Creek
There’s nothing quite like Walter Hill’s garish “Rock & Roll Fable.” $7.60. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening This Week
Follow the links for showtimes.
Bambi: The Reckoning
The public domain seems like a worse idea every day.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
You know, Nick Lowe’s old band Brinsley Schwarz had a good song about the Silver Surfer.
The Home
Pete Davidson learns the dark secrets of an old folks’ home.
House on Eden
Even the horror sites that love everything hate this.
Oh, Hi!
Molly Gordon kidnaps a guy to convince him he loves her.
Ick
A science teacher battles aliens in his home town.
Shoshana
A hunt for a Zionist militant in 1938 Palestine.
Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor takes some getting used to. As a screen presence, they often hold back cryptically behind a half-smile or throw other actors off the beat with their own rhythms, capturing how awkwardness feels to be around, rather than how it's typically performed on screen. Yet to say Victor seems like a person who learned to talk from the internet is description, not criticism; we’ve had decades of actors who learned to talk from TV or magazines or other movies after all. Victor also wrote and directed Sorry, Baby, which takes some getting used to as well. Partly it’s the non-chronological storytelling, which feels unnecessary and therefore affected, but it’s also because Sorry, Baby is the story of a sexual assault, and how to talk about it, or around it, when the words you have to communicate seem to distort what you’ve experienced. What anchors the film is the friendship between Victor’s Agnes and Naomi Ackie’s Lydie, and how it shifts over time. Often the humor is too broad for the scenario (Agnes’s nemesis Natasha, played by Kelly McCormack, feels especially sitcommy), and Sorry, Baby can also feel too crafted, with Victor creating moments—a stranger commiserating with Agnes after a panic attack, a postcoital cuddle ruined by a discussion of the future, a heart-to-heart about life’s cruelties with your friend’s infant—that feel deliberate, arranged, artistic. But all these moments, along with the halting discussion between Agnes and Lydie immediately after the assault, all work, and isn’t great filmmaking about believing in the illusion even when you know how the trick is done? A-
Summer Wars (2009)
A 4K re-release of the Japanese animated sci-fi film.
Together
Dave Franco and Allison Brie find themselves in a sticky situation.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight—ends Thursday
Eddington
If you’ve ever wondered what Ari Aster would make of Covid, Black Lives Matter, and our all-too-online modern existence… why? Why would you ever wonder that? Aster’s films are airless, carefully arranged dioramas, which is OK when you work in horror, where self-contained formalism can be part of the point, but unacceptable when you’re using the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath in Minneapolis as a plot point for your dim satire. Joaquin Phoenix, in Doc Sportello stumblin’ ‘round mode, is an Arizona sheriff (styled to resemble Dennis Weaver, which is funny, I admit); he’s so miffed that he has to mask up that he decides to unseat the town’s smug mayor, Pedro Pascal. With seemingly every encounter between townsfolk mediated by screens, misinformation proliferates, bodies pile up, and everyone, from dumbass cops to woke protesters, embodies their worst selves. That, apparently, is How We Live Now. But what’s so soul-deadening about internet life isn’t just how it leads us to act out in cartoonish ways; it’s how it encourages us to perceive our fellow humans from a single, simple vantage point, to strip their actions of all context, and to make that point, Aster would have had to give us some three-dimensional characters to begin with. Plodding loudly toward its preordaining conclusion, Eddington is as cynical and misanthropic as dumb people have always said the Coen brothers are; worse still, its cynicism and misanthropy are flaunted as intellectual and spiritual achievements. And Aster really needs to get over his mommy issues. C
F1
Well of course this is Top Gun for race cars—you thought Joseph Kosinski was gonna go back to directing Tron movies and Halo ads? What matters is that F1’s on-track action is as gripping as Top Gun: Maverick’s mid-air feats, and there are moments that had me, a non-gasper, gasping. The acting bits are not entirely as bad as those TG:M’s Oscar-nominated screenplay made us endure. And if your attention may wander in these off-track moments, at least F1 (I am not calling it F1: The Movie—I got my own Google problems to worry about) leaves us at leisure to compare and contrast Tom Cruise’s smugness with Brad Pitt’s: eternal youth vs. staved-off decline, skill vs. savvy, unnerving intensity vs indolent swagger. Yes, ideally, Pitt’s Sonny Hayes would learn as much from his younger colleagues as he teaches them, but instead it’s the wily old driver who touches the lives of everyone he encounters—he’s kind of a Magical Caucasian. Chastened hotshot Damson Idris learns not to showboat for the press. Kerry Condon overcomes his mistrust of Sonny’s arrogance long enough to bed him. And team owner Javier Bardem, who took a chance on Sonny, sees his long shot pay off, defeating the machinations of evil-as-ever Tobias Menzies. And they say Hollywood doesn’t make movies for aging white guys who feel like their talents have gone unacknowledged anymore. B-
