THE WEEKEND WARRIOR April 25, 2025
THE ACCOUNTANT 2, UNTIL DAWN, STAR WARS EPISODE 3, THE LEGEND OF OCHI, CHEECH AND CHONG’S LAST MOVIE
It’s the last weekend of April, which means it’s also the last weekend of the spring movie season, and next week, the summer movie season starts for real with Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, and yeah, no pressure that it’s following the massive box office hit of A Minecraft Movie and has a number of other strong movies still playing in theaters. But this weekend, we have one strong sequel, one movie based on a video game, a rare A24 family-friendly film, a 20th Anniversary rerelease of a franchise installment, and lots more.
THE ACCOUNTANT 2 (Amazon MGM)
At this point, it’s hard to tell whether Ben Affleck should be considered an A-lister or not. He’s had such an erratic career, going back to his indie work with filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith. He became a big star, then had a sudden downturn with flops like Gigli and Jersey Girl, and then he became a respected director, and in recent years, he’s been all over the place with streaming movies, well-received films that were plagued by COVID, and then his last film as a director, Air for Amazon doing decently with a $14.5 million opening on its way to $90 million worldwide. And during that time, Affleck also donned the cowl of Batman similar to his long-time friend and collaborator, George Clooney.
Directed by Gavin O’Connor, The Accountant opened with $24.7 million in 3,322 theaters in mid-October 2016, released amidst Affleck’s long-tie partnership with Warner Bros, and that went onto gross a respectable $86.3 million domestic and $152.9 million worldwide. Reviews weren’t great, but obviously audiences didn’t care, and they were interested in seeing Affleck in this sort of role. Apparently, Affleck having a hit for Amazon with 2023’s Air led to them stepping in to distribute Affleck’s third teaming with Gavin O’Connor. (Affleck starred in O’Connor’s The Way Back, which was released at the height of COVID in March 2020, literally a week before most theaters were shut down.)
For the sequel, Affleck is once again teamed with Jon Bernthal, who apparently has a much bigger role in this one, and it’s great timing since he just returned as The Punisher in the popular Daredevil: Born Again series last week. That is definitely a wise move considering how popular Bernthal has become since the previous movie. J.K. Simmons is also back, but probably not for long, going by the trailer, as is Cynthia Addai-Robinson, who I completely forgot was in the first movie. Oddly missing is Anna Kendrick, who is actually starring in next week’s Another Simple Favor, a sequel to a hit movie distributed by Lionsgate, though that is going straight to Prime Video for some reason.
Because Air did very well after premiering at SXSW in 2023 with a $14.4 million opening and $52.5 million domestic total, Amazon MGM tried to repeat that formula by premiering The Accountant 2 there as well. Reviews have been pretty solid with 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. (The original movie got only 53%, and I remember not liking it at all compared to other Gavin O’Connor and Affleck films. I tried rewatching it again recently and felt the same way.) Sadly, I wasn’t able to make it to any of the advance screenings, so I won’t be reviewing, but I plan to watch it on Friday and will post my thoughts on Letterboxd.
Being Rated R might limit the audience somewhat compared to The Amateur, which is still doing pretty well in theaters, but it also puts it directly up against Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Until Dawn below, so this is really hoping that enough people saw, liked and/or remember the movie on streaming to want a sequel. (To be fair, the movie did receive an “A” Cinemascore, which is rare for action movies… and for Ben Affleck… ba dum bum. His Best Picture-winning Argo did get an A+ though.)
Of course, it’s a safe assumption that a sequel to a decent hit should do just as well, but because this is opening with so much competition in theaters, including Sinners, this one is probably going to open somewhere in the high teens to early $20-millions instead, and that might be a struggle to make the top 3. I guess anything’s possible.
