THE WEEKEND WARRIOR 10/11/24

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY, TERRIFIER 3, THE APPRENTICE, PIECE BY PIECE, WOMAN OF THE HOUR,

After taking a number of weeks off, I figured I had to try my best to get this column back onto some sort of weekly schedule, especially since today, October 10th is the 23rd ANNIVERSARY of my very first box office column over at a log-defunct site called HSJ.org, back when it used to be called “Half-Assed Analysis.” (I couldn’t find that very first column, but I did find the second one I wrote.) I hope I’ve come far in those 23 years, but who knows? I’ve pivoted this column to be more for my reviews since I don’t really have other outlets for reviews right now, and believe me, this week’s column is absolutely PACKED.

This is the last weekend of the 62nd New York Film Festival, and I still have a few movies to see like Steve McQueen’s Blitz and Pablo Larrain’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, and once I do, I’ll share a few more reviews.  

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY (Warner Bros.)

You might notice that I’m kicking things off with a doc this week, and that’s because this movie is this week’s “Chosen One.”  I decided to put a little more focus on it, because I’d really like people reading this to get off their butts and get out of their houses to go see it in theaters if possible. Mind you, I was hoping to watch it again before writing any sort of review, but after seeing it months ago, it’s still stuck with me. 

I was never the biggest Christopher Reeve fan, even if his first Superman movie came out at a time and when I was at an age where it should have been my favorite movie. I was 13 years old in 1978 and already reading comics – in fact, my first comics were Superman – but for some reason, I don’t remember getting into the movies.

This documentary, directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, is not only one the best documentaries I’ve seen this year, but also one of the best films. It does such a good job pulling you into Reeve’s world, not only following his career from the stage to donning the cape, but also his family life both before and after his debilitating fall from a horse that left him as a paraplegic.

The filmmakers have great collaborators in Reeve’s kids, who not only lost their father in 2004, but then their mother Dana a year later. There are many takeaways hearing from Reeve’s surviving friends and loved ones, but the biggest one is how much he was loved, but also how much he was able to do after his accident, going to bat for paraplegic people around the world. This movie drives the point home that just because you’ve lost mobility, that doesn’t mean your life is over, and Reeve remained active as an actor and a director while also being heavily involved in his activism.   

I will freely admit that watching Reeve’s journey got me quite emotional, and I was almost in tears and sniffling through much of the film, maybe because it’s a case of me not really appreciating Reeve while he was alive and realizing how important he was to so many people.

I know that documentaries can often be a tough sell to convince audiences out to the movie theaters, yet this weekend, we have not one but two wide release documentaries, both quite good, although Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve just works better, even if it’s the more conventional of the two. I really hope that people take the opportunity to see one or both of these movies now that they’re more readily available in theaters.

You might notice that I normally don’t give documentaries official ratings when I review them, but this one is pretty much perfect so…

Rating: 10/10

Super/Man will open nationwide on Friday, and if you want to learn more about it, check out my interview from Cinema Daily US!

And we go from one of the best movies of 2024 to the absolute worst…. Oh, the irony indeed.

TERRIFIER 3

Filmmaker Damien Leone returns with his third slasher outing, centered around serial killer Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), this time with a Christmas theme, as the story moves forward five years with Lauren LeVara’s Sienna still trying to overcome the trauma from her last encounter with Art in Terrifier 2. She’s back with her family, who are worried about her mental stability, none of them aware that Art has returned.

After a Christmas prologue where Art slaughters an innocent family (including kids!) dressed as Santa, we cut back five years to right after Terrifier 2 as Art is reunited with Samantha Scaffidi’s Victoria, the sole survivor from the first movie, now horribly disfigured but oddly in love with Art to the point where she literally becomes his voice. We then return to the present day as Sienna leaves the institute where she’s been recovering to reconnect with her sister, whose young daughter Gabbie (Antonella Rose) looks up to her aunt. Eventually, we meet the horrid Mia (Alexa Blair Robertson), a true crime podcaster trying to convince Sienna and Jonathan to share their horrific experiences with Art. You just know that she’s going to be one of Art’s victims, but she’s one of the few characters who really deserves to be slaughtered in such a horrific way. Few others do.

