The big release this week is Project Hail Mary, and I've reviewed it below. But there are plenty of other screenings worth your while, including of restoration of Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli at the Heights.
Special Screenings
Thursday, March 19
Britannia Hospital (1982)
Alamo Drafthouse
It’s about a British hospital. (What would you do without me?) $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
A Bug’s Life (1998)
East Side Freedom Library
It’s about workers’ rights! Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Emagine Willow Creek
You couldn't make this today because we now know that pop music is good. $10. 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. More info here.
Clue (1985)
Parkway Theater
Can’t believe they made a board game out of this movie. $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Terry Jones and the Haudenosaunee Micro-Short Film Program
Walker Art Center
Seneca filmmaker Jones curated the annual Indigenous-led program this year. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
Friday, March 20
Melancholia (2011)
Alamo Drafthouse
When you’re a depressed person, an apocalypse is kind of a happy ending. $13.99. 8 p.m. Monday 3:40 p.m. More info here.
Stromboli (1950)
Heights Theater
Always reminds me of the Billy Bragg/Woody Guthrie song “Ingrid Bergman.” $30. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Robocop (1987)
Trylon
He’s a robot! He’s a cop! $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:15 p.m Sunday 3 & 5:15 p.m. More info here.
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)
Walker Art Center
I like when a movie helps me tell the characters apart. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, March 21
Twin Peaks: The Return—Parts 13-15 (2017)
Alamo Drafthouse
Is Cooper back yet? $10.99. 11:30 p.m. More info here.
Live at the Met: Tristan und Isolde
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Lagoon Cinema/Marcus West End
Tristan und Isolde? In der Wirtschaft? 11 a.m. Wednesday noon & 6:30 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Hubble (2010)
AMC Southdale
Footage from space in IMAX 3D. $6.50. Noon. More info here.
Matilda (1996)
Emagine Willow Creek
Anthony Edwards’s favorite movie. Also Sunday & Tuesday. $13. 3:30 & 6:15 p.m. More info here.
They Live (1988)
Emagine Willow Creek
They sure do! $10. 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. More info here.
Aladdin (1992)
Heights Theater
Took a date to see this and blew my chances when I said it was scary. $13. 11 a.m. More info here.
For Your Consideration (2006)
Heights Theater
Because it got snowed out last weekend. $16. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Police Story (1985)
Heights Theater
ACAB does not include Jackie Chan. $13. 9:45 p.m. More info here.
Varda by Agnès (2019)
Walker Art Center
Agnès Varda looked back on her career in her final film. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, March 22
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Extended Version (2003)
Alamo Drafthouse
Never heard of it. $10.99. 11:30 a.m. Tuesday 2:30 p.m. More info here.
Rad (1986)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the BMX cult classic. Through Tuesday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
The King of Kings (2025)
AMC Southdale 16
Is it Easter yet? $7. 4:20 p.m. More info here.
American Underdog (2021)
AMC Southdale 16
There's no need to fear... $7. 7:10 p.m. More info here.
Best in Show (2000)
Heights Theater
The Heights’ Catherine O’Hara tribute continues. $13. 11 a.m. Monday 7 p.m. More info here.
Idiocracy (2006)
Roxy’s Cabaret
What is this, a damn documentary?!?! Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Matewan (1987)
Trylon
Unions vs. bosses! $8. 7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7-9 p.m. More info here.
Monday, March 23
Daisies (1966)
Alamo Drafthouse
Everyone should have a lil friend that they can get silly with. $13.99. 7:15 p.m. More info here.
Brazil (1985)
Edina Mann
Terry Gilliam's wild dystopian masterpiece. Also Wednesday. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
Neon Maniacs (1986)
Emagine Willow Creek
Cult horror flick about water-soluble monsters. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
André is an Idiot (2026)
Main Cinema
Advance screening of a new comedy about a man with a terminal disease. Lol! Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
A new movie! All I know about it is that it’s 1:45 long. $6. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Singing Revolution (2006)
Parkway Theater
Doc about how singing helped liberate Estonia. A benefit for the Folwell Community Fund, with performance by Twin Cities Singing Resistance. $10/$15. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, March 24
Bones (2001)
Alamo Drafthouse
Before Emily Deschanel, there was Snoop Dogg. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
The First Hymn (2026)
AMC Rosedale/AMC Southdale/Emagine Willow Creek
They mean the first Christian hymn. Of course. Also Thursday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
The Thing (1982)
Parkway Theater
Sorry but Kurt Russell really did look like Steve Bannon in that Michelob ad. $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8. More info here.