UNTIL DAWN (Sony/Screen Gems)
As if we needed another R-rated movies in theaters right now, here comes this horror movie based on the Sony Playstation game of the same name, which reunites director David F. Sandberg (Shazam!, Lights Out) with his Annabelle: Creation screenwriter Gary Dauberman, for a movie that takes the time loop premise of Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow and puts it into the horror realm. The movie stars a number of young actors who are looking for the sister of one of their friends who has disappeared mysteriously.
I’ll be honest (and I’ll repeat this in my review) that I knew absolutely nothing about this Playstation game in advance, so I can’t tell you whether this is being faithful to anything in the game, but from what I gather, the game hit the Playstation in 2015, and it tried to capitalize on the boom in the horror video game craze after the likes of Silent Hill and the Resident Evil games. It’s good to note that Sony and Screen Gems have been responsible for releasing most of the movies based on both those games.
There aren’t any real stars in the movie, although Swedish character actor Peter Stormare reprises his role as Dr. Hill from the games. Otherwise, it’s a lot of young actors that few have heard of, although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to a horror movie.
Setting aside that the movie is based on a video game, it’s hard to ignore that Sony hasn’t done well with horror recently, with last year’s Tarot only opening with $6.5 million and the Sam Raimi-produced Umma bombing with just $2.1 million in 2022. On the other hand, Sony had a huge hand with its movie based on Uncharted in 2022, opening with $44 million and grossing over $400 million worldwide. If I wanted to be cheeky, I’d suggest that Until Dawn will open somewhere between them, but another better comparison would have to be 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City, which opened over Thanksgiving with just $5.3 million, grossing just $41 million worldwide. That can probably be partially blamed on COVID and the fact that theaters weren’t quite back yet, but also on the choice in releasing it on a weekend not great for horror. (Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving did far better opening earlier in November in 2023.)
Reviews for Until Dawn are embargoed until Thursday morning, and mine probably will run then as well, and while I really enjoyed this horror movie a lot, I’m worried that it’s opening against too much competition from top to bottom, between Sinners, The Accountant, and a Star Wars rerelease. Because of this, I feel that this might stumble with an opening between $10 and $13 million, with not much room to grow with Thunderbolts* opening a week later.
Look for my interview with director/producer David F. Sandberg and writer/producer Gary Dauberman over at Cinema Daily US and my review will be posted when the embargo is up.
THE LEGEND OF OCHI (A24)
A24 continues its run of truly bizarre films – okay, Warfare is an exception – with this film from first-time filmmaker Isaiah Saxon that takes place in a Carpathian island village where a shy young girl named Yuri (Helena Zengel) who has been taught by her father (Willem Dafoe) to be afraid of a mythical creature known as the Ochi. When Yuri discovers an injured baby Ochi that’s been abandoned by its family, she brings it home to nurse it back to health, making a friend while having to keep it secret from her father and adopted brother (Finn Wolfhard).
A24 decide seemingly at the last minute to give this a platform release into four New York and L.A. theaters with no advance notice last week, and it did okay but probably would have done better if others were informed of that plan. This weekend, it’s going wide into around 1,150 theaters or so, and it will be interesting to see how this fares vs. Opus and Death of a Unicorn, which weren’t some of A24’s finer moments. One thing benefitting Ochi is that it has a PG-rating, and it’s probably some of A24’s most family-friendly fare since Marcel the Shell with Shoes On from 2022, which was nominated for an Oscar but only grossed $6.3 million domestically, never playing in more than 821 North American theaters.
Ochi has quite a few things going its way, including the decent reviews it’s received since premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and playing as Regal’s Mystery Movie Monday is likely to help build word-of-mouth and awareness among parents with younger kids who enjoy fantasy and adventure.
Still, not getting that wide a release might keep it outside the top 5, especially with so many stronger movies both in theaters and opening this weekend, although it could act well as counter-programming to all the R-rated fare. Still, with such a lower theater count and so much competition in the genre space, I can’t really see this opening over $4 million.
