The Weekend Warrior May 13, 2022
FIRESTARTER, FAMILY CAMP, THE INNOCENTS, JAZZ FEST, ON THE COUNT OF THREE, PLEASURE, MONTANA STORY, IL BUCO, And More
Well, this is fun… and by “fun” I mean, the utmost in suckage, because NEITHER of the weekend’s two wide releases had screenings or screeners available before release, so I probably won’t have too much to say about either of them, and you can probably just skip ahead to the rest of the column where I hope to review a bunch of other releases. Not that it really matters since Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will maintain its dominance over the box office for another week. (Hey, did anyone notice that I was off by just $80,000 in my prediction for Marvel’s latest? That rarely if ever happens, and that’s after twenty years of doing this!)
(I’ve been mainly listening to the new Arcade Fire album “We” this week… I’ve really become a bigger fan of the band after seeing them live in April… and watching a bunch of livestreams since then.)
FIRESTARTER (Universal)
The draw of Stephen King and desire for Hollywood to continually adapt and remake all of his best-selling books into movies and series continues with this new take by Blumhouse on King’s 1980 novel that was previously adapted into a 1984 movie starring a very young Drew Barrymore as Charlie McGee, a girl with the power to control fire. It makes some sense for Blumhouse and Universal to want to mine the original story for a modern-day movie, because there continues to be abundant interest in King’s work.
Of course, the best example of that was Warner Bros’ adaptation of It, directed by Andy Muschietti, which was split into two parts, the first one released in Sept. 2017 to an astonishing $123.4 million opening weekend – still the biggest opening for an R-rated horror movie. The sequel, It: Chapter Two was released exactly two years later to an opening of $91 million. Combined, the two movies made $540 million domestically and $1.1 billion worldwide, reinvigorating interest in King.
During that time, Paramount released a remake of Pet Sematary, which made about $54.7 million domestic (and about the same overseas), and Warners thought it could do well with an adaptation of King’s Dr. Sleep, essentially a sequel to The Shining. It only made $31.6 million in Nov. 2019 and a little more overseas.
Oddly, Universal didn’t release the original Firestarter, so Jason Blum and Universal clearly had to buy the rights from King or Paramount? Or maybe, someone else owned the rights? Who knows but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. Although filmmaker Mike Flanagan has directed a few King adaptations, this one is being directed by Keith Thomas, who previously directed an indie horror film called The Vigil.
As we all know by now, the cast of a horror film doesn’t really make much of a difference since it’s all about the premise and the marketing. So the fact that this stars a relative newcomer in Ryan Kiera Armstrong from American Horror Story might not matter much, although Drew Barrymore had already starred in the Steven Spielberg blockbuster, E.T. The Extraterrestrial before being cast in the original Firestarter. That puts a lot of weight on Zac Efron playing Charlie’s father, as the 34-year-old changes gears in his career after being a teen stars from being in High School Musical and its sequels, including the theatrically-released threequel, which grossed $90.6 million domestically and $183.8 million overseas. Since then, Efron has starred in a wide variety of movies including the moderate-sized hits 17 Again, New Years’ Eve, and The Lucky One. In 2014, Efron had one of his largest non-High School Musical non-animated hits by starring with Seth Rogen in Neighbors, which grossed $150 million, followed by a sequel that didn’t do nearly as well. He then had a series of misfires, though he did star in The Greatest Showman, which was a substantial hit though not necessarily due to Efron. In 2019, Efron played Ted Bundy in the Netflix movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, but the couple movies he was in since then, including this year’s Gold didn’t bring in much business.
An even bigger factor for how this movie might fare than the cast is that Universal decided to release the movie concurrently day-and-date on the Peacock streaming network, similar to how they released the sequel, Halloween Kills, last October, and Jennifer Lopez’s Marry Me earlier this year. The former still did pretty well since horror fans were still anxious to see that sequel in theaters, but Marry Me really didn’t do well, maybe because the Omicron variant of COVID was still running wild. Oddly, there’s a new variant that’s causing an uptick in COVID cases, but surely Universal didn’t know that when they decided to go the streaming day-and-date route with Firestarter.
On the other hand, they must have known that the movie wouldn’t be received very well or else they would have screened it for critics in advance, but at least here in New York City, they’re not even having a press screening and not releasing screeners before Thursday. That immediately sets off the alarms for most film critics, and I’m no exception, but at least Universal doesn’t have to worry about the presumably horrid reviews until Thursday, maybe after people already bought tickets and before the film’s stink starts permeating the internet.
Because of these things, I’m not feeling that strongly about Firestarter doing any better than Dr. Sleep, which opened with just $14 million, and even that seems high to me for this movie which doesn’t even have the benefit of being a first-time King adaptation. I’m thinking that this Firestarter will open somewhere between $10 and 12 million and probably on the lower side of that.
