The Weekend Warrior July 15, 2022
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, PAWS OF FURY, MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS, DON’T MAKE ME GO, THE GRAY MAN, New York Asian Film Festival, Fantasia, and MORE!
This is a crazy busy week here at the Weekend Warrior, so I’ll do my best to write about as many of the movies coming out as possible, but there are just too many movies to watch and write about if I want to get this column up by Thursday latest. If you’re reading this, then I succeeded. Barely.
I’m going to start with a couple of my favorite annual fests, although I’m not sure I’m attending either this year (sadly):
This year marks the 20th anniversary New York Asian Film Festival, which is running from July 15 through July 28, and it’s fully in person this year after going virtual in 2020 and hybrid last year. For 20 years, this has been one of the best platforms for films from Asia that haven’t had a chance to get distribution here otherwise, so it’s a good chance to see some movies that few will have a chance to see theatrically in America. The 2022 NYAFF opens on Friday with Fast & Feel Love from Thailand and the Asian-American film, Dealing with Dad. Also, the Korean action film, The Killer — which opened theatrically on Wednesday — will screen as part of this year’s NYAFF, along with director Choi Jae-Hun’s earlier 2020 film, The Swordsman, and the director will be on hand with his star, Jang Hyuk for a QnA on Tuesday night.
Up in Montreal, they’ll get the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 14 through August 3, and it may actually have some overlap with the films shown at this year’s NYAFF, but unlike that festival, this is a mix of genre films that will be released in the next couple months (including this week’s The Killer and the August release Bodies Bodies Bodies) as well as Asian films that might not be released theatrically outside these fests. This year’s Fantasia opening films are KC Carthew’s Canadian genre film Polaris and Yuki Tanada’s adaptation of the web comic, My Broken Mariko. John Woo will also be receiving a Career Achievement Award, and presumably, he’ll be on hand to receive it.
Now let’s get to the wider studio releases of the weekend, although I’m going to try and keep the analysis slightly minimal due to the amount of movies opening this week.
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Sony)
Reese Witherspoon has really come into her own as a producer in recent years, buying the rights to popular books to be turned into movies and television series, and Where the Crawdads Sing is a great example. The bestselling novel by Delia Owens may not seem like the thing that should be produced into a film getting a theatrical release, but if there’s anything we learned from the pandemic, it’s that moviegoers are still looking for variety.
The movie stars Daisy Edgar-Jones from Normal People and who starred in the Sundance horror film, FRESH, as Kya Clark, a young woman living in the marshes in the South who is accused of murder. The movie also stars Harris Dickinson, Taylor John Smith, and David Strathairn, which doesn’t sound like a particularly strong cast in terms of getting people to the movies, but this one really is about the popularity of the original novel and how it got a bump from being a part of Witherspoon’s book club. It probably also doesn’t hurt that Taylor Swift provided a song for the movie, because it’s very much a movie (and novel, presumably) that would appeal to her teen-to-20-something fanbase.
I haven’t read Owens’ book, and as of this writing, I haven’t even seen the movie to review it. (No fault of Sony, who were gracious enough to invite me to the New York premiere.) But I have seen the promotional campaign that Witherspoon and Edgar-Jones have been on to promote the movie, and that is often a lot when it comes to raising awareness for a movie.
On the high end for dramatic adaptations, we can look at the 2014 adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, probably one of the last hugely successful young adult adaptations, opening with $48 million and grossing $124.8 million total. The next year, Green’s Paper Towns was turned into a movie, but that opened a little more reasonably with $12.6 million, grossing $32 million in North America. 2017’s Wonder, co-starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, opened with an astounding $27.5 million and grossed $132.4 million, and another hugely successful book adaptation was 2008’s Marley & Me, which had the benefit of a holiday release and stars Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson (again). That ended up with $143 million domestically. Those all seem to be very lofty
What’s interesting from looking at those numbers it’s that there are some books so popular that they do great business in theaters, but knowing that Crawdads sold 13 million copies as a book does not necessarily mean that fans of the book will rush out to see it. It does help the movie’s awareness since those who loved the book may be looking forward to the movie, and those just looking for something to see who have read the book might make this an option. (Reviews for the movie have NOT been good, though, and I’m not sure anyone will be surprised by that. Again, I have not seen it)
I still think we’re in a strange area of the box office where not every movie is doing huge business, although there’s more potential now than there was earlier in the year or last year for a book adaptation to break out. I still think we’re looking at an opening in the $15 to 17 million range, rather than a huge opening like some of the others mentioned above.
PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK (Paramount)
Another movie opening this weekend that I haven’t seen and know very little about is the latest animated feature from Paramount and Nickelodeon, which follows up its 2021 release, Paw Patrol: The Movie, which did okay for a movie opening last August, opening with $13.1 million and making $40 million total. (This isn’t bad for that point in the pandemic where vaccines were still being rolled out and not yet to kids.) It’s actually not too far off from the previous Nickeloden animated movie to get a full theatrical release, 2019’s Wonder Park, which bombed with $45.2 million domestic after a $15.8 million. The thing is that movie cost $100 million to produce, while Paws of Fury seems to have been made for about half that amount.
One of the more interesting things about this movie in my book is that it was initially conceived as a family friendly remake of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, called “Blazing Samurai,” and in fact, both Mel Brooks and the late Richard Pryor, two comedy legends, are still credited for writing the screenplay, although Brooks’ involvement seems to be minimal. This project was first announced and production began way back in 2015, which is a pretty long production time even for an animated feature
It features a relatively impressive voice cast that includes Michael Cera, Samuel L. Jackson, Ricky Gervais, George Takei, Michelle Yeoh (who is now in EVERYTHING!), Djimon Hounsou, Gabriel Iglesias, and Mel Brooks himself. Not sure how many kids will know who any of those actors are, so it’s going to be relying more on parents who might not really think that a kids’ version of Blazing Saddles is the best influence on their young ‘uns.
Paramount and NIckelodeon’s biggest animated hit to date had to be Gore Verbinski’s 2011 animated Western Rango, starring Johnny Depp voicing the title character, which grossed $123.5 million and even won the Oscar for Animated Feature that year. Other attempts like the aforementioned Wonder Park and others like Jimmy Neutron haven’t fared that well, compared to the various SpongeBob SquarePants movies, the most recent one mostly being released on Paramout+ due to the pandemic.
I also didn’t have a chance to see this one, and again, that’s no fault of the studio who did invite me to a screening, but the reviews may play some factor in whether this movie does any business this weekend, and I’m dubious they will be very good. (There are only four reviews on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing, two fresh, two rotten.)
Either way, I don’t think this one looks very appealing or original to families who have gotten a sudden slew of offerings over the past couple months after a number of months that were sans family films. I think this one will be struggling to make $10 million even if it is released into more than 3,400 theaters and may even be in more theaters than Crawdads. It’s doubtful this will make it past DC League of Superpets in a couple weeks in order to get any last-minute summer business in August.
MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS (Focus)
Also opening wide in roughly 900 to 1,000 theaters is this adaptation of Paul Gallico’s novel that was previously adapted into a TV movie starring Angela Lansbury and the late Dame Diana Rigg. This one stars Lesley Manville as the title character, a British cleaning woman in the ‘50s who gets the urge to travel to Paris to get an expensive Dior dress made for herself.
This is very much a lighter Brit rom-com that has the appeal not only of the subject matter and story but also its Parisian travelogue aspects, which allows Manville to interact with French actors such as Isabel Huppert, Lambert Wilson, Lucas Bravo and Portugese actress, Alba Baptista. The movie also stars Jason Isaacs and Ellen Thomas.
This is very much in a similar vein as Focus’ Downton Abbey: A New Era released back in May, which should have done much better than its $16 million opening and $43.9 million domestic total, considering that it was a sequel to a much more successful movie. Even though this includes fashion similar to Phantom Thread, the Paul Thomas Anderson movie that got Manville her Oscar nomination, this doesn’t have the benefit of Anderson, who is quite a draw as a filmmaker. Even so, that movie only made $21 million domestically with its biggest weekend being when it expanded to 897 theaters and made $3.2 million.