Mini-Review: I had been hearing about this movie going back to Sundance without really knowing what it was about, but I also felt like I was getting mixed reviews, or else, I was just confusing it with Opus, which also debuted at Sundance. This is much better than Opus.
You can read the plot above, but essentially, it’s the story of Yuri a young Carpathian girl, played by the delightful Helena Zengel from News of the World, who finds an injured baby creature, that has been separated from its family. That family is actually a group of large, hairy mythical beasts of legend who are being hunted by Willem Dafoe’s character, who has brought his daughter into the family business, along with a group of wayward armed boys.
Comparisons to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Gremlins are a bit obvious, because the film does rely on the adorableness of the baby “ochi” similar to Grogu on The Mandalorian, and for the most part, it does work. It also owes more than a little to Where the Wild Things Are (both the book and the movie), but it’s hard to fault it for borrowing from classics. I wasn’t really sure how Isaiah Saxon created the creatures, though I understand that it’s a commentary of puppetry and other practical methods vs. visual effects, and that does a lot to make the creatures feel more real. In that sense, the film also reminded me a bit of last year’s Sasquatch Sunset.
Willem Dafoe continues to do the same thing he was doing in last year’s Nosferatu, playing a very over-the-top character with a strange accent, which some might love more than others. I didn’t think he did much to help this movie, and I thought Emma Watson did a lot to save the film as the girl’s estranged mother living out in the wilds, and the picture improves drastically once she shows up.
More than anything, the film looks glorious, and it has such a wonderful score by David Longstreth (who also did the score for Love Me this year) that does a similar job at creating emotions as John Williams’ work on E.T. In that sense, it could be a good gateway for younger viewers to check out some of the films that clearly influenced Saxon, but I can also see it finding an audience of young people who have never seen or heard any of the other films I’ve cited.
Ultimately, The Legend of Ochi is a satisfying enough fantasy-adventure that can appeal to older kids (let’s say 10 and up), making it a great gateway into other classics from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Rating: 7/10
CHEECH AND CHONG’S LAST MOVIE (Keep Smokin’)
Opening moderately wide this weekend – as has become standard, I have nothing resembling a theater count in advance – is this documentary about the comedy team of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, directed by David Bushell. It follows Marin and Chong as they’re driving through the California desert, reminiscing about their lives and career, while also squabbling like an old married couple. I was particularly impressed with the archival footage from their early days on the stand-up circuit and various talk shows, through their years making movies before Cheech branched off with Born in East L.A. The movie then gets into what happened to drive the two of them apart, but it’s really interesting to learn so much about what they were doing before first meeting up, as well as getting ore into their days making records, none of which I really knew that much about. This premiered at the SXSW Film Festival last year, and it’s tough to predict how well it will do at the box office, though it should do well among Latino audiences since Cheech in particular is kind of a legend in that community, though mostly among older folks. Without having a theater count and this being a documentary might limit its audience, and that means it could end up outside the Top 10 with under $2 million.
STAR WARS EPISODE 3: REVENGE OF THE SITH 20th ANNIVERSARY (20th Century/Disney)
I’m not sure who keeps asking for these “Star Wars” theatrical rereleases when a.) There’s plenty of new and original movies in theaters and b.) You can watch whatever “Star Wars” you want to watch on Disney+ any time you want. And yet, Episode 3, which in my opinion is one of the weaker installments of this tired franchise, is getting a 20th Anniversary rerelease this weekend, presumably into a similar 2,700 theaters as Episode 1 got last May. That opened with $8.3 million against the opening of Ryan Gosling’s The Fall Guy, but Episode 3 definitely has stronger competition in theaters right now, including both Sinners and Minecraft, as well as new movies, The Accountant 2 and Until Dawn, both which should be of interest to a similarly male audience. Apparently, the movie has done quite well in presales and could be looking at an opening weekend in the $15 to $18 million range, which could put it just behind The Accountant and other movies mentioned.