Before you ask, I did see Terrifier 2 when it came out, and it wasn’t so bad, far superior to the original Terrifier, which I found to just be cruel with lots of gore for the sake of gore. I didn’t think I would need to rewatch either movie, although much of that last movie was quickly forgotten, to the point where I had trouble figuring out what anyone was talking about in this one. A movie like this could have used some quick exposition to catch viewers up, but Leone instead scatters that exposition throughout the movie. In fact, at one point, Sienna tells her brother Jonathan (Elliot Fullam) that she needs to return to “the Terrifier,” and my first thought was, “What’s that?” 

The majority of the film cuts between Art killing anyone he meets, and Sienna with her family, but the family stuff is so interminably corny it does nothing to alleviate any discomfort caused from sitting through Art’s gory kills. There are also so many incessant flashbacks of Sienna as a girl with her father, which references things that happened in the first two movies. The writing is just so horrible that it constantly has to fall back on Art doing his thing, and it’s a good ninety minutes before these two stories come together.

David Howard Thornton’s performance is essentially another bit of mime, though he and Vicky are just so awful, I have no idea why so many people seem to love them compared to classic killers like Freddy Krueger or Jason. I won’t spoil any of the kills, involving things like Art’s new toy, a canister of liquid nitrogen, but it always feels like Leone is trying to push the envelope with his special effects team in terms of how repugnant they can go with the gore created by a simple horror staple like a chainsaw. Before you come at me with “Ed must not like horror movies” or “Ed does not like gory slasher movies,” well, then, how would you explain that I liked last year’s Thanksgiving and this year’s In a Violent Nature? 

What Leone does in his third outing when Art and Vicky finally go after Sienna and her family is to create something so horribly mean, ugly and cruel that it’s hard to even consider it entertainment, let alone a good movie. In many ways, this effort reminds me of some of the utter garbage directed by Rob Zombie, who can be just as hit-or-miss and often is just as derivative while trying too hard to push the horror envelope. I honestly regretted staying until the very end, rather than joining the reported walkouts – I saw more than a few at the New York premiere – since the movie never gets any better, but it just gets much, much worse. 

Terrifier 3 seems to exist merely to fill the bloodlust in a certain sector of horror fans that I absolutely detest. We already live in a horribly cruel world, so a movie that deliberately tries to pass off wanton violence as entertainment – not to mention setting it during a holiday that many people take pleasure in – is just plain disgusting. At least this isn’t a musical, but I’m sure Leone might try that with an inevitable fourth movie, which I will not be watching it, even if someone wants to pay me. This is the worst movie I’ve seen in many years.

Rating: 2/10

I already reviewed Jason Reitman’s SATURDAY NIGHT (Sony) which also expands wide this weekend, and you can read that earlier review here, but it’s going nationwide in what’s become an insanely busy weekend, so I’m not really sure how it can do well. You can read more about what I think of its box office prospects over at Gold Derby. 

PIECE BY PIECE (Focus Features)

Morgan Neville directs this documentary made completely using LEGO bricks to tell the story of singer, songwriter, and mega-producer Pharrell Williams, who is probably best known for winning the Oscar for his original song “Happy” from Despicable Me, but has a lot of other hits under his belt as a producer and songwriter as well. 

I myself may have first became familiar with Williams through “Lucky,” his collaboration with Daft Punk, that was unavoidable that summer, followed by his equally unavoidable hit, “Happy.” It takes a little time to get to that point, as it tells the story of how Pharrell and his Neptunes production partner Chad Hugo meet in school, combining a mix of musical styles both as a band and then making rap music. I’ll freely admit that I wasn’t that familiar with The Neptunes,  but I was pretty amazed when it got to that portion of the film, and I started hearing all these hit songs that I knew but never realized that they had produced. 

In my book, Neville is one of the best documentarians out there, and he’s followed the Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom with a number of great films, including Won’t You Be My Neighbor and this year’s Steve Martin doc, merely called Steve! It must have been a real challenge for him to take his normal method of documentary filmmaking to work with animators to recreate some of the events being discussed where there no cameras present. There’s also a lot of humor instilled into the environments in which Pharrell’s friends, family, and collaborators talk about him.