Because Mrs. Harris is opening wider n 1,000 theaters vs. platforming and then expanding, its box office potential probably is somewhere in the $2 million range, which in past weeks could have put it higher in the top 10, but in this case, it’s likely to end up in the lower part of the rankings but should do well enough to open ahead of Lightyear.
Mini-Review: I’ll freely admit that I didn’t think this movie would be for me, and it took me quite some time into this movie before I started appreciating it for what it was, which is just a terrific vehicle for the wonderful and underrated Lesley Manville to play Ada Harris, an every woman, who just wants to have some of the nicer things in life, especially after losing her husband in the war.
Her character is introduced in a fairly innocuous way as we watch her day-to-day going to her client’s places to clean, but one of her wealthier customers has a beautiful Dior dress that cost 500 pounds, an outrageous amount but especially in the ‘50s. Undaunted, Mrs. Harris works harder to save up money before blowing some of her savings on a horse. Fortunately, she has someone looking down favorably at her as after that loss, a number of things happen where she suddenly has the money to fly to Paris for a couple days. When she arrives at the House de Dior, she’s treated pretty shabbily by Isabelle Huppert’s character, but otherwise, Dior’s staff immediately falls for Mrs. Harris and her honesty. She catches the eye of Lambert Wilson’s Marquis who seems to take a liking to her, so there’s a potential romantic angle to her trip.
This is a generally pleasant dramedy that hangs much of its weight on Manville’s ability to create a character that viewers will enjoy following on her journey, which is definitely the case with Mrs. Harris. Part of the movie acts as a straight-up travelogue to Paris, which adds to the glamour — although it takes place during a garbage strike, so a little of the glamour is diminished. Director Anthony Fabian does a fine job keeping the various elements of the plot rolling, and he has a great cast to pull it off.
I had issues with Phantom Thread, the PT Anderson film for which Manville was nominated for an Oscar, but here she swaps roles with Huppert (playing a rare antagonist), and the two of them are just so great when they’re on screen together.
While there are some aspects of the last act that are predictable, it still goes to a place that wraps up the story quite organically, so anyone on board by that time is likely to be up for continuing Mrs. Harris’ trip. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a thoroughly enjoyable film that women of a certain age might appreciate more than men of any age, but Manville absolutely shines in a terrific vehicle for the underrated actress.
Rating: 8/10
THE CHART:
It’s not likely that many of the new movies will have much of an impact on the top 2 or 3 movies with Crawdads standing the best chance of surpassing Top Gun: Maverick to take third place. Otherwise, the new movies are all very specifically targeted towards audiences not really served by other films, except for maybe Paws of Fury, since there are plenty of other PG family films in theaters. On the other hand, it will be good to keep an eye on A24’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and Focus’ Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, since they’ll be opening more moderately, although Marcel doesn’t look like it’s going wide this weekend as planned. (You can read my interview with director Dean Fleischer-Camp over at Below the Line.)
1. Thor: Love and Thunder (Marvel/Disney) - $50.5 million -65%
2. Minions: The Rise of Gru (Universal) - 23.5 million -49%
3. Where the Crawdads Sing (Sony) - $14.8 million N/A
4. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - $12.3 million -21%
5. Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (Paramount) - $9.4 million N/A
6. Elvis (Warner Bros.) - $7.2 million -35%
7. Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal) - $4.4 million -49%
8. The Black Phone (Universal) - $4.2 million -45%
9. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (Focus Features) - $2.2 million N/A
10. Lightyear (Disney-Pixar) - $1.3 million -55%
This week’s “Chosen One” is…
DON’T MAKE ME GO (Prime Video)
Another wonderful movie I saw at the Tribeca Festival this year is this road trip dramedy from director Hannah Marks, who may be better known for her acting, although I may have seen some of her shorts. This one stars John Cho as single father Max who decides to take his teen daughter, played by Mia Isaac, on a road trip to meet her estranged mother after learning that he’s been diagnosed with a terminal disease. The pretense is that he’s attending his 20th college reunion, and he convinces her to come since she can use the trip to learn to drive. But really, he wants to to make sure she knows everything she has to in order to survive with him.