THE BOX OFFICE CHART
This weekend, there seems like there could be a real run for first place between the returning Sinners and A MInecraft Movie with the release of a sequel to one of Ben Affleck’s popular action movies. Some have even suggested that the 20th anniversary of rerelease of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith could do well enough to get into the mix but I think that opens in fourth place, at best. Either way, it should be an interesting weekend.
1. Sinners (Warner Bros) - $25.5 million -47%
2. A Minecraft Movie (Warner Bros) - $20.5 million -50%
3. The Accountant 2 (Amazon MGM) - $19.5 million N/A
4. Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (20th Century/Disney) - $18.2 million N/A
5. Until Dawn (Sony/Screen Gems) - $11.2 million N/A
6. The King of Kings (Angel Studios) - $8.7 million -52%
7. Legend of the Ochi (A24) - $3.7 million N/A
8. The Amateur (20th Century/Disney) - $3.4 million -50%
9. Warfare (A24) - $2.6 million -47%
10. Drop (Universal) - $1.6 million -52%
Unfortunately, I got bogged down this week and didn’t get to nearly as many of the movies I was hoping to watch and review this week, including a few that I had already seen weeks back.
ON SWIFT HORSES (Sony Pictures Classics)
Daniel Minahan from Game of Throne directs this drama adapted from Shannon Pufahl’s novel that stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Muriel, who is about to begin a new life with her husband Lee (the ever-present Will Poulter), but Lee’s troubled Korean War vet brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) shows up and creates problems in their life. At the same time, Muriel has discovered a secret life betting on horse races and in a relationship with a new neighbor, played by Sasha Calle aka Supergirl from last year’s The Flash. While Julius and Muriel also seem like they might fall into an affair, Julius is actually involved with a Mexican man named Henry, he meets while working security at a casino. Oh, did I mention that this film takes place in the 50s?
Honestly, I saw this movie so long ago that I wasn’t sure if I’d get around to reviewing it, but I will say that I mostly enjoyed it since Minahan has such a great cast, and it shows off the true talents of Daisy Edgar Jones that maybe last year’s Twisters did not. There’s something about the movie that reminds me of Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, maybe it’s just that it’s a period drama, but as I said, I don’t have a ton to say about the movie, other than it feels very much like a Sony Pictures Classics release, which isn’t necessarily a negative, just that some people will probably enjoy it more than others.
APRIL (Metrograph Pictures)
This is a really fascinating film from the festival circuit, written and directed by Georgian filmmaker, Dea Kulumbegashvili, who actually studied filmmaking in New York. This is her second feature, and it stars Ia Sukhitashvili as Nina, an OB-GYN who has been giving illegal abortions and dealing with the repercussions of her ultra-conservative community. After the death of a newborn, she faces an interrogation while trying to help poor townspeople with their needs, including one woman with way too many kids whose mentally-challenged teen daughter has been impregnated and needs to get an abortion while keeping it secret from her father. This will open at the Film Forum in New York City as well as uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, and being Metrograph, I assume it will eventually end up on its digital platform, but probably not until it plays in a number of regions around the country. This is a fascinating film, beautifully shot, with a great performance by Sukhitashvili but having not watched the entire movie yet, I can’t review. I think it will play well for anyone who enjoys Romanian films, though.
BLUE SUN PALACE (Dekanalog)
Actually opening at the Metrograph on Friday is the directorial debut by Constance Tsang, who will be there over the weekend for QnAs with the film’s star Lee Kang-sheng (the focus of one of Metrograph’s new series, which you can read about in the Repertory section below) to talk about this prize-winning film from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. I actually won’t be seeing this until Monday night so no review but it stars Lee, along with Wu Ke-xi and Xu Haixpeng as “three Chinese immigrants living in Flushing, Queens—he’s a construction worker, they’re employees of a massage parlor they dream of being able to leave—whose routine lives and relationships are changed forever following a tragic Lunar New Year incident.” Many of the weekend showings of this already sold out, since the Metrograph has been doing a great job bringing in mass Chinese audiences lately. I mean, it is one of the few remaining movie theaters in or near to Chinatown, so that’s pretty cool. But there’s another theater right in the heart of Chinatown, and that also has a new movie this week.
