I've been toiling away on my year in film wrap up (look for it next week) and you know what that means: There's always one more movie to see before I finalize my year-end list. And then one more after that. In fact, I saw two of the best films of 2024 in the past week: the wittily sexy Babygirl (reviewed below) and the unsettling Red Rooms (now streaming). And if Babygirl has you yearning for more Nicole Kidman, the Trylon kicks off a six-film retrospective of her career on Friday.
Special Screenings
Thursday, January 2
Phantom Thread (2017)
Alamo Drafthouse
Food poisoning has never felt so intimate. $10. 11:40 a.m. More info here.
Luther: Never Too Much (2024)
Capri Theater
Did you know Luther Vandross appeared in the Sesame Street pilot? $5 or free for north Minneapolis residents. 7 p.m. More info here.
12 Monkeys (1996)
Parkway Theater
That’s too many monkeys! $9/$12. Pre-show trivia at 7:30 p.m. Movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Friday, January 3
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Alamo Drafthouse
May George Miller never tire of filming people getting torn apart beneath the wheels of ridiculously massive vehicles. Also Sunday. $10. 12 p.m. More info here.
Scream It Off Screen
Parkway Theater
New year, same old screamin’. $13/$19. 8 p.m. More info here.
Dogville (2003)
Trylon
Life there is… ruff. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 p.m. Sunday 3 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, January 4
Speed Racer (2008)
Alamo Drafthouse
You know who loves this movie? Taco Mike, that’s who. $10. 12 p.m. More info here.
Face/Off (1997)
Main Cinema
Quite simply: a classic. Presented by Midnight Mayhem. $10. 10 p.m. More info here.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Parkway Theater
It’s no Wicked. $5-$10. 1 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, January 5
Clue (1985)
Emagine Willow Creek
A movie about a board game?!? Has Hollywood totally run out of ideas?!? Also Wednesday. $9. 12 & 6 p.m. More info here.
Monday, January 6
Possession (1981)
Alamo Drafthouse
Isabelle Adjani... how she get so pale? $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Dolls (1987)
Emagine Willow Creek
They’ll kill ya! $6. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Cabaret (1972)
Trylon
Weimar Berlin seems like a swingin’ place. What could possibly go wrong? Also Tuesday. $8. 7 & 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, January 7
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Alamo Drafthouse
Do you pronounce it “or-ange” or “ahr-ange”? $7. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, January 8
Paprika (2006)
Emagine Willow Creek
Just like the Japanese Breakfast song. $12.50. 6 p.m. More info here.
The Last Showgirl (2025)
Emagine Willow Creek
An advance screening of the new Pamela Anderson vehicle, with a livestream Q&A. $11. 7 p.m. More info here.
Secret Movie Night
Emagine Willow Creek
Can’t tell you what it is? It’s a secret! $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Let’s Get Lost (1988)
Trylon
The Chet Baker story, told late in his life. Presented by Sound Unseen. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Some Dumas for dat ass.
The Damned
A haunted shipwreck movie, from what I gather.
From Ground Zero
An anthology of 22 short films from 22 different Palestinian directors.
Harbin
A historical South Korean drama.
Porcelain War
Three Ukrainian artists continue their work in the face of the Russian invasion.