Guns & Moses—ends Thursday
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Jurassic World Rebirth
Well, at least now we know why the dinosaurs went extinct—they couldn’t hunt for shit. I mean, one predator here not only fails to gobble up a child hiding under a life raft, but the loser can’t even pop the raft. Godzilla director Gareth Edwards and original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp (who I’ll just note is also responsible for the Indiana Jones duds The Dial of Destiny and The Crystal Skill) were called upon to right this series seven installments in, but the best they can dream up is an island of mutant dinosaurs like the Distortus Rex and the Mutadon. Plotwise, a team of mercenaries organized by Scarlett Johansson (who must have serious gambling debts or something) is dispatched to collect blood samples from the three largest breeds of dinosaurs, a key ingredient in a cure for heart disease. En route, the adventurers rescue a family that’s crossing the Atlantic on a sailboat, because the pictures needs children to imperil. The pro-forma backstory these characters are given is worse than none at all—a friend of Johansson’s Zora Bennett was blown up by a Yemen car bomb so she’s ready to retire, Mahershala Ali’s Duncan Kincaid lost his son so he wants to protect children (he’d let them die otherwise?). But it’s hard to care what happens to these people unless you’re just opposed in principle to the idea of make-believe humans being eaten by make-believe dinosaurs. C
Kill the Jockey—ends Thursday
The Life of Chuck
Tom Hiddleston is one of many talented actors who profitably allowed the MCU to Thanos-snap away the prime of his career, and from the looks of The Life of Chuck he doesn’t seem like he’ll be back to doing quietly intense Joanna Hogg films anytime soon. In this razzle-dazzle puzzle of a heart-tugger he’s Chuck Krantz, a mysterious accountant who turns out not to be so mysterious after all. Once the film pulls the metaphysical rug out from under a resonantly apocalyptic first act, The Life of Chuck stacks the deck in the interests of life-affirming profundity so gratuitously you can tell it’s lying to itself. There’s a good reason I don’t turn to Stephen King for the profound or Mike Flanagan for the life-affirming (or vice versa). Though seeing both Mia Sara and Heather Langenkamp as old ladies certainly does confront the middle-aged among us with intimations of mortality, the inexorable passage of time, and all that jazz. C+
Materialists
Well now, someone finally figured out what to do with Dakota Johnson. As Lucy, a get-’em-girl NYC matchmaker, the self-possessed daze that Johnson inescapably floats around in makes an eerie sense—she’s a true believer in her product, convinced that data points can substitute for intangibles. Hell, I’d hand her my business card too. Her sales instinct attracts a wealthy suitor (Pedro Pascal) but she can’t shake an unprofitable attraction to her ex (an unglammed Chris Evans), an actor who does catering or vice versa. The first third bubbles along winningly, though things get predictably wobbly once Johnson has to impersonate a human. But as a Celine Song skeptic who considered the characterizations in Past Lives too vague, I’m surprised by how much speechifying the writer/director allows her love triangulators here: People haul off with monologues about who they truly are so often its like being trapped in a city solely populated by Crash Davises. I wish I could say you’ll be surprised who Lucy ends up with, but though Song eventually knocks the matchmaker’s rickety ideology out from under her, the film settles for romantic mystification rather than working toward some compromised realism. Am I saying Materialists is insufficiently dialectical? Not just that, comrades—it’s insufficiently materialist. B
Mission: Impossible–The Final Reckoning
How is it that the only prominent person in this dumb country suspicious of AI seems to be Tom Fuckin’ Cruise? The most consistent action franchise this side of John Wick wraps up (or does it?—you really think that peppy lil guy is about to retire?) with Cruise’s agent Ethan Hunt fighting to prevent an all-powerful artificial intelligence called The Entity from starting a nuclear war. But The Final Reckoning is no more immune to bloat than any other blockbuster—you could lop a full half-hour of talking from this nearly three-hour adventure and no one would be the wiser. The script hunts for loose ends from previous installments just to tie them up, and the supporting cast is uneven—if Pom Klementieff has a truly fierce shooting-people face, Esai Morales remains a nonentity of a villain. By next month, you’ll remember The Final Reckoning as the MI where Tom hunts through a nuclear sub at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and climbs around on a biplane as the wind resistance does weirder things to his face than Vanilla Sky. Both incredible set pieces, worth the price of admission even. But you’ll probably forget most of the rest. I already have. B