It’s a doc called…
EMERGENT CITY (Meerkat Media)
Opening at the DCTV Firehouse Cinema for a one-week run is this doc from Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenburg which looks at the Industry City (formerly Bush Terminal) section of Sunset Park, Brooklyn where the long-time community faces gentrification when global developer Jamestown Properties buys Industry City, changing the face of the neighborhood and the jobs available to locals. Some of the key players in the film are Jamestown’s Andrew Kimball, who was running Industry City at the time and the district’s New York City Council member, Carlos Menchaca. While this was an interesting doc, it didn’t really connect with me on the level of something like Slumlord Millionaire, which played at DOC-NYC last year. I live in an area of the Lower East Side that’s been plagued by gentrification over the 30+ years I’ve been there, so I definitely can understand the plight of the locals and how the Industry City gameplan goes against the lives they’ve created for themselves. But then, another part of me had difficulty being very interested in the movie.
Either way, the filmmakers and guests will be on-hand all week at the DCTV for QnAs, so if you’re around downtown this weekend and want to learn more about this section of the city, click on that link above and see which one you might want to participate in. (I really like the DCTV, and I’ve been trying hard to get over there more since it’s a short walk away from me.)
MAGIC FARM (MUBI)
Amalia Ulman’s comedy, which also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, involves a documentary crew looking for their next big viral story ends up taking a wrong turn in rural Argentina, as they try to work with locals to fake a new music trend. The film stars Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff, Simon Rex and more, and presumably it will get a rather limited release this weekend. I tried to watch this, and it was absolutely terrible, seemingly serving little purpose and not really having much to say. I gave up after 45 minutes so I won’t be reviewing it, but hey, it’s out in select theaters this weekend.
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH (RLJEfilms)
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jack Quaid, and Malin Akerman star in Duncan Skiles’ crime-thriller (formerly called Nowhere Men) in which Quaid plays Simon, a young man with a mental illness who think he has witnessed an abduction, but the police don’t believe him. Instead, he seeks the help of his security guard neighbor Ed (Morgan), though he has his own issues. Together, Simon and Ed take on the mystery of the disappearance. This will be released simultaneously in theaters and on VOD but since it’s embargoed until Friday, I’m not sure I’m even going to bother watching/reviewing it, but we’ll see.
WINTER SPRING SUMMER OR FALL (Republic Pictures)
I watched Tiffany Paulsen’s rom-com back at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, and I quite enjoyed it, especially the chemistry between Jenna Ortega and Percy Hynes White, the latter who I had never seen anything before seeing him in this. You can read what I wrote about it before, but it’s essentially a Y.A. rom-com coming-of-age film in which Ortega’s valedictorian Remi has many goals she hopes to achieve, until she meets White’s Barnes, whose laidback attitude ends up having a bad influence on Remi, as the two of them fall in love. It’s definitely more of a meet-cute type movie that leans heavily on the chemistry between the two leads – I think someone told me that they both appear on Netflix’s “Wednesday” series, but it also generally works. Presumably, this will be getting a simultaneous day-and-date release in theaters and on VOD, but I’d be surprised if it reports box office at all.
ELECTRA (Level 33 Entertainment)
Opening this weekend at New York’s Roxy Cinema before expanding to other markets and VOD on May 2 is Bahraini filmmaker Hala Matar’s directorial debut, starring Maria Bakalova, Abigail Cowen, Daryl Wein, and Jack Farthing. It follows two journalists as they travel to the lush Italian villa of a famous musician and his partner for an interview, but things aren’t quite as they seem.