Like Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, this is a movie that on paper might not have enticed me that much, but actually watching it makes a big difference. The thing that most people might get out of this movie is how John Cho has transformed himself into one of the best dramatic actors today, and he’s well paired with Ms. Isaac, whose work I wasn’t familiar with previously. In some ways, the movie feels a bit of a companion piece to Searching, even though that may just be because this is also has Cho playing a father.
Sure, there are aspects to Don’t Make Me Go that will remind you of movies that played at Sundance over the years, but those are the aspects that are quite entertaining and crowd-pleasing, as the film mixes the lighter humor with stronger emotional dramatic moments.
Ultimately, Don’t Make Me Go is a terrific dramedy about father-daughter relationships elevated by the terrific duo leading the movie. (Apparently, Ms. Marks also plays a role in the movie but I didn’t realize this until later, so I’m not sure exactly who she played.)
While I wouldn’t necessarily say that Don’t Make Me Go is a movie that must be seen in a theater, I do think it’s a film that will find many fans on Prime Video since it’s a strong dramedy with real emotions at its core. I know I can’t wait to watch it again.
Rating: 8.5/10
Don’t Make Me Go will open in select cities on Friday and then be on Prime Video starting July 22.
THE GRAY MAN (Netflix)
Opening in select theaters this Friday before streaming on Netflix on July 22 is the new movie from the Russo Brothers, adapted from the novel by Mark Greaney, which apparently was a series of books, so a possible Netflix franchise? This one stars Ryan Gosling as Greaney’s title character, “The Gray Man,” a CIA agent only known as “Sierra 6,” who suddenly becomes a target of the agency when he gets his hands on info that can take down one of the group’s leaders, as played by Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page. To get that information back, the latter sends Chris Evans’ Lloyd Hansen, a “fixer” who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
Do you remember how much everyone loved Captain America: The Winter Soldier when it came out, and how it’s still considered one of the strongest movies in the MCU? Well, the Russo Brothers and the writers of their four MCU movies have been reunited to tell a bonafide spy story, one that could very well create the basis for the franchise Netflix has been looking for.
Gosling is Sierra-6, the CIA’s “Gray Man” who works in the field with no one knowing much about him, so he can easily take on missions that involve killing and then quickly disappear. Things get more complicated when his latest target is another Sierra agent who gives him a thumb drive with some damning evidence against Sierra-6’s handler, who insists the mission was to eliminate a “bad man.” Sierra-6 goes against his orders and immediately becomes a target, getting help from Ana de Armas’ Agent Miranda who think there’s something suspect about what is happening.
Needless to say, the action is some of the best you’re likely to see this year – and yes, that includes Top Gun: Maverick, before you ask – because the Russos fill the movie with a variety of different types of action. There’s one spectacular set piece set within a plaza in Prague that then goes onto a train, and it’s as good as anything from last year’s Shang-Chi, at least in terms of the action. Also, if you liked Ana de Armas’ far-too-short sequence in No Time to Die, she gets into some fight sequences that are equally impressive here. I was just as impressed by Bollywood star Dhanush, who is one of the assassins sent to kill Sierra-6, and who has some particularly great fights with Gosling and de Armas.
As much as I enjoyed Gosling back in this kind of action role, it’s quite evident that Chris Evans was always meant to be a character actor, because he’s just so great in the role of a know-it-all sociopath who doesn’t put up with failure from those he hires.
I have to say that while I wasn’t that familiar with Regé-Jean Page from anything other than his Saturday Night Live appearance, but he’s quite good as the overall antagonist, and I also liked how Jessica Henwick was used as a CIA agent where there’s more of a grey area on whose side she falls.
The Gray Man is indeed one of the better action movies of the year, twisting all of its Bourne and Bond influences into something quite different but equally exceptional.
