In addition to this week's listings, you'll find new reviews of Paddington in Peru, Captain America: Brave New World, and the Italian arthouse film Vermiglio.
Special Screenings
Thursday, February 20
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16
Back in theaters this week, for some reason. Showtimes and more info here.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
They look so young! Showtimes and more info here.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 3D (2001)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
What, is it Harry Potter Day or something? Showtimes and more info here.
Grotesque Fest IV
Bryant Lake Bowl
A selection of local horror shorts, with a drag performance from Mink Hole. Also Friday. $9/$13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Babe (1995)
Emagine Willow Creek
The other side of Mad Max’s George Miller. $4.60. 12 p.m. More info here.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Emagine Willow Creek
This is the movie with Elizabeth Taylor and the horse, right? $11.60. 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. More info here.
Wild at Heart (1990)
Grandview 1&2
The only David Lynch film that is currently not streaming anywhere, I believe. Also Sunday. $14.44. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Gun Crazy (1950)
Heights Theater
Meet Bart and Annie. They love guns! $12. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2 (2011)
Orchestra Hall
A live orchestra makes those hallows all the more deathly, I imagine. Through Sunday. $72-$135. 7 p.m. More info here.
Harold and Maude (1971)
Parkway Theater
This played at the Westgate in Edina for so long (114 weeks) that there were protests. $9/$12. Music from Fathom Lane at 7; movie at 8 p.m. More info here.
Paradise (2023)
Trylon
A Hatch dance performance from 2023, captured on film. $20. 7 p.m. More info here.
Autumn Knight Live at the Walker (2025)
Walker Art Center
I think this counts as a movie? Through Saturday. $15 and up. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Friday, February 21
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Pretty sure this is the one about the Chamber of Secrets. Showtimes and more info here.
Hitpig! (2024)
Marcus West End
The pig is a bounty hunter. Through Monday. Showtimes and more info here.
America: Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed Of (1967-73)
Trylon
A collection of short documentaries about Americana. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 8:30 p.m. Sunday 3 & 4:30 p.m. Sunday More info here.
Saturday, February 22
Cry-Baby (1990)
Alamo Drafthouse
John Waters gets silly. $11.50. 11 a.m. More info here.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
This is supposed to be the good one, right? Showtimes and more info here.
God Said Give Em Drum Machines (2022)
Bryant Lake Bowl
A doc about the rise of Detroit techno. Free. 9:30 p.m. More info here.
Babe: A Pig in the City (1995)
Emagine Willow Creek
Babe: Beyond Thunderdome. All week. $4.60. 12 p.m. More info here.
Best Picture Marathon 2025: Day One
Marcus West End
Watch I'm Still Here, A Complete Unknown, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Dune: Part Two all in a row—if you DARE.10 a.m. More info here.
13th (2016)
Mia
Are prisons slavery by other means? Free with registration. 2 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, February 23
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Alamo Drafthouse
You’re no Lon Chaney, Gerard Butler. You’re not even Herbert Lom! $20.59. 2 p.m. More info here.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
How many of these damn movies are there? Showtimes and more info here.
The Sundance Film Festival Indigenous Film Tour
Bryant Lake Bowl
Eight short films from Indigenous filmmakers. $8. 7 p.m. More info here.
Goodfellas (1990)
Emagine Willow Creek
It holds up. Also Wednesday. $10.60. 12:30 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Mascarpone (2021)
Emagine Willow Creek
An Italian man remakes his life after his husband leaves him. $11.60. 2 p.m. More info here.
Coming to America (1988)
Marcus West End
In case the SNL special got you in the mood for more Eddie. 3:50 p.m. More info here.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Marcus West End
Always worth catching in a theater. 6:05 p.m. More info here.
Monday, February 24
The Social Network (2010)
Alamo Drafthouse
Can we finally admit that Aaron Sorkin didn’t understand Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, the internet, or… anything? $10. 7 p.m. More info here.
Thirst (2009)
Emagine Willow Creek
Park Chan-wook’s absolutely underrated vampire flick features some of the most disgusting blood-slurping sounds ever recorded. $7.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Heights Theater
If you can’t make it to Willow Creek on Thursday. $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Marcus Mystery Movie
Marcus West End
It’s 90 minutes long, if that helps you guess. 7 p.m. More info here.
