January is a traditionally a month of wretched new releases but the belated arrival of critically acclaimed and/or awards-hungry 2025 releases finally reaching Minnesota. And guess what? It sure is January.
Below you'll find new reviews of Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and the new tween psychological thriller The Plague.
Oh, and if you missed it, I collected all my 2025 review in one place.
Special Screenings
Thursday, January 8
Sinners (2024)
Capri Theater
Where’d they find that other guy who looks just like Michael B. Jordan? $5. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Natural (1984)
Emagine Willow Creek
Robert Redford plays ball. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
Grandview 1&2
The movie that invented cheerleaders being gay. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Trylon
Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny boogie affluently into the ’80s. Director Whit Stillman will be in attendance. Sold out. 4 & 7 p.m. More info here.
Friday, January 9
The Thing (1982)
Heights Theater
What sort of “thing,” Mr. Carpenter? Can you be a little more specific? $13. 9:45 p.m. More info here.
The Fall of Otrar (1991)
Trylon
A Kazakhstani epic about battling the Mongols. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 3 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, January 10
Twin Peaks: Episodes 4-6
Alamo Drafthouse
Laura’s funeral! Cooper’s dream! More! $10.99. 11 a.m. More info here.
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Alamo Drafthouse
A very ’70s spy thriller. $10.99. 3 p.m. More info here.
Live at the Met: I Puritani
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Lagoon Cinema/Marcus West End
Puritans singing opera? Now I’ve heard everything. Also Wednesday. Prices and showtimes here.
The Iron Giant (1999)
Heights Theater
This one absolutely wrecked my niece Julia when she was little. $13. 11 a.m. More info here.
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
Heights Theater
They’re so dumb! $13. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Fargo (1996)
East Side Eagles Club
Some of you actually do talk like this, sorry. $10 or hotdish—there will be a contest. 7 p.m. More info here.
Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1974)
Walker Art Center
William Klein’s doc captures an eventful decade in the life of the boxing great—er, boxing greatest. $6/$8. 2 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, January 11
Darkman (1990)
Alamo Drafthouse
A deformed Liam Neeson seeks revenge. $10.99. 2:30 p.m. More info here.
Moonage Daydream (2022)
Alamo Drafthouse
An epic if abstract Bowie doc. Read our full review here. $10.99. 11 a.m. More info here.
The Outsiders: The Complete Novel (1983)
Emagine Willow Creek
If there’s one thing Francis Ford Coppola loves, it’s re-editing his movies. Also Wednesday. $11. 3:40 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Grandview 1&2
Wes Anderson introduces us to the Wilson bros. Also Thursday. $14.14. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Heights Theater
Redford and Newman do the Old West. $16. 11:30 a.m. Monday 7 p.m. More info here.
Monty Python’s Holy Grail (1975)
Roxy’s Cabaret
Oh, there will be some audience participation. Free. 7 p.m. More info here.
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Trylon
Who here watched his Christmas special over the holidays? $8. Noon & 8:15 p.m. More info here.
I Vitelloni (1953)
Trylon
Fellini dramatizes his youth. $8. 6:15 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Monday, January 12
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
Alamo Drafthouse
New Moon on Monday. $22. 7 p.m. More info here.
Gundam Premiere Night
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Whole lotta Gundam goin’ on. Also Tuesday and Thursday. Prices, showtimes, and more info here.
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Edina Mann
A Hollywood musical, mais en français. Also Wednesday. $12.12. 7 p.m. More info here.
Follow the Rain (2024)
Parkway Theater
Explore the world of fungi! $12-$20. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Torso (1973)
Emagine Willow Creek
When a movie description mentions “coeds,” you know there’s gonna either be a lot of sex or a lot of murder. Or both. $9. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, January 13
The Cat (1992)
Alamo Drafthouse
The Cat From Outer Space, but cool and interesting. $10.99. 8 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, January 14
Secret Movie Night
Emagine Willow Creek
A mystery movie chosen by a local notable. $12. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Gits (2025)
Trylon
A 20th anniversary edition of this documentary about the influential Seattle punk band. Presented by Sound Unseen. $12. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thursday, January 15
Matewan (1987)
East Side Freedom Library
John Sayles’s pro-labor classic Presented by TriLingua Cinema. Part of the "Reel Stories: Labor in Film" series. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
The Sting (1973)
Emagine Willow Creek
Newman ‘n’ Redford are old-timey grifters. $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Father Mother Sister Brother
Sadly, Tom Waits and Charlotte Rampling are not married in this Jim Jarmusch film, as I first assumed.
