THE WEEKEND WARRIOR August 9, 2024
THE WEEKEND WARRIOR August 9, 2024
IT ENDS WITH US, BORDERLANDS, CUCKOO, DAUGHTERS, SUGARCANE, GOOD ONE, THE LAST FRONT, TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN
August grinds along with a number of new wide releases and some pretty interesting limited releases as well. Let’s see how many movies I can get to this week, because I’m trying to be a bit more focused on docs right now for reasons I can’t discuss.
IT ENDS WITH US
Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom, a woman who moves to Boston to start a flower shop after the death of her father. Once there, she meets rugged neurosurgeon Ryle (played by director Justin Baldoni), and they begin a romance that takes a downturn as he becomes abusive. Meanwhile, Lily’s childhood sweetheart Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) has reentered the picture, which just makes things even worse.
I have not read Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, on which this movie is based, and I only recently learned about how it became a TikTok sensation that put it onto the New York Times bestseller list. Because one of my gigs is to write about upcoming movies I often don’t get to see in advance, I did quite a bit of reading about this, and honestly, it did not seem like my kind of thing, at ALL, nope! Again, I hadn’t read the book and I’m not that big a fan of Lively as an actor, and I can’t even remember if I liked Baldoni’s previous films, Clouds and Five Feet Apart. I think I may have seen one of them but they both came out during the blur that was the pandemic.
Baldoni turns out not only to be a great director for this material but also is quite good as a character that begins as a sexy love interest and then turns into quite an unlikeable straight-up antagonist. Most of the film bounces between the present day and the past when Lily (played by Isabela Ferrer) first meets Atlas (Alex Neustaedter) when he is practically homeless, while she’s also dealing with her toxic father who is regularly beating her mother. (I will say that Ferrer looks far more like Lively than Neustaedter looks anything like Sklenar).
The toughest part of a movie like this one is tone, especially when it’s trying to mix romance and humor (mostly in the form of Jenny Slate’s character, who works for Lily at her flower shop and is also Ryle’s sister) with a serious topic like domestic abuse, but Baldoni helps guide the way with his acting in so many key sequences.
This may be Lively’s best performance to date, and this is coming from someone who never really was much of a fan of her movies, other than maybe The Shallows (a shark movie, of course). It’s a tough role, one that requires a lot of heavy lifting on her part, and one of the main reasons the movie works at all is due to what she delivers.
There are still some issues, some which may come from the book, such as all the coincidences of Lily running into people from her past like Atlas, just as she’s starting a serious relationship. Other than that, I think the script worked quite well with the adaptation by Christy Hall (who recently wrote and directed the almost unwatchable Daddio).
It Ends with Us starts out romantic and sexy but then turns into something quite dramatic and ultimately, even inspirational. If nothing else, it lets young women know that they do not have to put up with someone who abuses them. Having a movie that starts out as one thing but effectively delivers such a message may be why Hoover’s book was so popular, and I imagine that will help this film do just as well.
Rating: 7.5/10
BORDERLANDS
Eli Roth directs this adaptation of the popular video game, which I’ve never played and know very little to nothing about. The movie stars Cate Blanchett as treasure hunter Lilith, who returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of Edgar Ramírez’s Atlas. She puts together a team to find her, including Kevin Hart’s former soldier Roland, Ariana Greenblatt’s demolitionist Tiny Tina and her protector Florian Munteanu’s Krieg, Jamie LEe Curtis as the scientist Tannis, and the wiseass robot Claptrap, voiced by Jack Black.
I’ll confess in advance that I also haven’t played the video game on which this movie is based, so we’re keeping that as this week’s theme. I was a little surprised to learn that the movie was PG-13, since from the trailers I saw, I just assumed it was Rated R, but I guess it’s hitting more for the likes of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy rather than his R-rated The Suicide Squad.
Borderlands is the type of movie that critics just LOVE to hate. For whatever reason, they’ve already decided, whether it’s from the trailer or other things, that this is going to be an absolutely horrible movie that doesn’t deserve even a minute of their most precious time. Maybe it’s the fact that two Oscar-winning actresses decided that this is the kind of movie they wanted to make at this point in their careers. Maybe the hatred is deserved in some cases, and yeah, it’s probably deserved in this case as well, but I’ve been an Eli Roth apologist for so much of my life and career that I definitely went in with high hopes that the negative nellies would be wrong. (I even tried to ignore some of the rumors that the production was a disaster and that Roth was replaced, which I’m not quite sure whether to believe or not.)