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Anora
From Kitana Kiki Rodriguez’s enraged trans sex worker in Tangerine to Simon Rex’s washed-up porn star in Red Rocket, Sean Baker knows how to let a character loose upon a movie, and Mikey Madison’s Ani may be the most fully realized of Baker’s high-powered, self-deluded survivors. A stripper and occasional escort whose charm and sheer self-determination haven’t failed her yet, she’s eking out a life in Brooklyn’s least glamorous southern reaches. (Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island are captured in all their drab, offseason outer-borough-ness.) Her life changes after a dance for a Russian oligarch’s son parlays into a paid fuck, which in turn goes so well he hires her for an extended stint. Baker captures their whirlwind spree through all forms of excess, ending with a Vegas wedding, as an audiovisual sugar rush that makes Pretty Woman’s shopping montage look like amateur hour. But when Ivan’s parents find out, they sic his handlers on him; he runs off like the spoiled little fuckboy we always knew he was and Ani is left to unleash her rage on the hired muscle as they hunt for him. Madison can be as subtle here as she was on Pamela Adlon’s Better Things and even more furious than she was in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood before Tarantino thought it’d be a hoot to immolate her with a flamethrower. This decade, we’ve seen plenty of commoners enter the worlds of the wealthy, often ending with fantasies of vengeance. Anora’s trip through the looking glass ends on a far more ambiguous note. A
Babygirl
I know many misguided youth feel deprived that Adrian Lyne’s alleged prime ended before they hit puberty, but take it from grandpa, erotic thrillers were rarely this self-assured in ye olde 20th century. Nicole Kidman is a tautly wound robotics exec who still packs her daughters’ lunches, Harris Dickinson is the intern who sniffs out the need to surrender beneath her hypercompetent sheen. And let’s not forget Antonio Banderas, who ably fills the traditional Anne Archer Hot Spouse role. What writer/director Halina Reijn gets about America’s official contemporary sexual ideology is that while no kink may be shamed—certainly not the fairly tame obedience training Kidman undergoes here—sex with an intern is a taboo we daren’t treat lightly. And what Kidman captures in her performance, especially in the petulance that precedes her submission, is that every kink feels like an unimaginable transgression to the person overcoming her shame. She’s a genuine auteur of self-degradation—truly, no one this side of Isabelle Huppert can match her freak. Yes, it’s “sometimes a bit much,” to quote the quibbles of one AP critic, which is like noting that “there are a lot of songs” in Wicked, but give in to your uncomfortable snickers, even if they emerge as full LOLs. The fun here is never knowing when to be turned on, amused, anxious, or outraged. As for Dickinson, he smolders credibly as Samuel, a kid whose instinct for dominance outpaces his competence or authority, and I promise never again to confuse him with George McKay. A
A Complete Unknown
Timothée Chalamet’s relative success here—he gets that Bob Dylan himself has always been a guy performing as Bob Dylan—is just one reason that James Mangold’s new biopic is so relatively un-embarrassing. The source material also helps: Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! is a thoroughly researched and reported account of Newport ’65 that’s preceded by an even-handed evaluation of what was at stake. Wald represents the ethos of the folk scene with a respect that rockist triumphalists could never see past their ingrained generational narratives to allow, and the film’s climax, Dylan’s amplified defiance of the Newport folkies, doesn’t feel as triumphant as we might expect. Dylan comes off less as a genius coming into his own than a cornered, confused guy lashing out at whoever comes closest; when his pal Bobby Neuwirth asks him point blank who he wants to be, it’s hard not hear a hollowness in the defiance of Dylan's reply: “Whoever they don’t want me to be.” When he returns to visit Woody Guthrie one last time after Newport, reflecting on what he’s done and lost, Bobby Zimmerman is now as completely Bob Dylan as Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. How does it feel? Not great, Bob. Read our full review here. B
Gladiator II
