What a weekend we have ahead of us: double-digit subzero temperatures and worse windchills, but also the Day of Truth & Freedom (aka the general strike) tomorrow. Many theaters will still be open on Friday, and for the sake of completeness I've listed Friday screenings, though I urge you to honor the strike. (Buying movie tickets = "shopping.") Also, did I mention it's gonna be fuckin' cold?
Special Screenings
Thursday, January 22
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
Alamo Drafthouse
Sorry, all tapped out of Twilight jokes right now. Ask again later. $22. 7 p.m. More info here.
Megadeth: Behind The Mask (2025)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
In case for some reason you care about what Dave Mustaine thinks about… anything. Also Saturday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Emagine Willow Creek
‘70s spy paranoia at its most paranoid. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Sugarcane (2025)
Hook and Ladder
Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s tremendous doc about an Indian residential school. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Parkway Theater
Memorize this movie in middle school? Me? Couldn’t have happened. $9/$12. Trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
The Plague (2025)
Walker Art Center
Tween water polo players bully each other. Free for Walker members only. 6 p.m. More info here.
Dust Bunny (2025)
Walker Art Center
Mads Mikkelsen battles a monster under a little girl’s bed. Free for Walker members only. 8 p.m. More info here.
Friday, January 23
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Alamo Drafthouse
I miss Alison Lohman. $13.99. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Opening Night (1977)
Alamo Drafthouse
Gena Rowlands in full effect. $13.99. 6 p.m. More info here.
Evil Dead II (1987)
Heights Theater
File under: sequels better than the original. $13. 10 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, January 24
Twin Peaks: Episodes 10-13
Alamo Drafthouse
Enter Harold Smith, and Laura’s secret diary. $10.99. 11 a.m. More info here.
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Alamo Drafthouse
Gus Van Sant queers (and modernizes) Shakespeare. $10.99. 4 p.m. More info here.
The Met: Live in HD—The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16//Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End/ Lagoon Cinema
An opera based on the Michael Chabon novel. 1 p.m. Wednesday 1 & 6:30 p.m. Prices and more info here.
Interstellar (2014)
Emagine Willow Creek
The secret answer to the equation is loooooove. Also Sunday & Wednesday. $11. 2:45 & 6:30 p.m. Wednesday More info here.
UFC 324: Gaethje vs. Pimblett
Emagine Willow Creek
Those can’t be their real names. $27. 8 p.m. More info here.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Heights Theater
Dubbed with great voicework from the Fanning girls. $13. 11 a.m. More info here.
The Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Heights Theater
“What if The Phantom of the Opera had Paul Willams songs?” is the kind of question they asked in the ’70s. $13. 10 p.m. More info here.
Road House (1989)
Trylon
Ben Gazzara is such a great villain. $8. 9 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Shakedown (1988)
Trylon
Sam Elliott is a cop battling corruption. $8. 7 p.m. Sunday 5:15 p.m. More info here.
The Tale of Silyan (2025)
Walker Art Center
A documentary about the life of a Macedonian farmer. Free for Walker members only. 1 p.m. More info here.
Blue Sun Palace (2025)
Walker Art Center
Two migrants in Queens come together following a tragedy. Free for Walker members only. 3 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, January 25
Christiane F. (1981)
Alamo Drafthouse
The brutal life of a teen German heroin addict. $10.99. 3:30 p.m. More info here.
Reds (1981)
Alamo Drafthouse
Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton get caught up in the Russian Revolution. $10.99. 11 a.m. More info here.
80s Skate Video Night!
Emagine Willow Creek
Just what it says. $6.61. 7 p.m. More info here.
Hard Boiled (1992)
Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Chow Yun-fat goes undercover. $13. 4 & 7 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here. Marcus: Also Monday. $10.50. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Grandview 1&2
Meet Renate Reinsve. Also Thursday. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Go West (1925)
Heights Theater
Buster Keaton is a cowboy! With live accompaniment from Dreamland Faces. $20. 11:30 a.m. More info here.
The Greatest Showman (2017)
Riverview Theater
The annual singalong returns. $10/$15. 1 p.m. More info here.
Blade Runner (1982)
Roxy’s Cabaret
Love the way he just… runs those blades. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Trylon
Some people just don’t know how to have fun at a party, you know? $8. 7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Monday, January 26
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1 (2011)
Alamo Drafthouse
Hard to think of a worse name than “Renesmee.” $22. 7 p.m. More info here.