After one of the most inane opening monologues from Blanchett’s character, the first of a ton of exposition throughout the movie, we meet Greenblatt’s Tina as she’s being freed by Hart’s character along with her guardian Krieg, who doesn’t talk much but when he does, his voice sounds like it was dubbed by Dave Bautista. Basically, he’s Drax. Lilith then gets the assignment to find Tina, and she returns to her homeworld of Pandora where she gets mistaken for a “Vault Hunter,” because everyone is looking for this valuable vault, including Roland and Tina.
From there, we get pretty much what’s expected, as the six main characters (joined by Curtis’ scientist and the aforementioned Claptrap) spend the movie fighting giant CG beasties and a bunch of underground marauders that look like Slipknot has finally found gainful employment.
The absolute worst part of the movie that’s going to keep anyone from being able to tolderate much of it, are the many annoying characters, like that robot voiced by Black, the kind of character that’s often thrown into many bad animated movies to try to make the youngest kids laugh. Greenblatt isn’t much better, and any hope that Jamie Lee Curtis might bring her Oscar-winning A-game to the mix is gonna lead to even more disappointment. (She seems to be doing a voice to make her character more interesting, and it does not work.)
In fact, the only really good part of the movie, as far as the characters, is Blanchett, bright red wig and all, because it’s obvious she’s at least giving it her all, though she probably should expect to get trashed by the critics who loved her in critical wank-fodder like Tár and Carol, since this material seems so below her. That said, she does get far more involved in the action than she did playing Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.
On the positive side of things, the production design in creating Pandora world is fantastic – Thor: Ragnarok is actually a great comparison there, too – and a lot of the creature/character design isn’t bad either, up until a point, since there are aspects of it that come across like something from Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, though that movie was irreverent, funny and weird where this is just blah. Maybe 60-70% of the visual effects are fine, too, with some decent action set pieces that aren’t half-bad, and I also enjoyed most of the score by Steve Jablonsky and the musical choices, showing that Roth can still put together a fine technical team around him, even with such weak material.
Those good things do very little to fix the fact that the writing is terrible, as if it’s written more for the tweens that flocked to see Five Nights at Freddy’s or even younger kids. The worst part of the movie is that even with all the explosions and gunfire and so forth, the movie is barely entertaining and it just isn’t even remotely funny, even with the likes of Kevin Hart and Jack Black, who were so great in the Jumanji movies. It’s hard to completely absolve Roth of any of the movie’s problems since he’s credited for the film’s story and screenplay.
This is the kind of movie that the Razzies love to award for being such an incompetent mess that as hard you might try, it’s just not easy to get into it for very long. Maybe gamers will know how much of the good and the bad of this movie is taken directly from the game, but there’s nothing about this movie that makes me even remotely interested in playing the game, and for that alone, Borderlands is indeed an epic fail.
Rating: 5/10
CUCKOO (NEON)
German filmmaker Tillman Singer (Luz) directs this horror-thriller starring Hunter Schafer from “Euphoria” as Gretchen, a teenager who has moved into a resort in the German Alps with her father (Marton Czokas), step mother (Jessica Henwick) and their younger daughter Alma (Mila Lieu). The resort is run by Dan Stevens’ Herr König, a strange character who hires Gretchen to help out at reception but warns her not to go outside at night. We soon learn why that is the case as Gretchen ends up being chased by a screaming woman in goggles and then encounters a detective (Jan Bluthardt) looking into the strange occurrences at the resort.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect the first time I saw this, and yes, I did watch it a second time, because it is such a weird premise that it almost requires a second viewing. It starts out quite straight-ahead as we meet Gretchen, your typical disgruntled teenager, unhappy with everything thrown her way. It doesn’t take long for Singer to start introducing the weirdness, as we watch her younger step-sister experiencing seemingly an epileptic seizure that seems to be creating a time loop. Not long after that, Gretchen is riding her bike home at night and starts being chased by a screaming woman where the movie begins to really delve into its horror elements. But by the end, there’s an actual shoot-out that might surprise those trying to figure out what is happening.