Greenland 2: Migration
I have capital-Z ZERO memory of a movie called Greenland ever existing.
Is This Thing On?
Men would rather become stand-up comics than go to therapy.
I Was a Stranger
A family tragedy in Aleppo has repercussions worldwide.
Jana Nayagan
An Indian political action thriller.
Labyrinth
The 40th anniversary? Wait, that can’t be right.
Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu
"Loyalties are tested as festivity gives way to danger."
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 alum 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 factory's 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-
Primate
“Honestly, everyone told me not to bring the monkey. Everybody.”—Justin Bieber, 2016
The Raja Saab
A new Indian historical epic.
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
Bugonia
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-
The Dutchman—ends January 8
Eternity—ends January 7
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+
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, and 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-
The Plague
AITA for wanting to punch a 12-year-old boy in the face? That’s a question I asked myself during The Plague, Charlie Polinger’s smart directorial debut about a nasty and yet ordinary set of bullies at a water polo camp. Sweet little Ben (Everett Blunck), whose family is new to town, just wants to fit in, but that means ostracizing nerdy Eli (Kenny Rasmussen). The other boys say Eli’s rash is a symptom of The Plague, a disease which wavers in their minds somewhere uncertain between joke and truth, tending toward the latter whenever they get scared. Because Polinger maintains a kid’s eye view, he can capture the complicated group dynamics of bullying, detailed quirks of adolescent insecurity and sexuality, and the ineffectual interventions of grownups. (“That is the most depressing pep talk ever,” Ben tells the camp leader, played by Joel Edgerton, after a convoluted “it gets better” speech.) There’s something about the relentlessness of The Plague that feels a bit off to me—adolescent boys can be monsters, but that’s not all they can be. And setting The Plague at a water polo camp makes me consider the old line that The Lord of the Flies is less a look into the human capacity for evil than an indictment of the British public school system. Still, The Plague is craftily unsettling for anyone who’s ever been a tween boy, cared about a tween boy, or had eczema. Oh, and the punchable face belongs to skateboarder Kayo Martin, who plays the boys’ ringleader Jake with such shifty, credible malice I can’t tell if he’s a natural actor or just naturally hateable. B+
Resurrection
“In a wild and brutal era, humans have discovered that the secret to eternal life is to no longer dream!” a title card tells us with suitably melodramatic aplomb. And yet, in this world of the future (or is it?), some outcasts, called Deliriants, continue to dream regardless, even though they wither to nosferaturian husks as a result. An introductory sequence shot as a silent film follows an agent (Shu Qi) who tracks down a decaying Deliriant (Jackson Yee) in a steampunk opium den that recalls the space station in Twin Peaks’ third season. When he begs for a mercy killing, the agent instead keeps him alive a century longer, and he in essence relives the age of film, as condensed into four segments, each with its own characteristic style. Resurrection is like nothing you’ve seen before and yet every element of it seems familiar. Even if you’re not the sort of cineaste who can tick off boxes here and there—Orson Welles here, the Lumières there—its remixing of genres, images, and techniques will stir up déjà vu. And since narrative is never director Bi Gan's main concern, images are what will stay with you: the way a woman’s sneaker pivots as she turns to climb a ladder, or how a double rear-view mirror reflects a driver and a passenger individually. When we return to the framing device, and the Deleriant finally expires, the film ends in an empty movie theater. Is this an elegy for cinema or a call to rebirth? Resurrection suggests that we’ve barely begun to draw upon the wealth of images that can sustain us, and yet also that our time is running out to retain that capability. Which may make it the most realistic film of the year. 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, whom 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-