The LEGO thing actually works quite well, and as someone who recently returned to working on music in the studio, I appreciated how much time it spends with Pharrell trying to find the perfect beat. I also loved how Neville used LEGO blocks to display Williams’ ideas for the beats he pitches to artists like Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, and others,

More importantly, Piece by Piece is a kid-friendly documentary, which is fairly rare these days. Some kids might already know Williams from “Happy,” but other kids might just enjoy the abundance of music and the look into the music-making process… and the LEGOs, of course.

Piece by Piece is a lighter, viewer-friendly documentary that avoids the fact it’s mostly talking heads by creating something inventive and colorful, and that makes it thoroughly entertaining, and not just for kids.

Rating: 8/10

THE APPRENTICE (Briarcliff)

Sebastian Stan plays the young Donald Trump in the 1970s, when he first meets lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who has a big influence on the young heir to a wealthy real estate developer. Around the same time, he also meets a gorgeous Ukrainian model, Ivana Trump (played by Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova), and he ends up making her his “trophy wife” as his fame and notoriety as a New York real estate mogul grows.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I saw this a few weeks ago, mainly because I didn’t watch the trailer beforehand, so I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed it, since much like other liberal film critics, I HATE DONALD TRUMP! I mean, seriously, the sooner he loses the election and goes away (either to jail or just somewhere without TV cameras), the happier I’ll be.

That said, Stan is so great playing Trump, not merely doing an impression of the Trump we know and loathe, at least not at first, but creating a far more naive earlier version of Trump who absorbs everything Cohn tells him. Strong is so great as Cohn, to the point where I’m still regretting not having watched “Succession” yet, mainly because it’s a show that I feel I really need to concentrate on while I watch it. His Cohn is so influential on Trump that when he shares his main rules like “Never admit defeat”

With a fantastic script by Gabriel Sherman (who wrote Independence Day: Resurgence, oddly), The Apprentice is also quite funny if you’re watching it to have a laugh at what a dope Trump is, but over the course of the film, we start seeing how Cohn’s influence turns him into a much nastier person. His marriage with Ivana also starts falling apart, leading to one of the moments in the film that I absolutely hated, not just because it’s been said to not be true, but also, I’m getting a little sick.

Essentially, The Apprentice is more about Trump’s relationship with Cohn and how that transforms, as his power and fame grows and Cohn’s wanes, than it is about his relationship with Ivana, but it’s an interesting experiment in biopic filmmaking since so much of it may have been fictionalized, though that’s done in such an entertaining way.

If you go into The Apprentice with an open mind, not expecting or wanting something that’s particularly biased one way or the other, then you might appreciate it as a political biopic on par with Vice or W. Or you can just enjoy it as an entertaining farce. Up to you.

Rating: 7.5/10

Another movie that I just didn’t get to – also because I really don’t watch enough anime to have any sort of informed opinion – is MY HERO ACADEMIA THE MOVIE: YOU’RE NEXT (Toho Entertainment), the fourth theatrical release of this franchise, this time by Toho vs. the previous FUNimation releases.

Also, Disney is re-releasing Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas for the umpteenth time, and with so many other options for family audiences, I’m dubious it will get too far into the top 10 or do as well as the last rerelease, which I believe was last year. 

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THE BOX OFFICE CHART

This weekend is likely to be a real mess with so many new wide releases – I count seven! – but Terrifier 3 has a good chance of exceeding expectations since the previous movies have built such a large audience with its insanely gory slasher kills, which is the only real horror offering in theaters until next weekend. 

1.Terrifier 3 (Cineverse) - $12.8 million N/A
2. The Wild Robot (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $12.2 million -35%
3. Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros.) - $11.2 million -70%
4. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Bros.) - $6.2 million -40%
5. Saturday Night (Sony) - $5.6 million
6. Piece by Piece (Focus Features) - $5.1 million N/A
7. The Apprentice (Briarcliff) - $4.5 million N/A
8. My Hero Academia The Movie: You’re Next (Toho International) - $3.3 million N/A
9. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros.) - $3 million N/A
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Disney) - $2.8 million 

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WOMAN OF THE HOUR (Netflix) 

This Anna Kendrick-directed and starring crime-thriller premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, which is where I first saw it, but I liked it enough to rewatch it ahead of its limited theatrical release this weekend ahead of it streaming on Netflix starting October 18. In the film, Kendrick plays struggling L.A. actress Cheryl Bradshaw, who is booked on ‘70s game show, “The Dating Game,” where she’s matched up with a charming bachelor named Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), who just happens to be a serial killer who has been raping and killing young women across the country for years.