Wednesday, March 25
Forbidden Fruits (2026)
Alamo Drafthouse/Emagine Willow Creek
An advance screening of the latest from Diablo Cody. Alamo: $13.99. 7:45 p.m. More info here. Emagine: $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Mystery Voyage (1990)
Alamo Drafthouse
A “kung fu fantasia.” (Note lower case “f.”) $13.99. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Stabilizer (1986)
Emagine Willow Creek
An Indonesian action flick. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Departed (2006)
Lagoon Cinema
It’s about a rat. $11. 7 p.m. More info here.
Oceans Are the Real Continents (2023)
Main Cinema
OK! I’m not looking to get into an argument here. Part of the Cuban Film Festival. $12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Trylon
This will sell out soon. $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, March 26
Repo Man (1984)
Emagine Willow Creek
This soundtrack changed my life. $10. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Mallrats (1995)
Grandview 1&2
I heard this was filmed in Minnesota someplace? $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Rooted: Stories from Minnesota’s Farming Future (2026)
Main Cinema
The first original documentary from the Grand Northern festival. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Dhurandhar The Revenge
A new Indian action film.
Food Truck: Stolen Love... and Moo Deng
How is this the real title of a movie?
A Poet
A failed Spanish poet mentors a talented teen.
The Pout-Pout Fish
With Nick Offerman in the title role. Well, his voice, anyway.
Project Hail Mary
Anyone who has a heart will love this adorably techno-optimistic film about Ryan Gosling buddying up with an intelligent alien who looks like a rock as they save the galaxy together. I guess so, anyway—I’m extrapolating from the fact that even a soulless monster like me thought it was pretty cute. Interstellar parasites are gobbling up the stars, including our sun, and as will happen when the Earth is in danger, only a middle school science teacher can save the day. Ryland Grace (which sounds like a name Gosling would give if he wanted to check into a hotel in secret) is recruited by a grim German bureaucrat (the great Sandra Hüller, who deserves all the Hollywood blockbuster cash that comes her way) to research these solar gluttons. His insights prove so invaluable he’s sent on a suicide mission to the only star that’s proven impervious to the baddies to learn how to counteract them. There he meets an alien scientist on the same quest for his own world, who he dubs Rocky, and both species work together to etc. etc. as their unique friendship and so on and so forths. Drew Goddard’s script, adapted from the much-loved Andy Weir novel, has the same plucky scientific spirit as Goddard’s script of Weir’s The Martian, and Gosling remains likeable as ever, though I do wish he’d find some new ways to be likeable. The pleased laughter all around me at the screening was so delightful I felt left out a little. Maybe someday when the wizard grants me a heart I’ll give this another go. B
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Well, that title was just sitting there, wasn’t it?
Tow
If Rose Byrne had legs she’d kick the towing company that charged her $20K.
Ustaad Bhagat Singh
A tribal boy takes a stand against injustice.
Vampires of the Velvet Lounge
The movie that asks “What if vampires used dating apps?”
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
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 destruction of military hardware. B
The Bride!—full review here.