The Phoenician Scheme
As a lukewarm Wes Anderson apologist, I take no joy in reporting that this chuckle-eliciting puzzle box is essentially the movie the dandy director’s haters accuse him of constantly remaking. Benicio del Toro is Zsa Zsa Korda, an apparently assassin-proof international power broker with a knack for wrangling slave labor and inciting famine. Following his latest near death encounter, Korda embarks on facilitating his final, most ambitious project, accompanied by his daughter and potential heir, a moonfaced and expressionless would-be novitiate named Liesl (Mia Threapleton). Thing is, all his backers want out, and he’s got to wrangle and manipulate a collection of terrific bit players (hearing Jeffery Wright recite Anderson/Coppola dialogue is always a pleasure) into ponying up the dough. Threapleton is a perfect match for Anderson’s schtick, and the zany final showdown between del Toro and a bewhiskered Benedict Cumberbatch should cap a much funnier movie. But a handful of pleasing moments don’t add up to much, and we get far more of Michael Cera’s dazed turtle expressions than anyone needs in 2025. B-
Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Jim Crow vampire flick is a truly rare thing: a wholly self-assured mess. Technically and narratively, Coogler knows exactly what he wants to do, whether or not you can keep up, and each of the performers are just as committed. You get Michael B. Jordan distinguishing the murderous twins Smoke and Stack without resorting to caricature, Delroy Lindo as an aged bluesman. Hailee Steinfeld as a seductive quadroon, Jack O'Connell as an undead banjoist, Wunmi Mosaku as a wise hoodoo woman, Saul Williams as a preacher with a new wave hairdo, and I could just keep going. They all populate a vividly simulated Clarksdale, Mississippi to which Jordan’s gangsters have returned to open a juke joint soon targeted by bloodsuckers—you could call this August Wilson’s From Dusk to Dawn. There are visual moments that split the diff between cornball and visionary (I truly did not know Autumn Durald Arkapaw had this in her) and more ideas—about Black spirituality and its vexed relationship to Christianity, about the social role of music, about integration as a deal with the devil—than your average multiplex sees in a whole summer. And if Coogler never slows down to develop those ideas, they still pack a conceptual wallop that complements the film's lived-in texture. This world is so engrossing that by the time the vamps come calling, I almost wished Coogler would just let his people have their one night undisturbed. But America’s not really like that, is it? A-
Superman (read the full review here)
James Gunn’s flagship reboot of the DC film universe has its moments. In its best scene, a smug Clark Kent insists on a candid interview—as Superman—with co-worker/girlfriend Lois Lane, and the ace journalist he’s dating pulls no punches, getting in as many good hits as any of Lex Luthor’s henchfolk. David Corenswet’s Clark/Kal/Supes is all-too-human, with a real temper and self-regard bubbling up from beneath his Midwestern aw-shuckistude. He’s well-matched by Rachel Brosnahan, a purely 21st century Lois Lane who avoids Rosalind Russell throwback vibes as she fields modern problems like work-life balance and how to fly Mr. Terrific’s spacecraft. Yet the rest of Superman never matches the energy of that interview; in fact, Gunn foolishly splits Clark and Lois up on separate adventures. As we enter a world of intra-dimensional pocket universes and Metropolis-(Cleveland- actually) gobbling black holes, Superman gets loud and ugly and digital and, well, MCUish. And sorry, there’s just too much Krypto. B-
28 Years Later
Maybe I was just in a shitty mood (though I don’t remember being in one when I walked into the theater) but this Danny Boyle/Alex Garland reunion irritated the hell out of me. Could be Boyle’s affected jitter-glitch montage style, the aesthetic equivalent of a cheap jump scare, haphazardly splicing in newsreels, Olivier’s Henry V, and the music of Young Fathers, whose gritty beatcraft I generally appreciate on its own. Or could be that I resent films where characters plunge nonsensically into danger for reasons I’m supposed to consider noble. Along the way, you get Ralph Fiennes as a cuddlier Col. Kurtz, “alpha” zombies who pluck spinal cords out by the head (pretty cool), Jodie Comer adding another accent to her CV, and a newborn baby to symbolize how life overcomes death or whatever. “Pretentious” is generally a lazy insult for dummies, but what else do you call it when a film makes such a show of insisting it has achieved technical feats and reached emotional truths that remain far beyond its grasp? C+