Rating: 8.5/10
GABBY GIFFORDS WON’T BACK DOWN (Briarcliff Entertainment/CNN Films)
Something strange and unusual took place on the way to this portion of the column. I first heard about this doc when it played at SXSX, but somehow, I completely forgot to add it to my release schedule calendar, from which this column is based. I’m a huge fan of the docs made by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who have been quite on a roll with RBG and Julia over the past few years. Maybe I just wasn’t as interested in another political doc, even if their portrait of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the better profile docs in recent memory. Anyway, I was reminded this was coming out when someone mentioned it was doing a special presentation on Wednesday night, and because one of the showings was at an AMC that allowed me to use my AMC A-List card, I went out to see this last night.
Now, mind you, I don’t think I knew a lot about Giffords, the Representative from Arizona, until she was almost killed in an assassination attempt in 2011 that left her partially paralyzed, but as with their previous movies, Cohen and West find a very human way into her story, covering her life and career before the fateful shooting, but also her struggle with Aphasia after being shot where she still has difficulty forming sentences. It’s quite miraculous she survived the shooting that took six other lives, but her experience made her perfectly suited to speak to Congress and others about the need for background checks and gun laws that aren’t just about taking away ALL guns. (As she says a few times, she has guns of her own and that didn’t change after being shot.)
What’s amazing about Cohen and West’s latest doc is that they had a lot of home footage shot by Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, who went on to run and be elected as the Senator from Arizona in 2011 after the death of John McCain. A lot of this movie does deal with the very hot topic of necessary gun laws, and in the months after the movie premiered at SXSW, end title cards needed to added for context that the movie was completely before the May shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. Obviously, gun violence was an issue before Giffords was shot and took up the battle to make changes, but it seems like the movie is perfectly timed to hopefully make that change if it gets out there. In that sense, it’s just as important a film as RBG, even though the movie is surprisingly non-partisan or centrist, which may be the only way to get things done.
Gabby Giffords will open at New York’s Village East by Angelika and other theaters across the country on Friday – sorry, I don’t have a theater count at this time – and I definitely recommend checking this out, especially if you’re interested in recent gun control issues.
SHE WILL (IFC Midnight)
This feature directorial debut from Charlotte Colbert has a few lofty expectations that come from being presented by horror legend Dario Argento and being produced by Edward Pressman (Wall Street, Bad Lieutenant and hundreds of other movies). It’s a strange horror-thriller that stars Alice Krige as Veronica Ghent, an aging actress who has just undergone a double mastectomy, as she travels to Scotland to attend a healing retreat with her nurse Desi (Kota Eberhardt). And then, weird things start to happen.
And that’s about all I can really say about the movie, because I really didn’t understand what was going on, and that’s more or less par for the course with IFC Midnight, whose offerings have been so spotty in terms of quality and entertainment value, often going for slower and stranger movies that haven’t really stuck with me. (Watcher is one of the few exceptions where it really blew me away, but it’s also one of the movies I got to see at a screening room, whereas I’m seeing most of these on screening platforms.)
She Will is definitely better than some of the other IFC Midnight movies I didn’t like, but there’s still a matter of me not really understanding what was happening for a good portion of the movie, since it often relies on disturbing visuals cut together in a way that’s quite disconcerting, and yes, sometimes confusing, too.
Much of She Will’s horror elements rely on there being some sort of witchcraft surrounding the main women, and eventually, it transforms into a revenge thriller where we see that both of the main women have to deal with awful men (played by Rupert Everett and Malcolm McDowell).
There were aspects to the story that reminded me of Ben Wheatley’s 2021 movie In the Earth, and part of that might come from the usually brilliant score by Clint Mansell. (The movie’s end credits roll over an amazing cover of Echo and the Bunnyman’s “The Killing Moon” performed by Nouvelle Vague and Melanie Pain from 2006.)
Colbert is definitely a filmmaker to watch with a strong sense of visual style, and she gets great performances out of both Krige and Eberhardt. In a similar vein as The Lodge and St Maud, She Will falls pretty squarely in the middle of me either loving or hating it, maybe since it took me so long to figure out what I was watching, as much as everything eventually does come together.