Personally, I preferred this movie to Oz Perkins’ Longlegs, which I first saw around the same time, maybe because Singer’s film takes a far more original approach to its storytelling, creating something that’s odd and enigmatic but also quite effective in its scares. I know that Neon has already chosen Perkins to be its Ari Aster/Robert Eggers, but Singer is the real deal.
Rating: 8/10
I’ll have an interview with Tillman Singer over at Cinema Daily US sometime this week.
THE BOX OFFICE CHART
1. Deadpool and Wolverine (Marvel/Disney) - $50.3 million -48%
2. It Ends with Us (Sony) - $31.5 million N/A
3. Twisters (Universal) - $14 million -38%
4. Borderlands (Lionsgate) - $13.4 million N/A
5. Despicable Me 4 (Universal) - $7.8 million -34%
6. Trap (Warner Bros.) - $7.4 million -52%
7. Inside Out 2 (Disney/Pixar) - $4.8 million -30%
8. Cuckoo (Neon) - $4.4 million N/A
9. Harold and the Purple Crayon (Sony) - $3.3 million -45%
10. Longlegs (NEON) - $2.5 million -40%
This week’s “Chosen One” is…
DAUGHTERS (Netflix)
Getting a limited theatrical release this weekend ahead of its debut on Netflix on Wednesday, Aug. 14, is this doc from Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, which follows four young girls as they prepare for a Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers as part of a program in the Washington, DC jail system. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for documentary and one other award.
Normally, this would be a topic of interest for me, and eventually, it did win me over, though it takes a little time to really pull you in, as we’re introduced to the titular daughters at the heart of their story and their fathers, who have been incarcerated for various reasons. It’s a very intimate film that tales a close look at the incarcerated men in the days leading up to the dance put on through the Date with Dad program. And yes, at first, it does take a cinema verité approach which I’m not that crazy about.
Otherwise, this is pretty decent for a first-time doc from the two filmmakers, which focuses primarily on the importance of being and having a father, and once we get to the point where we see the fathers and daughters reuniting, many of the girls seeing their fathers in jail for the first time, it really just wins you over with happy they all are despite the tough situation. Seriously, I dare you not to start bawling when these fathers and daughters are reunited, because it’s such a complex situation. The movie then cuts forward a year that shows how some of the lives were changed by this program while others just weren’t able to maintain a long-term relationship with their daughters.
It’s hard to imagine anyone can watch this movie and not get teary at seeing these fathers being able to spend time with their daughters and the happiness that brings them all. The filmmakers have found an admirable way to tell these important stories in a way that really sticks with you.
This is opening at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, among other theaters.
We’ll just continue on with some more docs, including one that could very well have been this week’s alternate “Chosen One”...
SUGARCANE (National Geographic Documentary Films)
Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie co-direct this documentary about the decades of abuse and deaths at the St. Joseph’s Mission on the Sugarcane Reserve at a time when the Canadian (and American) government were involuntarily forcing indigenous children into residential schools run by the Catholic Church. I bet you can guess where this is going, but the kids were abused and raped and the babies that came out of those rapes were then killed or put up for adoption. Julian’s father Ed was part of that program and was left quite scarred, as many of those who survived ended up turning to alcoholism or suicide i.e. just another case of the Catholic Church abusing its powers and ruining children’s (and eventually, adult’s) lives.
It took me a little time to get into this, not because I wasn’t interested in the historical context about this government practice of which I was unaware, but because it took me some time to get interested in the characters. In some ways, that makes this a lot like Daughters above, though in both cases, they won me over by the end.
The filmmaker’s father Ed NoiseCat, who was actually born at St. Joseph’s, his mother raped as a girl and him having luckily survived their attempt to get rid of him, and his grandmother are both key subjects. Other impotant subjects involved in the story include the Williams Lake First Nation Chief Willie Sellars, who realizes the importance of getting answers to what happened at St. Joseph’s, which includes using radar to scan the grounds outside the property to find the bodies of those whose deaths were covered up, including many illegitimate babies that weren’t given up for adoption.