I genuinely envy those who are calling this one of the worst movies they’ve ever seen—oh, you sheltered lambs. As messy a Rorschach blot as the black splatter on the side of the titular reanimated gal’s mouth, The Bride! is an ADHD fever dream that inverts text and subtext and plows through subplots en route to the nearest dead end. You can decide for yourself whether that sounds like a compliment. At the behest of Victor Frankenstein’s infernal creature (Christian Bale) Annette Benning’s bespectacled Dr. Euphronius revives a 1930s Chicago party girl named Ida (Jessie Buckley). Complicating matters, however, is that the Bride of Frank (as he calls himself) is also possessed by the spirit of an extremely pissed off Mary Shelley (also Buckley). Soon, Frank and his Bride set off a spree that’s equal parts nonsense and fun, though we’ll all disagree which is which. Buckley’s curse as an actor is that she only ever gives the kind of performance that you have to nail 100%. Sometimes that wins you an Oscar, and sometimes you leave audiences violently Danny-Devito-meming their heads back and forth. As Frank, Bale hasn’t been this endearing (or endurable) onscreen in years. He’s a softboy with a violent streak he deplores, as close to Shelley’s concept of the tortured natural philosopher as any film depiction has come. In any case, I’m amused by how haters smugly call this a flop. Gyllenhaal found someone to give her $90 million for the movie she wanted to make. May we all flop so lucratively. B
Bugonia—ends March 19
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-
Crime 101
Good actors can take you a long way, and Bart Layton’s adaptation of the Don Winslow novel is cast expertly, if a little predictably, top to bottom. A beady-eyed Chris Hemsworth is Mike Davis (is this an L.A. in-joke?), a wily, emotionally unreadable/unavailable crook-with-a-conscience who seems to somehow always know when insured valuables are being transported. The scruffy divorced cop who thinks he’s got the thief’s m.o. pegged? Mark Ruffalo, of course. (All Mike’s robberies are within a short distance of Highway 101. Get it?) A carefully de-glammed Halle Berry is the insurance agent who stumbles into both their lives, while Barry Keoghan (always best in supporting roles—Hollywood please note) is the hothead out to muscle in on Mike’s action. These stock figures are given some psychological parameters to work within, but sometimes I wondered why. The slick opening sequence and killer chase scene would have worked just as well if we knew a lot less about these people; the characterizations didn’t add much to the already somewhat clumsy Mexican standoff at the climax. And really, does love interest Monica Barbero—who gets involved with Mike despite the serial-killer lack of personalized touches in his apartment—have no survival instinct at all? B-
Cutting Through Rocks—ends March 19
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert—ends March 19
Elvis Presley and Baz Luhrmann share a common flaw: an inability to trust the music. For Elvis, this showed through in the compulsive bad jokes he told onstage; this was the behavior of a guy who got away with whatever he wanted for too damn long but also doubted he deserved the attention he received. For Luhrmann, there’s no such psychological complexity: He just has a short attention span. And so what’s billed as “Elvis in Concert” is interspersed, overlaid, and just plain interrupted by Elvis backstage, Elvis in historical clips, Elvis in rehearsal, and Elvis trying to come up with interesting answers to the same boring questions from reporters he’s been asked for 15 years. EPiC never finds its groove because groove is anathema to Luhrmann’s schlock postmodernism—we get multiple onstage climaxes with too little foreplay, and with performances edited anachronistically together, it’s slightly distractingly to see Elvis fluctuate in weight, intensity, and sartorial finesse. As in life, the King’s charisma struggles to emerge from someone else’s vision of him. Still, the live stuff is killer, if more reliant on showmanship than grit. And we get documentary evidence of Elvis’s favorite simile (“feels like Bob Dylan slept in my mouth”) and of the license his mere presence continued giving women of all ages to be horny on main. Precious lord, did that man kiss a lot of ladies. And not on the cheek either. B
Hamnet—ends March 19
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
Iron Lung—ends March 21
Marty Supreme—ends March 19
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-
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
Matt Johnson cashes in the cred he earned with his 2023 film Blackberry to turn his ‘00s cult web series with Jay McCarrol into perhaps the most relentlessly Canadian hit comedy movie since Strange Brew. The two jokesters play their fictionalized selves, with Matt devising increasingly desperate plans to score their musical duo a gig at a Toronto rock club as Jay grudgingly goes along. When Matt invents a time machine, the fellas find themselves back in 2008 (when their show first streamed), and the trail of period clues leading to the moment when Matt realizes he’s not in 2025 anymore are perfect. As time travelers will do, Matt and Jay soon foul up the time line by interacting with their former selves and must undergo a series of hilarious convolutions to set things right. The Main was a-hootin’ when I saw this, with a guy behind me shouting “Oh no! OH NO!” in anticipation of one gag. (Though there was no reaction quite like the theater-wide groan when a certain music vlogger appeared on screen.) But the movie’s heart is its investment in Toronto as a place, evident as Matt and Jay interact with ordinary Torontonians and tourists and leading to climactic gag that involves the CN Tower, miles of electrical cord, and a police chase. You think studios will take the hint and start green-lighting more low-budget romps like this from funny weirdos? Nah, me either. B+