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Trylon
Ray Milland has a few drinks. $8. 6 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 & 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, February 25
Dolemite Is My Name! (2019)
Alamo Drafthouse
Eddie Murphy’s tribute to the Avenging Disco Godfather himself, Rudy Ray Moore. $7. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, February 26
Vertigo (1958)
Alamo Drafthouse
… to the polls! $13.50. 7 p.m. More info here.
Action Jackson (1988)
Emagine Willow Creek
“Vanity was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as Worst Actress, but lost to Liza Minnelli for her performances in Arthur 2: On the Rocks and Rent-a-Cop.[citation needed].” $7.50. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Inherent Vice (2014)
Trylon
An exclusive for Trylon Club members. Free for club members. 7 p.m. More info here.
20 Years In The Crypt : Embedded On Tour With Dead Moon (2025)
Cloudland
The legendary Portland band, filmed in 2001. $13. 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
Cleaner
A window cleaner (no, not a beekeeper) tries to save hostages.
Dragon
An Indian student quits school to become a fraudster.
Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
Chinese martial arts masters battle Gengis Khan.
The Monkey
I’ll give you one more chance, Oz Perkins.
Parthenope
A coming of age drama from Paolo Sorrentino.
The Unbreakable Boy
An autistic boy with brittle bones proves inspiring.
Vermiglio
Who wouldn’t be suspicious of a quiet period piece set in a picturesque, isolated Alpine village saturated with natural light? But as we drift through a year in the life of a rural Italian family dominated by its patriarch, a stern provincial schoolmaster, director Maura Delpero probes the cruelty beneath the placid, pastoral surface. One daughter falls for a WWII deserter hiding out in the village, while another is obsessed with self-mortification and in love with the local wild girl. The children all vie for papa’s affection so they might escape Vermiglio for boarding school, except a son who rebels by becoming a field hand. And babies just keep being born and occasionally dying. The storytelling isn’t just episodic but anecdotal; Delpero typically cuts away before a scene is resolved, with much of the action happening off screen, as befits a story of shame, thwarted desire, and withheld affection. But there are moments of joy—the children whispering together at night in their shared beds, a shared elicit cigarette in a barn—suggesting that not all vitality has been stamped out. And it’s all very pretty to look at, of course. Not major, but rewarding. B+
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Becoming Led Zeppelin
I’d hoped that the sensory bludgeoning of IMAX Zep would be ideal Super Bowl counterprogramming last Sunday, but this all-too-authorized doc (no sex or drugs or mudsharks) is way scarcer on live footage than I’d been led to believe. Well, actually there’s lots of footage (and hell, I’d watch silent film of John Bonham slapping and stomping) but too much of it is set to the studio recordings. The ’60s studio recordings, that is—Becoming Led Zeppelin is true to its name, wrapping up with the band’s Royal Albert Hall homecoming in 1970, which I’d honestly rather watch in full rather than listen to so much jawing from three elderly Brits who really need to get over a certain 1968 Rolling Stone review already. (At least give me visuals of the wonderfully sloppy Eddie Cochran covers that are instead relegated to the credits.) Those studio LPs do sound great over a cineplex soundsystem, of course, but first you’ve got to wade through 45 minutes about skiffle and life as a ’60s session man in London. Some of that's engaging enough, but sorry but I did not pay $20 to see and hear Lonnie Donegan and Lulu in The World’s Most Immersive Movie Experience. B
The Brutalist (read the full review here)
Brady Corbet’s aspiring epic tracks the disillusionment of a man who believed himself beyond illusion. László Tóth (Adrien Brody, once more a heroic European Jew) is a Bauhaus-tutored architect, Buchenwald survivor, and recent immigrant in Philadelphia. Into his life strides Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a Bucks County nouveaux with a pseud’s hunger for as much expert-approved culture as money can buy. He enlists his pedigreed discovery to design and construct a massive community center for the suburban backwater of Doylestown. The Brutalist is a film about grandiosity that also aspires to it. There are tremendous moments, in which far from subtle images communicate boldly what language cannot, that only a filmmaker gifted with a certain degree of self-importance can achieve. But on the back end it loses the shape of a masterpiece, and the sturdy facsimile of a greatness we'd been watching reveals itself as something lumpier and less monumental. And for a film supposedly about ideas, The Brutalist is strangely devoid of them, unless you count “rich people will fuck you over,” “Americans hate foreigners,” and “the Holocaust!” B
Captain America: Brave New World