The former chief even goes to the Vatican to meet with the Pope, who mainly acknowledges all the bad things done to them (with a quick speech in Italian), as does Prime Minster Justin Trudeau in a later scene, though neither of those things
This feel like a very different type of doc for NatGeo, but it’s a commendable endeavor that not only has a very personal touch due to the filmmaker’s relation to one of the subjects, but also touches on things that continue to absolutely boggle the mind, first that they could have happened at all, and secondly, that the governments aren’t doing more to help the indigenous communities still affected by this trauma.
This is a doc that really creeps up on you as you watch the three or four subjects the film chooses to follow and how they get involved with revealing the truth about St. Joseph’s Mission and getting justice for its helpless victims.
Sugarcane opens at the Film Forum in New York on Friday with the filmmakers doing a QnA on Thursday (for a preview) and Friday.
GOOD ONE (Metrograph Pictures)
Opening at the Metrograph and up at Film at Lincoln Center this Friday is India Donaldson’s indie drama, which was quite the hit at Sundance this past January. It stars Lily Collias as Sam, a 17-year-old who goes on a camping trip with her father (James Le Gros) and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy), as she has to deal with toxicity of middle-aged men. (Hey! I resemble that remark!)
I saw Ms. Donaldson’s film virtually at the Sundance Film Festival and I wasn’t really a fan – in fact, I just realized that I already reviewed it – but I did watch the movie again (actually at the Metrograph), and I was able to appreciate it more. The problem is that it’s almost cinema verité in that we watch this trio as they just walk around and talk, and then something happens to Sam, which becomes a thing, even though I personally did not think it was a very big deal and not enough to be considered a significant plot development. And then, the rest of the film just goes nowhere, basically avoiding the potential drama rather than facing it on.
I did like it better a second time — I’d maybe update my original “C” rating to a “B” or 7/10 — and considering how many of my colleagues raved about it, I think it will find a decent-sized younger audience, going by the Metrograph member screening earlier this week. Donaldson is certainly an interesting filmmaker to keep an eye on, and I’ll be interested to see what Collias does next, as well. I still have issues with this movie, especially the ending, but it’s still accomplished enough that it should
THE LAST FRONT (Enigma Releasing)
Set in a small Belgium village during the tail end of WWI, Julien Hayet-Kerknawi’s war drama stars Iain Glen from “Game of Thrones” as Leonard Lambert, a widower farmer with two kids, a daughter and an older son Adrien, who is in love with Louise (Sasha Luss from Luc Besson’s Anna), although her rich parents do not approve of their relationship. When the Germans show up, they start to plague Leonard’s life, particularly one brash officer named Laurentz (Joe Anderson), whose father is the battalion commander (Philippe Brennikmeyer).
This is a movie that I went into knowing absolutely nothing, including the distributor, Enigma Releasing, who are releasing their very first feature, and potentially fairly wide, apparently. It took me some time to really get into it, because I just wasn’t really interested in the young troubled romance, not even remotely. Things get more interesting when the Germans show up, and the movie turns into more of a war drama with Leonard and the normally peaceful villagers standing up for themselves. I’m not going to spoil one of the absolutely shocking events that spurs this on, but it ends up creating an interesting dynamic between Leonard and Laurentz, dealing with the relationship between fathers and their children.
Iain Glen is fantastic, and I wish I could remember who he played on “Game of Thrones,” but so is Anderson and Brennikmeyer, playing the latter’s commanding officer and father. Ultimately, this is a pretty well-directed war drama with one of my biggest issues being the score, in that it’s just too over-powering and burdensome, something that almost ruins certain scenes where using the music more sparingly could have achieved far more.
The Last Front is a fine drama that shines a spotlight on a part of Europe that really hasn’t been covered very much in war movies, since most of us think of Belgium being neutral despite its proximity to France and German. It ends up being far better than it could have been in the hands of a filmmaker who clearly didn’t have a personal stake in telling this story. (I’m just assuming this to be the case, as I know nothing about the filmmaker otherwise.)
Rating: 7/10
ELECTRIC LADY STUDIOS: A JIMI HENDRIX VISION (Abramorama)
One would think that a documentary about a recording studio would appeal to me, because many of the ones I’ve seen in recent years have been great. This one, directed by John McDermott, is about the record studio built by the late, great Jimi Hendrix on 8th Street in the West Village, where I’ve actually been before (though I never actually recorded there).