Rating: 6.5/10
FROM WHERE THEY STOOD (Greenwich Entertainment)
Opening at the Film Forum in NYC on Friday is this fascinating French doc from Christophe Cognet, which takes a look at a number of clandestine photographs taken by a number of prisoners and others in East European concentration caps around 1944 or so. These photos were either snuck out of the camp or buried and found later, but the photos reveal different sides of the concentration camp experience than we’ve seen in the numerous movies made about the Holocaust.
What’s amazing about this film is that it doesn’t feel like any other movie or doc about the Holocaust that I’ve seen. For instance, it doesn’t rely so much on people telling their own stories while talking about the photos being shown as much as the filmmaker trying to find more context for how and where they were shot. There are many scenes that are simply wordless shots of the original photos overlaid on the actual locations in present day, and that ends up being quite powerful.
In fact, I’m not sure this doc even had any sort of score or music, which would have given a completely different feel, tonally, but it’s also something the filmmaker could have overly relied on, rather than just letting the photos tell their own story.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Holocaust or are just a fan of photograph, From Where They Stood is a terrific use of archival photographs to learn more about the horrible conditions in concentration camps but also a very different use of the documentary medium to tell such a story.
Unfortunately, we now get to a bunch of movies that I just wasn’t able to get to before putting this week’s column bed, but maybe I can add some thoughts once I get to some of these, since the first three are definitely of interest.
ANONYMOUS CLUB (Oscilloscope)
Opening in New York (at the Angelika Film Center) and L.A. (at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown L.A.) on Friday is this doc from Danny Cohen that follows Australian rocker Courtney Barnett, following her during a three-year period, filming on 16mm as she goes on her world tour to support her album, “Tell Me How You Really Feel.”
THE DEER KING (GKids)
The latest anime film from GKids released a Fathom Events on Wednesday in a subtitled version, and if you don’t mind dubbing, it will get a Fathom Events tonight (Thursday), but then you can see the subtitled version when it opens limited on Friday. The directorial debut by Masashi Ando, who has worked in the animation department of so many great films like Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, it’s a fantasty epic that takes place in the aftermath of a war where Van, a former soldier, is workin in the mines controlled by the ruling empire. Van ends up encountering a pack of wild dogs carrying an incurable virus, leaving him and a young girl named Yun as survivors to try to find a possible cure.
THE KILLER (Shaw Entertainment)
Opening on Wednesday is this Korean action film directed by Choi Jae-hun, based on a Korean web-novel, starring Jang Hyuk as the hit man Ui-gang who is ready to retire when his girlfriend goes on a trip and asks him to watch over her friend’s 17-year-old daughter to make sure she doesn’t get into trouble.
KARMALINK (Good Deed Entertainment)
Opening in L.A., San Fran, Seattle, and on VOD is Jake Wachtel’s Cambodian sci-fi thriller (the first one from that country) set in a near-future Phnom Penh where the rich and privileged are implanted with nanotech. In a tight-knit Tralop Bek community in anger of eviction, a 13-year-old named Leng Heng has been having dreams of his past lives, and he goes looking for a buried Buddhist statue with his friends to save their homes.
EARWIG (Juno Films)
I watched some of director Lucile Hadžihalilović's film based on Brian Catling’s novel when it played TIFF last year. I can’t remember if I saw the whole movie, unfortunately, but it involves a little girl who has ice cubes for teeth. She is taken care of by Albert (Paul Hilton), who changes her ice dentures a few times a day until one day they’re told to leave the apartment. If that seems like your kind of movie, then go, you!
NEON LIGHTS (Momentum Pictures)
Don’t know a lot about this one other than it’s directed by Rouzbeh Heydari, and it involves a dysfunctional family reunion where guests start disappearing from the reunion’s “off-grid location.”
Streaming…
PERSUASION (Netflix)
Dakota Johnson stars in this new remake of Jane Austen’s novel, which unfortunately is not very good. It will be released on Netflix streaming, and honestly, I’m not going to review it because I could barely get past Johnson’s horrible accent and fourth-wall breaking.
More importantly, Netflix’s new Resident Evil series will debut on the streamer this Friday, as well, and that one I’m really looking forward to watching since I love the games/movies so much. I’ve been hearing relatively good things so far.