The Captain America movies are where the MCU gets “serious,” where comic book idealism clashes with the dark side of U.S. history, where unfettered heroism encounters the restraining forces of bureaucracy. With Anthony Mackie inheriting the shield, Brave New World adds race to that equation. After shouldering endless Steve Rogers comparisons, Mackie's Sam Wilson gets a little speech where he wonders if he'll ever be enough, while for contrast we have Isaiah Bradley (Carl Bradley), an older Black super soldier who’d been imprisoned by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) nearly gets us into a war with Japan (couldn’t be China—Disney needs that big overseas market) over adamantium, a new substa—ah, you know, don’t worry about it. Since in the real world, an authoritarian prez is seeking to purge the military (and everywhere else) of non-whites while saber-rattling with the nation’s historic allies, theoretically the film’s themes should resonate, at least in a half-assed pop culture thinkpiece kinda way. But this slapdash entry is more concerned with callbacks to the MCU D-list like the Eternals and 2008's The Incredible Hulk. Its one big reveal (unless you’re genuinely wondering, “Will Liv Tyler appear?”) was torpedoed by the need to fill seats: This would have been 10 times more fun if we didn’t know Ford was gonna Hulk out at the end, but the theaters would have been ten times emptier if the trailers didn’t spoil that. Brave New World is about one thing only: The MCU struggling to justify its continued existence. C
Challengers (read the full review here)—ends Thursday
Mildly pervy Euro auteur Luca Guadagnino has concocted a sort of Jules et Jim for les enfants de TikTok et PRIME sports drinks, with Zendaya as the apex of a love triangle who reveals that the other two points—scurfy Josh O’Connor and submissive Mike Faist—also have the hots for each other. What Guadagnino gets about Zendaya is that she excels as an observer, a judgmental force that doubles as a relatable audience surrogate. If there’s something of the fashion model’s posture to her confidence, and a flatness to her characterization—she’s all impulse and response—Challengers allows us to postpone any hard questions about development as an actor because its pleasures are all so wonderfully superficial. You kids don’t know how good you’ve got it. Why in my day, we had to go to grad school, study Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and learn to read homosocial desire into seemingly “straight” fictions. What once was subtext is now reflected vividly in Zendaya’s shades. B+
A Complete Unknown (read the full review here)
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. B
Conclave
Edward Berger may think he’s cooked up something more substantial than a chewy Vatican potboiler here—a meditation on faith in the modern era, or some other middlebrow (papal) bull. Who knows and who cares? The crowd I saw it with thought Berger’s flamboyant pope opera was funny as hell (pardon the expression, Father) and they were right. Watching old guys from around the world in funny clothes politic, gossip, and backstab is just solid entertainment. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine milks everything he can from the ornate setting and bright costumery, and this cast knows how to project an ominous seriousness that’s forever camp adjacent. We’re talking Ralph Fiennes working his timeworn visage of existential indigestion, John Lithgow looking more like Donald Rumsfield than ever, Sergio Castellitto as a gregarious bear who wants to repeal Vatican II, Isabella Rossellini as a mysterious nun, and, for the ladies, a little Stanley Tucci. You’ll guess most of the twists, groan at some, and even get blindsided by a few. Still, without giving too much away, it’s hard not to notice that none of the scandals here are as horrific as those the Catholic Church has covered up in real life. B+
Flow
Every house cat stalks through its domain like some fierce jungle predator indifferent to any challenge. Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis calls that supposedly independent beast’s bluff, tossing a kitty into a flood and saying “How tough are you now, huh puss?” Flow is in part a unique hangout movie, a kind a postdiluvian animal Real World where a prickly black cat is forced to coexist on a boat with a wounded secretarybird, an acquisitive lemur, a stolid capybara, and an all too friendly Lab. None of the critters speak—aside from knowing how to work a rudder, they generally behave as animals would. And while the computer animation isn’t exactly beautiful, and can’t avoid an occasional cutscene quality, we pass through computer-generated environments with an unmatched three-dimensional ease that's its own reward. Though we never learn what happened to the humans—Flow is blessedly free of any backstory—there’s also an element of wish fulfillment here. If humans ever do finally off themselves en masse, it suggests, at least the animals we love will find ways to survive. If they learn to work together better than humans did, that is. A-
I’m Still Here
There’s a lot to admire about Walter Salles’s newest film, which documents the struggle of Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) to learn the truth about what happened to her dissident husband Ruben (Selton Mello) after his abduction by the Brazilian military dictatorship. Mostly there’s Torres’s performance, which projects an astonishing dignity and perseverance. (As a nice touch, Fernanda Montenegro, the jaded teacher from Salles’s 1998 breakthrough Central Station, plays the older Eunice.) Salles’s timing couldn’t be better: Surely the film’s Oscar nominations (Best Picture and Best Actress for Torres) owe something to the mood of “it can happen here?” now belated descending upon the privileged in the U.S. But as a director Salles lacks the historical sweep required to tell a multi-decade story, the Paivas’ family life feels idealized both before and after the arrest, and we rarely quite get inside Eunice’s mind and heart. The film exists for a worthy goal, bearing witness to the fact that repressive regimes someday come to an end—sometimes even with a single lifetime. But it’s more testimonial than art. B