Gladiator worked as well as it did (which might not be quite as well as you remember) because Ridley Scott stocked his swords ‘n’ sandals rehash with hams who knew how to spout nonsense about "the dream of Marcus Aurelius" and "the glory of Rome" as though it were meaningful, nay crucial. And this sequel is almost worth seeing solely for Denzel Washington, who accepts his role as a challenge, supercharging the eccentric cadences that made his Macbeth a darkly comic curiosity a couple years back—his “I own … your house. I want … your loyalty” may be the line reading of the year. As the wily former slave Macrinus, Washington traipses, flounces, pounces, smirks, exclaims, and keenly outwits his dim foes. Close your eyes and he could be playing an evil Disney tiger. But poor Paul Mescal looks as out of place as a puppy at a Senate budget hearing. He’s surely swole enough as the son of Crowe’s Maximus (and a rightful heir to the imperial throne) to credibly wallop challengers in the arena, whether corporeal or poorly animated. But we all know Paulie’s a weeper not a fighter. Every generation needs its moody dreamboat, and Aftersun and Normal People made Mescal that nontoxic totem. As for the combat scenes, if the first Gladiator challenged Scott to revamp a genre for modern audiences, all his sequel can offer is more. Read our full review here. C+
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Nosferatu
Who needs a vampire to drain the life from a town when you’ve got Robert Eggers directing? Wisborg, the German community that Count Orloc (Bill Skarsgård) will eventually infest with plague, is so gloomy at the start of Eggers's take on the Dracula story that the fiend has hardly got any work to do. And the wan woman Orloc is drawn to (Lily Rose-Depp) already endures joyless orgasmic gasps and speaks in trite Emily Dickinson first drafts. Like any well-prepared corpse, Nosferatu can be striking, even beautiful, in its airless, stylized way. For the German scenes, Eggers favors a blue filter familiar to admirers of The Piano or the first Twilight movie, and some of his fussily framed shots do rise to a Barry Lyndon quality—no mean feat. Orloc’s castle is a black-on-black-on-black realm of shadows within shadows, a daring and somewhat frustrating design for those of us who like to occasionally see what we’re looking at. Willem Dafoe’s mad, chaotic Prof. Albin Eberhart Von—ah fuck it, I’m just gonna call him Van Helsing—brings a mad touch of chaos to the proceedings, but much of Nosferatu advances with the grim inevitability of a fairy tale. Skarsgård’s Orloc, a hulking, shadowy beast with the bristly mustache of an ancient warlord and a booming, electronically modulated voice, is a beastly embodiment of menace, a dark force awakened. But without pathos or malice, he’s just acting on instinct. Turns out pure evil can be almost as boring as pure good. B-
Queer
An older gay man sets his sights on a pretty younger fellow in a picturesque sunny clime, and if you think Luca Guadagnino has been here before, well, yes and no. We’re in Mexico City (actually a staged facsimile thereof) and the elder is Bill Lee (Daniel Craig), the alter ego of William S. Burroughs and the central figure of that author’s most personal work. Sure, it figures that Luca’d be the director to show us James Bond sucking dick, but Craig’s at his best here, bringing pathetic depth to a sensualist. There’s nothing smooth about Bill—he loves hot guys and shooting junk, and thinks he can manage both addictions. He’s so entranced by one Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) he does an awkward little dance for him in the middle of a bar and ignores how their relationship blurs the transactional and the intimate for as long as he can. Guadagnino sharply evokes a postwar gay expat milieu, fleshed out by Jason Schwartzman, pudgier and more hirsute than ever, as Bill’s cruising pal. But when Queer gets trippy in the home stretch, as Bill and Gene journey into the jungles of Ecuador in search of a rare psychotropic and the wonderful Leslie Manville lurches into frame, the only real revelation is that Guadagnino is a big fan of Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. The result is a movingly disappointing sort of film—heartfelt, but often dull. B
Wicked
Thinkpieces are surely in the works about how Wicked, the story of a good woman who is cast as an enemy of the people by authoritarians using fiendishly disseminated lies, is a perfect Trump era fable (just as it was a perfect Bush era fable two decades ago). But maybe the best topical lesson that Wicked offers is that villains are often more entertaining than heroes. If anything, Cynthia Erivo has too much screen presence for her already underwritten part, and her almost-adult dignity undermines her character arc. Her Elphaba (a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West) is no ingénue misled by foolish dreams, and seems incapable of humiliation. Meanwhile, Glinda is a dream of a role that Ariana Grande floats through with perfect timing, flaunting her shallow vanity, scene-stealing blonde hair tosses, and comically sudden upshoots into her showy soprano. And while I’ll take songwriter Stephen Schwartz’s generically inspirational pop over the wan schlock of the dreaded Pasek and Paul, I have seen better movie musicals set in Oz. Read our full review here. B