FAMILY CAMP (Roadside Attractions, KLOVE, Provident Films)
This is a movie I know even LESS about going into the weekend, but it’s a comedy from “The Skit Guys,” who apparently are a faith-based comedy duo who do… um… skits? I’ve checked out some of their stuff on YouTube and none of it seems particularly funny, but maybe I have to be a bit more religious to fully understand the humor. They definitely seem to be targeting the more conservative and religious right, which definitely isn’t me, but I wonder if that’s why I just really didn’t know much about them or this movie.
In some ways, the movie looks a bit like the movies made by Broken Lizard, a comedy troupe that I absolutely love, and who have had mixed success at the box office with 2002’s Super Troopers being a popular enough cult hit to lead to 2018’s Super Troopers 2, which only grossed $15.2 million. (One of my personal favorites was 2006’s Beerfest, which opened with $7 million (backed by Warner Bros.) and grossed $19.1 million domestic. Still, Broken Lizard is a different type of comedy.
In fact, I don’t even know how many theaters this will be released into by Roadside Attractions – I hear that it’s roughly 800 theaters – but this is a distributor who has had quite a bit of luck with faith-based films, its biggest hit being 2018’s I Can Only Imagine, which grossed $83.5 million domestically after an opening of $17 million. Maybe that will give some pause, but that was a very different kind of movie based on a hit song, no less. 2020’s I Still Believe, also based on a song, didn’t fare nearly as well, but it also gets the big old asterisk of COVID since it opened on March 13, 2020. I mean, it opened with $9.1 million but only grossed $10.4 million cause theaters all shut down.
It definitely feels like faith-based dramas have not been doing as big business with the most recent ones, American Underdog and last month’s Father Stu, only opening with $5 million or so, and Redeeming Love opening lower, but in January at the height of Omicron.
Even if a comedy might fare better in the current market, the fact that this will be targeted to places where the Skit Guys’ fans reside, probably in the heartland/South, and predominantly white I imagine, will limit how much this movie makes. Opening somewhere between 750 and 800 theaters, I’d probably put this somewhere between $2 and 3 million, so on the outskirts of the top 5 against much stronger returning movies.
THE CHART:
Although the #1 and 2 movies might be obvious this weekend, the fifth, sixth and seventh places might be close, although not knowing how many theaters Family Camp is getting, I’d be hesitant at putting it above some of the stronger returning movies.
1. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel/Disney) - $65 million -65%
2. Firestarter (Universal) - $10.8 million N/A
3. The Bad Guys (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $6.2 million -35%
4. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) - $3.8 million -37%
5. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) - $2.3 million -34%
6. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros) - $2.3 million -46%
7. Family Camp (Roadside Attractions) - $2.2 million N/A
8. The Lost City (Paramount) - $1.8 million -35%
9. The Northman (Focus) - $1.5 million -45%
This week’s “Chosen One” is… actually there are two. The first one is…
THE INNOCENTS (IFC Midnight)
This second feature from Norwegian filmmaker Eskil Vogt, who has co-written most of Joachim Trier’s films, including the recent Oscar-nominated The Worst Person in the World, is an eerie psychological thriller that is going to get more than a few comparisons to Stephen King. That makes it more than a little ironic that it’s opening the same week as a new version of Stephen King’s Firestarter, since there’s definitely some similarities in the storytelling.
The film takes place at a building complex in Norway into which young Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) has just moved with her family, including her older, autistic sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad). She meets a kid named Ben (Sam Ashraf), and they become fast friends as he shows her how he has figured out how to move objects with his mind. There’s another girl named Aisha who also comes into their circles by the fact she can communicate with the otherwise mute Anna, not that her parents believe Ida when she tells them.
Although the majority of this movie does involve those four kids, the movie gets pretty dark, because Ben is pretty horrendous, one of those kids who will kill a cat just to see what happens, something that indeed shocks Ida and makes her question being friends with him. But she continues to get into trouble with him, while Aisha instead decides to hang out with her new friend Anna, and it leads to a bit of a confrontation as the kids divide into factions, all of them experiencing
Vogt is a pretty terrific filmmaker. Although I’m not sure he’s ever forayed this far into genre territory before, he proves himself to be quite skilled at making the audience deeply uncomfortable and on edge as the story develops. I’m not going to get into too much about what happens, although if you’re familiar with Stephen King’s work, especially his stories that deal with kids, like Stand by Me, you have some idea how disturbing it is to see kids having powers that allows them to fight against bullies and eventually each other.
Honestly, skip Firestarter (which I haven’t seen as of this writing) and try to find this one, either in theaters or on VOD, because it is absolutely terrifying and easily one of the best horror films of the year. (In New York, it’s playing at the IFC Center and at Lincoln Center, and it’s a particularly great film to watch with an audience.)