Before Sunset (2004)
Edina Mann
Jesse and Celine meet again. Also Wednesday. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The House With The Laughing Windows (1976)
Emagine Willow Creek
*Rapture guy voice* House With! Laughing Windows! $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
True Grit (2010)
Heights Theater
The good (Coens) version. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Secret Movie
Lagoon Cinema
Catch a new film before it hits theaters. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
And another secret movie. $6. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, January 27
Pearl (2022)
Alamo Drafthouse
Stardom isn’t always pretty. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, January 28
Fatal Termination (1990)
Emagine Willow Creek
A Hong Kong shoot-em-up. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Rooted: Stories From Minnesota’s Farming Future (2026)
Main Cinema
A doc about the day-to-day life of two Minnesota farmers. Part of the Great Northern. $15. 6 p.m. More info here.
Stars in Broad Daylight (Nujum An-Nahar) (1988)
Trylon
A Syrian family is torn apart by wedding celebrations. Part of the Mizna Film Series. $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Train Dreams (2025)
Walker Art Center
Clint Bentley’s meditative take on the Denis Johnson novella. Full review here. Free for Walker members only. 6 p.m. More info here.
East of Wall (2025)
Walker Art Center
A horse trainer lets teens crash at her ranch. Free for Walker members only. 8 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, January 29
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Emagine Willow Creek
Yes, the Robert Redford meme movie. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
This Is Not a Drill (2025)
Main Cinema
Activists battle Big Oil. Part of the Great Northern. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Parkway Theater
Bill Murray vs. shark. $9/$12. Music from Little Man at 7 p.m. Movie at 8. More info here.
Wattstax (1973)
Trylon
In 1972, Stax Records threw a helluva party in Watts, L.A. Presented by Archives on Screen. $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Perfect Neighbor (2025)
Walker Art Center
Oscar-nominated doc about a deadly dispute, including police bodycam footage. Free for Walker members only. 6 p.m. More info here.
Sorry Baby (2025)
Walker Art Center
Eva Victor's excellent debut as a writer/director/actor. Full review here. Free for Walker members only. 8 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Clika
A Mexican-American musician struggles to make it big.
H Is for Hawk
Screen adaptation of the Helen Macdonald memoir.
Mercy
Don't miss what many are already calling the worst movie of 2026...
Return to SIlent Hill
... except maybe for this one.
The Testament of Ann Lee
Amanda Seyfried founds the Shakers.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Medical workers field a call from a trapped six-year-old in Gaza.
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
Father Mother Sister Brother—ends January 22
A character in a Jim Jarmusch film earnestly declaring “Who wants to be a square and live a conventional life?” is like if Hitchcock had a character say “I only care about two things: blondes and voyeurism.” And in this quiet triptych (love that word) of family life, the director does fiddle with that notion of “hip” and “square” some. But his primary concern is with the breakdown of intergenerational communication. “Father” is Tom Waits, a loner and an enigma to his two button-down children (Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik), much as he is to us all. During a short and awkward visit to his house (a rarity, we learn) he putters and mutters Waitsily as they survey him with incomprehension. “Mother” is Charlotte Rampling, as icy and elegant as ever. Her two daughters—stylish hipster fraud Lilith (Vicky Krieps) and meekly even-tempered Timothea (Cate Blanchett)—compete for maternal approval at their annual tea party. “Sister Brother” are twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat), who sort through old photos and together learn more about their parents, whose plane recently went down in the Azores. (It’s Billy who vocalizes the line I quoted above.) There’s not just thematic overlap between these vignettes—shared words and phrases emerge, in different contexts, and in each segment some skate rats pass by, providing an unexplained slow-mo epiphany. Jarmusch calls this an “anti-action film,” and though it’s at times a little too static, we could all use a little well-constructed stasis right about now. B+
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+
Is This Thing On?
At last, Bradley Cooper makes the tedious relationship drama we all knew he had in him. A Star Is Born had Gaga; Maestro went down swinging. But this is a grownup movie about grownup stuff for grownups, as filtered through the sensibility of a guy who spent his 40s dating Irina Shayk and Gigi Hadid. (If it tanks, the Times will surely scold us all once again for not going to see serious adult films.) Will Arnett and Laura Dern are Alex and Tess. He’s in finance, she’s a former U.S. Olympic volleyball star, and I’m sure we can all relate to their lives. When we meet the married couple, they’ve decided to separate, though we won’t know why until an argument later in the film where they somberly fling lines like “You checked out first!” at each other. One night, to avoid paying a $15 cover, Will puts his name down on an open mic list, and he is reborn onstage; he’s befriended by other comics and (we’re told) develops a newfound sexual magnetism as he processes his new life confessionally onstage. Arnett capably exudes middle-aged surrender when necessary, and Dern is always a welcome presence, but there’s no sense that these people were together for 26 years. Meanwhile Andra Day and Cooper play one of those couples you always wish would break up already, and guess what? They’re even less fun to be around than in real life. Most annoyingly, Is This Thing On? plays into the noxious idea that art is therapy, and that audiences are obliged to play along as people onstage work through their shit. Why should I pay $15 to hear what a professional should charge $150/hour to listen to? C+
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
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
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-
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-
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants
