A recent rewatch confirmed it: Dick holds up. (So to speak.) Easy to understand why a teen comedy that required a working knowledge of a then-25-year-old scandal was not exactly a huge hit in 1999. But you get two of the best actresses of their generation in wonderfully ridiculous period outfits, (possibly) the best onscreen Nixon ever, and (most definitely) the best onscreen Haldeman.
Let me also put in a word for the wonderful Gold Diggers of 1933. If you've ever asked yourself, "Should I get into old Hollywood musicals?" Start here. If you don't absolutely love this one, abandon ship.
Finally, I have two new reviews below of The Drama and, unfortunately, Michael, which I wish I'd just skipped rather than adding a couple-hundred more words to the discourse.
Special Screenings
Thursday, April 30
ONE OK ROCK Detox Japan Tour 2025 At Nissan Stadium (2026)
AMC Southdale 16
That’s a whole lotta title. $13.99. 5 & 8 p.m. More info here.
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Granada
The latest edition of Taste the Movies. Sadly, frog does not seem to be on the menu. Also Thursday, May 7. $169. 6 p.m. More info here.
The American President (1995)
Emagine Willow Creek
What if a president didn’t have a wife (and wasn’t gay like James Buchanan)? $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Grandview 1&2
Men be decent to Teri Garr in one movie challenge. (See After Hours below.) $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
North by Northwest (1959)
Heights Theater
The funnest Hitchcock? Probably! In 70mm. $19. 7 p.m. Sunday 11 a.m. More info here.
Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)
Trylon
Archives on Screen brings us a recently restored Satyajit Ray film. $8. 7 p.m. Saturday 1 p.m. More info here.
Friday, May 1
Cabin Fever (2002)
AMC Southdale
The director’s cut. $7. 8 p.m. More info here.
Escalation (2026)
Main Cinema
A short film about the increased targeting of journalists by law enforcement. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
Come shout at some local short films. $18/$25. 7 p.m. More info here.
Family Plot (1976)
Trylon
Hitchcock’s very last movie. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:30 p.m. Sunday 3 & 5:30 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, May 2
Playtime (1967)
Alamo Drafthouse
Maybe the Frenchest movie ever made. $10.99. 4 p.m. More info here.
The Met: Live in HD: Eugene Onegin
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Lagoon Cinema/Marcus West End
Pushkin + Tchaikovsky. Also Wednesday. Showtimes, prices, and more info here.
Carrie (1976)
Main Cinema
God, I love Sissy Spacek. $11. 10 p.m. More info here.
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Open Eye Theater
A truly delightful Busby Berkeley musical, presented by the Picturegoer Film Club. $10. 6:45 p.m. More info here.
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
Parkway Theater
Even witches need to believe in themselves. $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
Bitterroot (2025)
Trylon
Locally made story of a Hmong karaoke fan in Montana who loses his job. Free. 4 p.m. More info here.
The Third Man (1949)
Trylon
Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, and The Third Man—as good a three-movies-in-three-years run as anyone. $8. 8 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, May 3
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Alamo Drafthouse
Paul Schrader’s astounding staging of the life of the Japanese author/failed coup leader. $10.99. 4 p.m. More info here.
Past Lives (2023)
AMC Southdale 16
Celine Song’s overrated directorial debut. $7. 1 p.m. More info here.
AMC Screen Unseen
AMC Southdale 16
A secret new movie! $7. 2 p.m. More info here.
F1 (2025)
AMC Southdale 16
Vroom, if that’s what you’re into. $30. 2:45 p.m. More info here.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Emagine Willow Creek
Never heard of it. Also Wednesday. $11. 1 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Vertigo (1958)
Grandview 1&2
Well, somebody is really into blondes. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Power to the People: John and Yoko in New York City (2026)
Lagoon Cinema/Marcus West End
Rock out with the original power (to the people) couple. Lagoon: $15.50. 2:10 p.m. More info here. Marcus: $15.50. 1:15 p.m. More in here.
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Lagoon Cinema
Bogart at his Bogartiest. $11. 4 p.m. Wednesday 4:30 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Secret Movie
Lagoon Cinema
What could it be? $5. 2 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
Damn, big day for secret movies. $6. 2 p.m. More info here.
The Craft (1996)
Roxy’s Cabaret
I think this is about small-batch beer. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Monday, May 4
12 Angry Men (1957)
Edina Mann
And one ugly one. Also Wednesday. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Orphanage (2007)
Emagine Willow Creek
Who wouldn’t want to buy a haunted orphanage? $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Captain Jack and His Rocket Powered Go-Kart (2026)
Parkway Theater
New doc about an aging but still ambitious daredevil. $15/$20. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, May 5
Evil Dead II (1987)
Alamo Drafthouse
A great movie made even better. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Accordo with Silent Film
Ordway
The adventurous local quintet scores three silent films: Léontine's Boat, One A.M., and Steamboat Bill, Jr. $29-$39. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Dick (1999)
Parkway Theater
"It's called incest, Arlene, and it's against the law." $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, May 6
Obsession (2026)
Alamo Drafthouse
Advance screening of the critically acclaimed horror flick, with livestream Q&A. $25. 8 p.m. More info here.
Goldfinger (1964)
Parkway Theater
God forbid a man have offbeat interests. $9/$12. Music from Leslie Vincent at 7 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Tape Freaks
Trylon
You’re not gonna believe this, but it’s sold out again. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, May 7
Highest 2 Lowest (2025)
Capri Theater
Spike Lee’s uneven riff off Kurosawa’s great High and Low. $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
After Hours (1985)
Emagine Willow Creek
Emagine begins a monthlong tribute to Catherine O’Hara (RIP). $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Charade (1963)
Heights Theater
As good as fake Hitchcock gets. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Monster in Me: The Video Work of Cecelia Condit
Walker Art Center
Includes a conversation with the artist and the premiere of two new works. $15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Animal Farm
Andy Serkis rumored to be now working on 1984: A Love Story.
Deep Water
New Renny Harlin survival flick.
The Devil Wears Prada 2
A comedy about the death of print media? No thanks, I already lived it.
Erupcja
Charli XCX is a movie star now, I guess.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Lives up to its title, I’ll say that for it.
Hokum
Adam Scott is trapped in a spooky house.
Jetlee
A flight attendant becomes a hero. (Actually, they’re all heroes to me already.)
RZA's One Spoon of Chocolate
If you only see one movie this year featuring Paris Jackson and Jason Isbell.
The Story of Everything
I hope there’s an intermission.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea
Oh, that time.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Drama—I’m not big on the “hypothetical movie.” You know, “What would you do if [some outlandish situation arose]?” and so on—just something a little too “Chuck Klosterman dorm-room conversation” about the whole idea. The latest from Kristoffer Borgli does have a great premise, though, the specifics of which I’d advise you steer clear of if it’s not too late: When sweet Emma (Zendaya) shares a secret about her past, fussy Charlie (Robert Pattinson) wonders if he should call off their wedding. As with his last film Dream Scenario, which tormented Nicolas Cage for involuntarily showing up in people’s dreams, Borgli is fascinated with the unforgiving, punitive instinct in people to the point where it feels like a personal obsession. The characters here are so judgmental—especially best friend Rachel, played as a one-note scold by Alana Haim—I started to judge people for being too judgy. Which is maybe the point? Who can say? Borgli seems torn between riding the dark comedy wherever it takes us and making some vague statements about honesty in relationships or whatever. When The Drama does work, it’s to the two stars’ credit: Pattinson works well in uptight nerd mode, Zendaya is finally growing into movie stardom, exercising greater control over her overly expressive teen-TV face. B
Exit 8—ends April 30
Sorry, but I don’t want to hear anybody call the arty-ass (ahem, contemplative) cin-e-mah that I recommend “boring” ever again, not with this repetitive video-game adaptation making Béla Tarr look like Baz Luhrmann. After learning that he knocked up his ex-girlfriend, our hero, the Lost Man, is trapped in a subway tunnel and has to uncover the rules that will allow him to escape to the surface via, yes, Exit 8. Every time he screws up, it’s back to Exit 0. And screw up he does: I know “watching people play video games” is now a supposedly fun thing to do, but is “watching people play video games badly”? The production design is suitably alienating in a Cineplex Kubrick way, but the genuinely freaky moments are too few. Oh, and Exit 8 is About Something: the importance of protecting children and assuming adult responsibility, a lesson that maybe people who spend a lot of time watching others play video games will find more educational than I did. B-
Lorne—ends April 30
Michael—This is the story of a sweetly eccentric young fellow who merely wants to collect exotic animals, visit children in hospitals, and share his incredible talents with the world. With the help of agent (and, incidentally, the film’s executive producer) John Branca (Miles Teller), our hero wriggles free of his abusive, domineering father (Colman Domingo) and embarks on his first solo tour in 1988, finally his own man—presumably it was all smooth sailing from there. A glitzy extended ad for the disgraced superstar’s estate, Michael follows in the footsteps of the modern music biopic not only as a form of brand management, but as a means of score-settling—from NWA to Elton John, every star wants to be a victim nowadays. Michael has a made-to-order villain in Jackson paterfamilias Joseph, but with his grotesque prosthetics and Nixonian hunched shoulders, Domingo is actually more cartoonish than Mike Myers is in his brief borscht-belt turn as CBS head Walter Yetnikoff. The lesson of Michael Jackson’s life is that the further you retreat into escapist fantasy the more inescapably your neuroses surface, and that plays out with his fandom: The more irreparably Jackson’s reputation is tarnished, the more his worshippers demand a portrait of a saint’s life. And so they get as lousy a movie as they deserve. Shout out to Janet Jackson, who refused to participate and therefore simply doesn’t exist in this Michaelverse. C
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
The Stranger—ends April 30
"Great butts" may not be a comment you’d expect to hear about a Camus adaptation, but it’s hardly the first time I’ve made it about a François Ozon film. The libertine French director’s Meursault is Benjamin Voisin, who made his mark in Ozon’s Summer of 85 and then held his own at the center of the 2021 Balzac adaptation Lost Illusions. Voisin has the look of a lippy sensualist, whether he’s enduring his mother’s funeral, distractedly fucking the woman who inexplicably adores him, or sealing his fate by shooting an Arab. In other words, he seems impeccably French in attitude and style, as does the film itself, shot as it is in a stylized black and white by cinematographer Manu DacosseI—Dennis Levant even shows up to do his weird-little-guy act. And if the film’s requisite 21st century postcolonial framing can feel a little studied, so can the novel’s postwar absurdism, non? (Another sign of the times: When I typed “Is Meursault” and Google completed “autistic” before I got it—apparently there’s a whole literature on the question.) A-
Two Prosecutors—ends April 30
The law moves slowly, they say, but not nearly as slowly as the latest from Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. Across a series of prolonged scenes, a young, idealistic prosecutor in the 1930s Soviet Union (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) uncovers the false imprisonment and torture of an upstanding Party member by the secret police and decides to bring it to the attention of the higher ups. Loznitsa captures the banality of totalitarianism, with lots of waiting around for meetings and chummy backslapping as each authority figure humors our naive hero along the way. We humor him as well, knowing as we do that everything the prosecutor disdains is according to Stalin’s design. The conclusion, which splits the difference between tragic inevitability and delayed predictability, doesn’t shock, but does satisfy in its grim way. B+