Nickel Boys
You probably know the deal: director RaMell Ross’s debut feature is shot almost entirely from the point of view of two Black teens sentenced to a brutal Florida reform school. The opening moments are so perfect and impressionistic you think, well, this could be a fine short film, but there’s no way Ross can keep that level of formal command up for over two hours. And there are occasional stumbles, but the technique is no gimmick, or maybe it’s just a gimmick that deepens the content. Being essentially trapped in a character’s body with them creates a distancing effect. We feel as alienated from the strange surroundings as the somewhat naive innocent Elwood (Ethan Herisse) does; we keep a keen eye open as the more savvy Turner (Brandon Wilson) has learned to do. Using the techniques of screen realism to tell this story is what would have felt like a gimmick—just a gimmick we’ve learned to accept as natural. A
No Other Land—ends Thursday
Maybe the Oscars can be a force for good? Certainly a Best Documentary nomination has helped this acclaimed look at the Israeli displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank belatedly access U.S. theaters, after major distributors ignored it for more than a year. But the struggle for distribution shouldn’t overshadow the film itself, which is much more than just a competent document of brutality. No Other Land is the product of four directors (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor), two Israeli and two Palestinian; the various sources of footage from cameras and phones are brilliantly edited, and the strained friendship between two of the filmmakers—the Palestinian Adra and the Israeli Abraham—is central to the story it tells of the limits of empathy and humanitarian universalism. There are plenty of horrors to catalogue here, and even if months of violent clips from Gaza have desensitized you, watching a settler casually gun down a displaced Palestinian will still make you gasp. Yet it's the everyday cruelty that's most unsettling, the sight of an army pouring concrete into a well and bulldozing the homes of families forced to relocate to caves. Humans really are capable of doing anything to one another, and in cold blood. A
Nosferatu—ends Thursday
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-
Paddington in Peru
The third Paddington installment has all the hallmarks of a Part Three: a new setting, a cast replacement (Emily Mortimer gamely standing in for the much-missed Sally Hawkins), developing characters whose charm has always been that they don’t change, a resolution that could end the story but, if everything works out at the box office, probably won’t. Still, it’s fun to watch Antonio Banderas ham it up as a tour boat captain who is not what he seems, haunted by gold-hungry ancestors (also Banderas). Likewise for Olivia Coleman as a grinning, singing nun who is not what she etc., running a home for retired bears. Paddington, bless him, remains exactly what he seems, causing good-natured mayhem whether he’s failing to operate a photo booth correctly, racing on llamas, or steering a ship. But this is merely cute where Paddington 2 was irresistible. B+
Rob Peace—ends Thursday.
The Substance (read the full review here)
Without our shared cultural knowledge of Demi Moore’s life and career, The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s absurdist experiment in gory meta-hagsploitation, is a fairly limp if expressively graphic satire of impossible female body standards. Moore’s presence, and her performance, give the film its moments of depth—moments Fargeat doesn’t always seem particularly interested in. Moore is an aging, discarded star who injects herself with a black-market serum that looks like radioactive pee and mitoses into the “ideal version of herself,” a perky-butted and gleam-smiled Margaret Qualley who calls herself Sue. Each woman gets to remain conscious for exactly a week apiece, spending each alternate week as a nude, comatose lump ingesting bagged nutrients. And as Elisabeth begins to sulk through her allotment of days and Sue wants more time to shine, rules are inevitably bent, with increasingly disastrous results. The subtlety-free finale, which fire-hoses blood at the patriarchy and anyone else in proximity, will either have you pumping your fist at its audacity or rolling your eyes at what a cop out it is. For better or for worse, what Fargeat is “trying to say” and her grisly overindulgence are inseparable. B-
2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films - Animation
It’s that time of year.
2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films – Documentary
And more shorts.
2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films - Live Action
And yet more shorts.
Wicked (read the full review here)
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. B