This is a pretty straight-forward doc that really focuses more on the Jimi Hendrix aspect of the studio then it’s rich history in the 55 years since it was built and after Hendrix died. As someone who never really knew the history of how Electric Lady Studios became a thing and how Hendrix ended up having to juggle his own recording with bringing it outside paying clients – for instance, Carly Simon recorded her first album there – is kind of interesting.
Still, I didn’t think there was really enough weight to the story being told here to make it as interesting as some of the other recording studio docs I’ve seen, and I’m not quite sure how many casual music fans, even Hendrix diehards, will get much out of this movie. This opens at the Quad Cinema (just a few blocks north of Electric Lady) with QnAs this weekend.
HAPPY CAMPERS (Grasshopper Films)
Also opening at the IFC Center in New York this Friday and then in a couple Laemmle theaters in L.A. on August 21 and 22 is this doc from Amy Nicholson (the filmmaker, not the film critic) which follows a group of families who live at the seasonal trailer park, Inlet View, that is being threatened by development.
This is another doc that took me a long time to really get into it, and that’s partially because Nicholson uses a cinema verité style of storytelling, which is not my favorite doc format, because it requires the viewer to interpret far more than I prefer to. The subjects aren’t that interesting either, because we’re watching a wide variety of characters with no names, and there just isn’t the focus on one, two, or three characters, which is largely why Daughters and Sugarcane works so well by comparison.
Because of that, I really don’t have much more to say about Happy Campers, since it was a little disappointing and forgettable, so maybe I’ll just leave it at that.
TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN (Well Go USA)
From Hong Kong comes this action movie starring Louis Koo as an underground fighter who falls foul of a Hong Kong Triad boss when he ends up in the Kowloon Walled City that’s dominated by the underworld in the ‘80s. When a bounty is placed on his head, he goes on the run from hundreds of violent killers, who he has to fight off. Yes, it does sound a lot like one of the “John Wick” movies and while this has some great action scenes, and it even has the great Sammo Hung in a main role, but I just couldn’t find the time to watch the whole thing to review. Sorry! This is probably opening in a few hundred theaters across the country this Friday.
RUNNING ON EMPTY (Lionsgate)
Daniel André’s rom-com stars Keir Gilchrist, Lucy Hale, Francesca Eastwood, Rhys Coiro, Jay Pharoah, Jim Gaffigan, and more. Gilchrist plays Mortimer living in the San Fernando Valley who receives some life-changing news, sending him on “a spirited quest to find meaning in his existence and discovers the girl of his dreams along the way.”
A few other movies I just didn’t get to…
DUCHESS (Saban Films)
DANCE FIRST (Magnolia Pics)
ONE FAST MOVE (Prime Video)
REPERTORY
Fresh off its “Shinji Shomai X3” series (or as part of it), Metrograph will be showing a 4k DCP restoration of Shomai’s 1993 coming-of-age film Moving (Cinema Guild) through the weekend. (I’ll be seeing this on Sunday night.)
Juzo Itami’s Tampopo (1985) will screen on Saturday and Sunday as part of “Metrograph Selects.”
“Twisted Sister” shows Vera Chytilova’s Daisies (1966) and Jacques Rivette’s 1975 film Duelle.
“Ties That Bind: Tales of Madness” offers one more screening of Julia Ducornau’s Titane on Thursday night, and then you can watch Argento’s Suspiria (1977) through the rest of the weekend.
“In Pursuit of Shadows” has the second-to-last screening of Wong Karwai’s Chungking Express (1994) on Thursday night (tonight!) and Park Chanwook’s recent Decision to Leave (2022).
“Under the Pavement, The Beach” continues through the weekend with Olivier Assayas’ excellent Something in the Air (2012) and Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970).
“Summer at Sea” will screen Jacques Deray’s La Piscine (1969) through the weekend.
“Passages” continues this weekend with Kore-eda’s Still Walking (2008), Theo Angelopoulos’ 1998 film, Eternity and a Day, and Edward Yang’s That Day, On the Beach (1983).
Thursday night is your last chance to see Bette Gordon’s Variety (1983) as part of “Long Live Scala Cinema!”