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
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
Pillion—ends March 19
Who says BDSM can’t be romantic? In Harry Lighton’s directorial debut, Harry Melling is Colin, a meek little gay fella who sings in a barbershop quartet at the local with his dad while his dying mom tries to fix him up with someone nice before she passes. Enter the opposite of her hopes and dreams: an impossibly chiseled Alexander Skarsgård as a biker named Ray. Under Ray’s laconic tutelage, Colin dives happily into his new submissive leather ‘n’ chains lifestyle, and the first half of Pillion is both warmly affectionate and flat-out hilarious. It loses its way for a bit in the midsection until Colin starts quietly asserting himself, hoping to get to know the Ray behind his dom exterior. The result is a crowdpleaser that doesn’t untangle its kink. If only it had opened here on Valentine’s Day weekend like it did in so many other cities. A-
The President’s Cake—ends March 19
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 cinematographer 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-
Sirât
Óliver Laxe’s existential desert thriller is certainly overwhelming, if not overstimulating, but also a little exhausting. A portly Spanish dad sets off into the North African desert with his son hoping to locate his adult daughter; there the searchers fall in with a crew of itinerant ravers and trail the dancers’ fitted-out trailers in a far less geographically appropriate minivan. As some sort of military action closes in on the travelers, they slowly learn that the small space of pleasure and community they’ve carved out for themselves will no longer serve as an escape from the wider world. Sergi López (a long way from his role as the fascist stepdad in Pan’s Labyrinth) is excellent as the father, and Laxe gets just the kind of naturalist performances from his non-professional actors as Sirât needs. The dance sequences are tremendous visually and sonically; the settings are a cinematographer’s fantasy, and Mauro Herce does them justice. Laxe concocts a few of the tensest moments in recent cinema—I gasped aloud more than once (though I’m admittedly a pretty jumpy guy)—and no one is safe. (Add this to the 2025 “you can’t protect your kids” canon.) But though he's clearly trying to multiply Friedkin times Antonioni, as the bodies piled up I felt emotionally toyed with. To paraphrase Stalin, one death is a tragedy; a half-dozen or so starts to feel like a melodrama. B
TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze
Train Dreams—ends March 19
Clint Bentley’s Denis Johnson adaptation tells the story of man who lives in two worlds, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is a logger who works on the railway, a place for men that’s violent but companionable, a site of vengeance murder and fireside tall tales, of labored exhaustion and insuperable beauty. The other is a homestead he shares with his wife (Felicity Jones) and daughter, a place of peace until tragedy transforms it into a den of isolation. With its sonorous narration and ecstatic natural world cinematography from Adolpho Veloso, Train Dreams has the look and feel of a more accessible Terrence Malick, and given the perfume-ad direction of so much of that auteur’s later work, someone should pick up the baton. Like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Bentley’s film stands as a memorial for all those who were torn away from family for work, suffered loss because of the elements, and whose small, quiet lives otherwise go undocumented. A-
“Wuthering Heights”—full review here.
Dumb people can make great movies, but Emerald Fennell will never be one of them. The problem with “Wuthering Heights” (yes, I noticed the quotes, very postmodern, wink wink) isn’t that it’s unfaithful to Emily Brontë’s novel. The problem is it’s just worse. Margot Robbie reduces Cathy to a peevish little bitch who somehow gets more childish as she gets older, and as for Jacob Elordi, I’m starting to suspect that his whole career is tall privilege—a Heathcliff that we mostly feel sorry for is no Heathcliff at all. What still rattles us about Brontë is the emotional violence, the psychic degradation, that sense of the demonic that haunts even those of us who don’t believe we have eternal souls. But Fennell is saddled with the sexual imagination of a teen virgin—she’s titillated by sex but also grossed out. She tries to make Wuthering Heights sexier by having Cathy and Heathcliff fuck and then tossing in some peripheral BDSM moments, but that just makes it cornier. And she seems to believe her modern perspective allows her a freedom denied to any benighted 19th century lass. Girl, you cannot be more fucked up than a Brontë sister. Don’t even try it. C-