I’ll post my review of this shortly.

WE LIVE IN TIME (A24)

Sadly, I had to make some choices and missed the press screening of this to see Terrifier 3, but it’s the new drama from John Crowley (Brooklyn), starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, and since I haven’t seen it, best I can do is the synopsis from IMDB: “An up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée find their lives forever changed when a chance encounter brings them together, in a decade-spanning, deeply moving romance.”  I’m actually going to try to see this on Friday so maybe I’ll have a review next week, or you can follow me on Letterboxd, which I’ve been updating more regularly.

LAST OF THE SEA WOMEN (Apple Studios)

This interesting doc that will debut on Apple TV+ on Friday from filmmaker Sue Kim and produced by Malala (yes, that Malala) is about South Korea’s haenyeo, women divers, mostly aged 60 and up, who dive in the shores of Jeju Island cultivating seafood that they sell. I quite enjoyed the camaraderie between these women, and we even get to meet two younger women trying to keep the tradition of these divers alive. I hope to add more about this soon, as well.

MEDIHA (Together Films)

Opening at the Film Forum on Friday is this new documentary from Hasan Oswald, which is exec. produced by Emma Thompson, about a 15-year-old Yazidi girl, who had been sold by ISIS into sexual slavery at age 9 (!) after her mother goes missing, who makes intimate video diaries in the fields outside a Northern Iraq refugee camp.

MAD ABOUT THE BOY: THE NOËL COWARD STORY (Greenwich Entertainment)

Another doc that I didn’t check out, mainly cause I just don’t have interest in the subject matter is this movie directed by Barnaby Thompson, who co-directed St. Trinian’s and its sequel and narrated by Alan Cumming. This is opening on Wednesday at the IFC Center, and it includes appearances by the likes of Rupert Everett (also from St. Trinian’s!) and Michael Caine.

BROTHERS (Amazon) 

Amazon is giving this comedy starring Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage a one-week limited theatrical release for some reason – it’s only playing in one Regal theater here in New York City that I could find – before debuting on Prime Video on Oct. 17. Amazon wouldn’t send me a screener to review it, but the movie is about twin brothers who are trying to reform from their life of crime, so they go on one final road trip to perform a dangerous heist. So apparently, this is the Twins remake that no one asked for, but with Cena and Dinklage. Oddly, it’s directed by Max Barbakow, the man behind the terrific time-travelling rom-com, Palm Springs, but he didn’t write this one, so who knows if it will be any good?

THE SILENT HOUR (Republic Pictures)

Filmmaker Brad Anderson (Session 9) is back with a crime thriller starring Joel Kinnaman as a Boston police detective who returns to duty after losing his hearing, so he takes on the role of interpreter for a deaf witness named Ava (Sandra Mae Frank), the two of them getting trapped in a run-down building when the killers return to clean up loose ends. The film also stars Mekhi Phifer and Mark Strong, but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, even though I’m always interested in what Anderson is up to, since he tends to make interesting genre films.

There’s a lot coming out this weekend, but much of it is mainly VOD or streaming, so some of the movies I won’t be covering include:

MAFIA WARS (Saban Films)
BAD GENIUS (Vertical) 
DOMINIQUE (Lionsgate)
DADDY’S HEAD (Shudder)
LONELY PLANET (Netflix)
BONUS TRACK (Sunrise Films)

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REPERTORY

Honestly, the thing I missed more than anything on my last few weeks off from writing this column was not writing about the New York repertory scene and what was playing in those great theaters around town. It meant that I wasn’t on top of things like MOMA’s fantastic Johnny To retrospective, which I would have liked to have caught some of the rarities playing there. That’s still going on this weekend, but there are a lot of other options as well.