A NORMAL FAMILY (Room 8 Films)
From Korea comes this film from Hur Jin-ho (Happiness, One Fine Spring Day), starring Sul Kyung-gu as defense lawyer Jae-wan, whose job forces him to defend killers, while his brother Jae-Gyu is a religious doctor who cares more about his patient’s interests than making money. The two brothers must face their conflicting values when a family secret rears its ugly head, causing tensions during a dinner.
Other movies out this weekend…
PANGOLIN: KULU’S JOURNEY (Netflix)
BANNED TOGETHER (Kanopy)
YADANG: THE SNITCH (Well Go USA)
THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA (Music Box Films)
KILLGRIN (Dark Sky Films)
REPERTORY
Besides the rerelease of Stars Wars Episode 3, which you can read about above, this weekend’s nationwide repertory offering is PINK FLOYD AT POMPEII - MCMLXXII, which will screen on regular and IMAX screens on Thursday night, as well as in a few places over the weekend. I’ll be going to see this for the first time in decades on Thursday night in IMAX thanks to my good pal Jonathan. Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley, will continue playing in theaters across the country. Miyazake’s Princess Monoke might be ending its run, but Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore is getting a re-release ahead of the sequel on Netflix.
It’s the last weekend of April before Metrograph launches a number of great new series, although a few of these might continue into May.
We’ll start with this month’s “Filmcraft: American Cinema Editors,” which will be screening Roman Polanski’s noir classic Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson, on Saturday night with a QnA with Bobbie and Molly O'Steen, who are the children of the film’s Oscar-nominated editor Sam O’Steen, who died in 2000. Sadly, this screening is already sold out, but if you just want to see Chinatown, you’ll have more times on Sunday and Monday.
More events this weekend including a rare appearance by Taiwan actor Lee Kang-Sheng for the second week of “Drifting Through Time: Focus on Lee Kang-Sheng.” Besides doing some QnAs for the new Constance Tsang film, Blue Sun Palace, Lee will introduce Tsai Ming-Liang’s 1998 film, The Hole, on Friday night, apt since Lee has appeared in many of Tsai’s films. Lee will also doing a QnA for the 2008 film he directed, Help Me Eros, as well as a QnA after a Saturday afternoon screening of some of his other shorter collaborations with Tsai. Check out Metrograph’s events page for more on all of Lee’s involvement with QnAs this weekend.
“Syd Mead: Illustrating the Future” continues this weekend with some great genre fare including James Cameron’s Aliens on Sunday afternoon, which will be preceded with an introb by the curators of a new exhibit of Mead’s work. (The Friday night screening of Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Director’s Edition is already sold out but that will play one more time next Thursday night.)
“The People’s History: Early Films of John Sayles” continues this weekend with more screenings of 1996’s Lone Star (which is great and a must-see film) and 1994’s The Secret of Roan Inish, which I didn’t care for as much.
Yeah, so there’s a LOT going on at the Metrograph this weekend, and then next week… NEW SERIES!!
A new repertory series begins this week with “L.A. Rebellion: Then And Now,” running through May 4. It focuses on the work by the “L.A. Rebellion,” a group of African, Caribbean and African-American filmmakers and video artists from UCLA in the ‘70s and ‘80s who revitalized Black cinema, including the likes of Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) and Charles Burnett (To Sleep With Anger). The series will include ‘70s revenge films Welcome Home, Brother Charles and Joe Bullet, as well as political films like Bush Mama, Penitentiary, and Night of the Kings, and films about jazz like Larry Clark’s Passing Through. The films mentioned above by Dash and Burnett will also screen, as well as Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk.
Fellini’s 1963 film, 8 ½, starring Marcello Mastroianni, will be screening on a new 35mm print beginning Friday, and being one of the few Fellinis I haven’t seen, I should probably get on that. Speaking of Charles Burnett, a 4k restoration of his 1977 film, Killer of Sheep, continues to play at another downtown favorite arthouse through May 1, as does Claude Lelouch’s A Man and A Woman. This Sunday’s “Film Forum Jr” is Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, which would be awesome to see on the big screen either with the kiddies or not.