GOOD MADAM (Shudder)
Hitting the horror streamer Shudder on Thursday is Jenna Cato Bass’ South African thriller, which premiered at the 2021 Toronto International FIlm Festival. It follows single mother Tsidi, who is forced to move in with her estranged mother Mavis, who works as a live-in domestic worker with a white “Madam” in a rich Cape Town suburb. And spooky and sinister stuff happens to her. I wasn’t able to watch this before writing the column but definitely hope to check it out since I generally like what Shudder’s been doing. (Interestingly, She Will will probably stream on Shudder eventually, since it seems to have a new partnership with IFC similar to the one it has with AMC+.)
SOUTH PARK: STREAMING WARS PART II (Paramount+)
This will debut on Paramount+ sometime this week. I’ve never been a fan of South Park, so I haven’t paid this much heed.
“Road Trip: American Cinema from Coast to Coast” has turned into a fine excuse to play some classic regional horror films, as this weekend, there’ll be screenings of The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972), Grizzly (1972), Eyes of Fire, and the classic Candyman (1992). You also hae another chance to see Brian De Palma’s Blown Out, as well as Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, and on Friday and Sunday, you can see Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975). “Pioneers of Queer Cinema” wraps up on Thursday with the groundbreaking doc, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984). Screening this weekend as part of “Late Nites: Miami Heat” are Wild Things on Thursday and Friday, Michael Mann’s 2006 Miami Vice movie, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, and Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) on Saturday night. The “Playtime: Bicycles and Balloons” selection of the weekend is Haifaa Al-Mansour’s 2012 filim Wadjda, although you can also see Vittoria de Sica’s 1948 film The Bicycle Thieves (1948) on Thursday evening. This weekend, “Welcome to Metrograph A to Z” will show Mervy Leroy’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Joseph Losey’s Accident (1967), both on Friday and Sunday, as well as Denzel Washington’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) on Saturday.
As part of “Russo’s Film Inspirations,” in conjunction with showing The Gray Man (see above), the Paris will screen Shoot the Piano Player and Bullitt in 35mm on the weekend, then To Live and Die in L.A., The Seventh Seal, and The Raid: Redemption next week.
FILM FORUM
The “Mifune Redux” continues through July 21 with more screenings of the Japanese actor’s work mostly with Akira Kurosawa. There’s lots of opportunities to catch some of the classics you may have missed.
Beginning a new series on Friday called “Movietown: Los Angeles Plays Itself and Other LA Visions,” screening Die Hard, The Terminator, The Long Goodbye, Sunset Boulevard, and much more, running through July 28 along with the three-hour 2003 doc, Los Angeles Plays Itself. There are many great films in this series and some great money-saving deals, as well, if you want to see more than one of them.
The “Messaging the Monstrous” series continues with more “Gender and Horror” including Mitchell Lichenstein’s Teeth (2007) later today, and 2000’s Ginger Snaps this evening. Friday, you get Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987) and Brain Damage (1988) and then the 1975 The Stepford Wives and the fairly recent, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair on Saturday. The next portion of the series about “Race and Horror” begins on Sunday with Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs (1991) and Wolven (1981), then this year’s Master and Beloved on Monday, as well as Tales from the Hood, Ganja and Hess, and of course, Jordan Peele’s Get Out on Thursday.
“Films of the Dead: Romero & Co.” continues with screenings of Romero’s Land of the Dead, the 1990 Night of the Living Dead remake, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, as well as Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. This runs through the end of the month. Also, Baz Luhrmann’s debut, Strictly Ballroom, will screen on Friday as part of “Musical Matinees” and guess what? I will be there to see it on Friday!
On Thursday, the Roxy will screen the oddly timely (again) Romanian drama, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 35mm, as well as Batman Returns and Cruel Intentions on Thursday in 35mm, and then another chance to see Cruel Intentions and Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on Sunday.
ETC…
AMERICAN CARNAGE (Saban Films)
LIVING WINE (Abramorama)
MY NAME IS SARA (Strand Releasing)
GONE IN THE NIGHT (Vertical)
Next week… Jordan Peele returns with his third feature film, the sci-fi thriller, NOPE.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.