METROGRAPH

I’m very excited that a lot of my friends who never (or rarely) go to the Metrograph will be there this weekend to introduce a number of movies as part of the new series “Don’t Go in the Sewers”! This weekend, you can see the 1980 classic, Alligator, directed by Lewis Teague and written by no less than John Sayles! Bong Joon-ho’s 2006 classic The Host (my #1 movie the year it came out) will also screen on Friday night and Sunday for those who haven’t seen it yet.

This weekend is also kicking off a series based around Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy by showing 2023’s Youth (Spring) on Saturday (with Wang Bing in attendance) and then showing the two more recent chapters (which just screened at the New York Film Festival) on Oct. 20.

Cartoonist and author Yao Xiao (“How to Solve a Problem”) curates the animated series, “Coming of Age in a Disorienting World” with screenings of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue, and the awesome animated film, Persepolis screening this weekend.

Inspired by the book of the same name by Guy Debord, the series “Society of the Spectacle” will screen the political docs The War Room (1993), by documentary legends Chris Hegedus and the late D.A. Pennebaker, and Penny Lane’s 2013 doc, Our Nixon, this weekend.

“Under My Thumb” continues this weekend with Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven, starring Julianne Moore, and Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher on Sunday night. 

FILM FORUM

On Thursday, you can see three movies by the late great Ed Wood, who would have been 100 (if he hadn’t died in 1978) with his classic Plan 9 from Outer Space shown along with Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster. The latter will be show on an original 35mm print from 1955, no less!

Film Forum is kicking off a series honoring what would be the 100th birthday of Brooklyn-born silent film actress Clara Bow this weekend featuring 16 silence and pre-code talkies with the likes of It, The Saturday Night Kid, The Wild Party, Her Wedding Night, and others. Some of the silent movie will have the Film Forum’s famed live piano accompaniment.

This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr” is one I wish I could make since Stan & Ollie & Co, showing four shorts from the comedy legends, three of them silent with piano accompaniment. If I was around, I totally would make this, and it’s probably a great introduction for kids to do of the funniest men who have ever made it onto film.

Robert Bresson’s Lancelot Du Lac (1974) continues, as will Bresson’s The Devil, Probably from 1977.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES

A really exciting series called “Starring Brad Dourif” starting on Thursday at the East Village arthouse, as they will have actor Brad Dourif (best known as the voice of Chucky) on hand for a retrospective of his movies, including his breakout role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Wise Blood (with Dourif in person on Friday), Horseplayer (with Dourif on Saturday), Child’s Play, Ragtime, and much more!

IFC CENTER

Even though I didn’t care for Guy Maddin’s latest film, Rumours – reviewed here – I’m pretty excited that the IFC Center is doing a week-long series called “Forbidden Rooms: The Films of Guy Maddin,” showing some of Maddin’s previous films, including My Winnipeg, The Saddest Music in the World (which I hated), Brand Upon the Brain!, Archangel, The Green Fog, and so many more! If I had more time and money, I might have gone over to see some of these again and watched some of the movies I missed like Dracula, Pages from a Virgin’s Diary from way back in 2002.

Another cool series is “Horror ‘84: Nightmares and Misfits,” which this weekend will show Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday and Saturday just before midnight. 

ROXY CINEMA

My pal Onur Tukel will be screening his 2017 film The Mysoginists on Friday and doing a QnA with the great Dylan Baker – that’s where I’ll be on Friday night! – and speaking of Nosferatu, the original 1922 silent movie will be screening along with music from Radiohead on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Apocalypse Now: the Final Cut (also from 1979!) will be screening on Saturday, as will John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, which also screens on Thursday. On Sunday, you can see Francis Ford Coppola’s 2009 film, Tetro, but after putting yourself through Megalopolis, why would you do that to yourself?

PARIS THEATER

What is becoming an incredible series showing off all the Paris’ efforts at remodeling and updating its sound and picture is “Big and Loud!” featuring 70mm showings of popular movies as well as films that take advantage of the Paris’ Dolby Atmos system. (And this theater is owned by Netflix who could just put their own movies into every tie slot but they’ve been mixing it up, and I respect that.) The second part of this series features new 70mm prints of John Ford’s The Searchers and Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, as well as 70mm screenings of Lawrence of Arabia, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, 2001: A Space Odyssey (a 70mm staple), and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Dolby Atmos screenings include Jordan Peele’s Nope, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, Jaws, The Matrix, Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner final cuts, Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, and lots more. John Cameron Mitchell will be on hand for a screening of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and lots more. 