UPDATE: I missed something massive! IFC Center will be showing a 4K restoration of Bruce Robinson’s classic, Withnail and I, starring Richard E. Grant, and it’s playing three times a day starting on Friday. Continuing through the weekend is a 50th anniversary DCP of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, as well as screenings of the Coens’ The Big Lebowski, Lynch’s The Elephant Man, Raimi’s The Evil Dead, as well as Pasolini’s Solo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. On Friday and Saturday night at midnight, you can catch the highly underrated Richard Franklin sequel Psycho II from 1983, starring Osgood Perkins’ dad, who you might know from Hitchcock’s Psycho from 1960.
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
Thursday night’s “Ridiculous, Sublime” offering at Prospect Park is the 1984 film Ninja III: The Domination. Over the weekend, you can catch Marlene Dietrich in Josef Von Sternberg’s classic, The Devil is a Woman (1935) on Saturday and Sunday at brunchtime.
The “Apocalyptic Visions” series moves to Williamsburg with late night screenings on Friday and Saturday of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), and brunchtime screenings on Saturday and Sunday of Peter Sellers in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964). The print of Shinji Somai’s 1985 pink film Love Hotel that has been playing at Metrograph will screen at WIlliamsburg on Friday and Saturday close to midnight. 1991’s Delicateseen from Caro and Jeunet will screen on Monday night at 9:15 at Williamsburg, and then Tuesday’s “Anime After Dark” is Rintaro’s 1999 film, Galaxy Express 999. As with the Metrograph, new series start next week!
.
Mostly new stuff this week, but you can catch the William Friedkin-directed classic action movie, The French Connection on Saturday, and the 1994 Little Rascals movie on Sunday.
On Monday, you can catch the classic musical, Singin’ in the Rain from 1952. Seriously, if you haven’t seen this, you must watch it! It’s such a huge influence on the movies of Damien Chazelle that it’s crazy!
On Sunday night, Tina Fey will be on-hand to introduce a screening of Alan Arkin’s The Four Seasons, co-starring Carol Burnett, ahead of the premiere of the new series based on the movie which hits Netflix on May 1, starring Fey, Will Forte, Steve Carell, Kerry Kenney-Silver, Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani. Sunday also wraps up “A Century of Romance” with screenings of Moonstruck, Portrait of Jason, and True Romance.
A very cool series starts this weekend with See It Big: Stunts!, which coincides with the opening of a terrific Mission: Impossible exhibit, showing off lots of props and costumes and other cool things from the entire Tom Cruise action series. This weekend’s offerings shown on the big screen with the newly Dolby Atmos-enhanced Redstone Theater are Buster Keaton’s 1928 Steamboat Bill Jr. (word of warning that this is probably with the awful orchestrated score vs. the far better showing it with an accompanying live piano), as well as Sylvester Stallone’s beloved 1993 action film, Cliffhanger, directed by Renny Harlin, which they’ve been threatening to remake.
There’s also “A Weekend with Tom Gunning: The Attractions of Cinema” with films selected by writer and professor Tom Gunning with screenings of Fritz Lang’s M and Hal Hartley’s 1996 Flirt, with a live taping of the “Film Comment Podcast” to follow. (Shouldn’t that be at Film at Lincoln Center? What is going on here?!)
Sunday’s “Always on Sunday: Greek Film Series” offers a fairly recent 2023 film called The Last Taxi Driver, directed by Stergios Paschos.
BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)
BAM is beginning a series on Sudanese Cinema, something I know nothing about, so you’re better off just clicking on that title and seeing if anything interests you.
Next week, it’s May, it’s the summer movie season, and it’s Marvel’s Thunderbolts*! What more can you ask for? Well, I’ll have other stuff, as well.