“Milestone Movies: The Anniversary Collection 1994” continues this weekend with screenings of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (which is getting a sequel soon?!), Chungking Express, Cabin Boy, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, and more. The Lucy Walker retrospective ends tonight with a screening of one of her more recent docs, Bring Your Own Brigade. On Wednesday, Maurice Pialat’s À Nos Amours (1983) will show as part of “Agnès Varda’s Paris,” preceded by a short by the late Ms. Varda.
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
Before I get to anything else, I should mention that this Sunday at Prospect Park is the monthly “Sundays on Fire” presented by Subway Cinema that shows a secret movie from Hong Kong in 35mm. I’ve been to so many of these, and they’re always a lot of fun, but get your tickets quick since they almost always sell out! On Saturday at Prospect Park, you can catch Almodovar’s All About My Mother as part of the “Class of ‘99” series, and on Monday night, you can see Cronenberg’s Existenz as part of the same series. On Tuesday, as part of the monthly “Misfit Alley” series, you can see the 1984 schlock classic, Angel, with the dubious tagline of “Honor student by day - hooker by night!” Next Wednesday, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (which I believe just showed somewhere else) will be screened as part of “Aventures in Black Cinema.”
On Friday, Williamsburg’s “Class of ‘99” offering is Takashi Miike’s Audition, which you can see close to midnight on Friday and Saturday night. Saturday and Sunday at brunch time, you can bring the kids to Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant. Tuesday night, they’re screening Spike Jonze’ Being John Malkovich as part of that same series. Tonight (Thursday), you can see the 1986 film Valet Girls with director Rafal Zielinski on hand for a QnA.
IFC Center will be screening a 50th anniversary 4k restoration of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation beginning this Friday. The “Defamed to Acclaimed” series continues with lots of repeats including Joseph Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963) on Sunday, Scorsese’s King of Comedy on Friday, Showgirls on Saturday and Sunday, and many other renowned bombs throughout the week.
“The Complete Melville” comes to a close today (Thurday) but a new 4K DCP of Melville’s Army of Shadows will continue to run through Aug. 15. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai also continues through the 15th.
I’m pretty excited that MOMA’s one-week run of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (now officially “art” since it played at MOMA), is leading right into “Tobe Hooper in the ‘80s,” starting next Tuesday, which includes classics like Poltergeist, Lifeforce (which I’ve never seen!) and more.
Movie Mindset and the Film Stage continue their “Fidelio” series with more screenings of Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and Clint Eastwood’s Absolute Power tonight and through the weekend.
I must have missed that the new 4k restoration of Shinji Shomai’s Moving actually premiered up here last week, but it’s still playing here through the weekend if you don’t feel like coming downtown…and you know what I’d say to that. (It begins with “F” and ends with “U.”)
The “Verbatim” series continues through the weekend with screenings of Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, and more.
BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)
The new series “Passing By You: Impostirism on Film” kicks off with Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of Passing from 2021, and includes Devil in a Blue Dress, Coming to America, Omar, The Birdcage, Imitation of Life, White Chicks, and many more, running over the next two weeks.
This weekend’s “See It Big: 70mm” offerings are Lawrence of Arabia on Friday and Saturday evenings, and Ron Howard’s 1992 film Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, on Saturday afternoon. Also, this weekend, as part of the “Silents, Please!” you can see Buster Keaton’s 1924 comedy, Sherlock Jr., on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, perfect for the kids!
Out on Long Island, where I’m spending far less time, Huntington’s premier arthouse is showing the Led Zeppelin concert movie classic, The Song Remains the Same, tonight (Thursday)! Friday, they’re showing John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986) as part of a tribute retrospective to composer Alan Howarth, who I had to double check, but yes, he’s still alive. Saturday’s “Cult Café” offering is the Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy Spies Like Us (1985), directed by John Landis, or you can see Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) as part of that retrospective. That series continues on Sunday with Rebecca, followed by The Wrong Man on Monday and Psycho on Tuesday. Also on Sunday, you can bring the kids to Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki’s first Oscar winning animated film. Another pal, Glenn Kenny, will be there next Weds, Aug. 14, for a screening of Brian De Palma’s Scarface, Glenn (whose birthday is today) having written a book about that movie.
That’s it for this week. Next week, one of my most anticipated movies of the year (no joke), Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus!
Shout out to Long Island. Whoop whoop.
Never seen LIFEFORCE???
You are in for a TREAT.
Hollywood should remake LIFEFORCE. ANUALLY.