Of course, I wrote all of that out only to find out that this weekend is mostly taken up by the Netflix movie, Woman of the Hour, starring Anna Kendrick, but on Thursday night, you can catch Inception and Pi, and they’re showing Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels on Saturday Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road on Sunday as part of a series called “Open to the Open Road” that I completely missed due to my hiatus.

NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG

I’m just loving the programming going on at the Nitehawk (shout out to Cristina!), although the rest of this month, they’re taking part in a couple festivals, first the 36th Annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival this weekend and then the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival next week. On Saturday and Sunday, the brunch offering is Slavik cartoonist/animator Viktor Kubal’s The Bloody Lady with some of his animated shorts at Prospect Park. 

Williamsburg is doing brunch showings of Alejandro Brugués’s Juan of the Dead (2011) as part of its “Hispanic Horror” series (since it is Latin Heritage month and spooky season!), and on Monday, you can see a restoration of George Gage’s 1978 film, Skateboard: The Movie with Gage doing a QnA. Tuesday night’s “Anime after Dark” is a “secret screening” threatening to go “full goth”... oooooo… what could it be? On Friday midnight, Mubi is presenting Urban Legends, a late ‘90s horror classic, and they’ll be showing the original 1992 Bernard Rose-directed Candyman on Wednesday night (at a more reasonable hour).

MOMA

“Chaos and Order: The Way of Johnnie To” continues through Oct 13 with his 1999 film, Running Out of Time screening on Friday, as well as his part in the heist film, Triangle, which he directed along with Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. Saturday offering the chance to see both Election and Election 2 back-to-back! (Separate admission prices, I’d imagine.) On Sunday, you can see Throw Down (2004) and 1997’s Lifeline. I’m a huge fan of To’s films, and I wish I had the budget and time to make some of these.

JAPAN SOCIETY

A new series begins called “So as to Dream: The Eternal Mysteries of Kaizo Hayashi,” running from Oct. 11 through the 19th, but since I know nothing about filmmaker Kaizo Hayashi, you might be best just exploring that one yourself.

MUSEUM OF MOVING IMAGE

Out in Astoria Queens, MoMI is doing a “The Magic of Oz: A Frank Oz Retrospective” (It actually started on Oct. 4) with screenings of The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Dark Crystal, and The Blues Brothers this weekend! (Sadly, I missed the screenings with Oz in person, but he’ll be back next weekend to screen Pixar’s Inside Out, apparently, and he’s doing a sold out screening of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Steve Martin in November, too!) I love that MoMI has done so much to keep the Muppets and Jim Henson’s legacy alive with the long-time exhibit and by doing this series with one of Henson’s primary collaborators. 

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE

“Alamo Time Capsule 1979” continues this week with screenings of the Italian gialo film, The Visitor, but more importantly, they’re also screening Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (which should also be screening at Metrograph in a couple weeks). On Sunday and next week, it will also show Albert Brooks’ Real Life, which is also from 1979. 

VILLAGE EAST

On Monday, you can see the sequel to the Paramount+ movie, Apartment 7A (ha ha), as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, starring Mia Farrow, will screen three times in 35mm!

BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)

Newfest is screening Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langdon and Marlon Riggs’ Tongues United (both from 1989) as a double feature on Friday. I know nothing about either of those.

CINEMA ARTS CENTRE

Some great “spooky season” offerings at Huntington, Long Island’s best arthouse/repertory theater with Cabin in the Woods and Ringu on Friday, An American Werewolf in London and the 1911 Italian silent film L’Inferno (with a live accompaniment score by Montopolis) on Saturday, and the one and only Hocus Pocus on Sunday. On Wednesday night, you can see Monty Python’s hilarious The Life of Brian.

Phew! Anytime I get through one of these columns, I feel relieved, and hopefully, I’ll be back next week with a review of Smile 2 and more.