Rating: 8.5/10
JAZZ FEST: A NEW ORLEANS STORY (Sony Classics)
Directed by producer Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern, this music doc – which as many of you will know is one of my favorite movie genres – is all about the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which just wrapped its 51st edition over this past weekend. (It was attended by 475,000 people, which is back to pre-pandemic numbers.) The doc was on-hand to capture the 50th anniversary of Jazz Fest back in 2019, and it combines a mix of talking heads interviews with some of the acts that were present with some of their performances which range from local acts to big national superstars like Katy Perry and Bruce Springsteen. But those two are anomalies compared to some of the regulars at the fest including Jimmy Buffett and Irma Thomas.
As much as the movie is about the musical acts at the festival, it just as ably delves into the other aspects of the festival, including the absolutely delicious food that one can get in between acts, and also the diversity of musical styles and genres being represented. While some might be interested in some of the bigger names like Pitbull (yikes) and Earth, Wind and Fire, it’s just as great seeing local acts like Dwayne Dropsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and various brass bands. Marshall and Suffern also capture an amazing reunion of the late Ellis Marsalis, Jr. with his four sons, including Wynton and Branford, which is just one of the film’s many amazing moments. (One quibble I have is that the great Tom Jones is interviewed, but we don’t actually get to see him perform.)
It’s somewhat amusing that this is being released so soon after QuestLove’s Summer of Soul won the Oscar, because that just automatically became far more high-profile after kicking off Sundance last year, while I’m not sure if that many people are really covering this, despite it premiering at [a festival that will not be named] just a few months ago.
But Marshall and Suffern really did an amazing job on this one with all the footage looking great as shot by Michael Parry, Justin Kane, and Boyd Hobbs, and editor Martin Singer, ACE, just doing a fantastic job pulling it all together into a cohesive whole.
While it’s too late for anyone seeing this doc getting to this year’s Jazz Fest (it’s over, remember?), the film does such a great job showing why so many hundreds of thousands attend every year and why it’s become a go-to destination for musical acts.
Now, we’re getting to a few movies that I saw at festivals last year, the first two at Sundance, and the third one at Toronto/TIFF, I believe…
ON THE COUNT OF THREE (UA Releasing)
Comedian Jarrod Carmichael – who just hosted Saturday Night Live based solely on the popular of his HBO Max comedy special apparently – makes his directorial debut with this dark comedy that premiered way back in January 2021 at Sundance. He plays Val, a guy who has dealt with a lot of personal hardships, but not as many as his best friend Kevin (Christopher Abbott), who suffers from depression and has been institutionalized for trying to kill himself. Val breaks Kevin out with the plan they can help each other by going through with a co-suicide pact. Before they do so, Kevin decided that if it’s going to be their last days on earth, they should make the most out of it and get back at those who have led them to this.
I was already a fan of Carmichael from his appearances in the Neighbors movies when I watched this, and this shows that the dark areas his stand-up special went is built into his desires to be a filmmaker, because On the Count of Three isn’t necessarily a “comedy” as much as it’s a dark drama with an inherent humor in the situations. It’s interesting that Carmichael deliberately cast Tiffany Haddish as Val’s girlfriend and JB Smoove as his abusive father, since they’re essentially comedic actors who are able to pull off some of the film’s more emotional beats while keeping it from being utterly depressing.
I’ve been generally impressed with Abbott throughout his career, but Kevin is a particularly juicy role for him, one that allows him to be mopey at times but also giving such a rounded performance, as we learn more about his past and how he was abused by his psychotherapist as a child. (Henry Winkler plays that psychotherapist in such a deliciously sleazy way.)
On the Count of Three may be too dour for people looking for the laughs Carmichael usually brings to his stand-up work, but it’s a fine feature directorial debut that gives him a chance to really branch out and gives others a chance to do the same. It’s quite a departure for Carmichael, but also shows that he can handle material that might not seem to be in his wheelhouse (kinda like Ben Stiller in recent years).
Rating: 7.5/10
PLEASURE (Neon)
Another Sundance premiere is this feature debut from Swedish filmmaker Ninja Thyberg, starring Sofia Kappel as a young Swedish woman who comes to Los Angeles to break into the porn business and become an adult film star, working under the name Bella Cherry. She soon learn that porn isn’t all glamour and sex, but it involves a lot of really vicious and vindictive people trying to get ahead by tearing others down, particularly the men who use their power to abuse the women just trying to make a living.
I remember watching this virtually at Sundance last year and being unsure of what to expect, but make no mistake, there’s a good reason why this is being released without a rating, and that’s because otherwise, it would probably be NC-17 with its graphic depiction of sex and abundance of male and female nudity. I mean, this isn’t exactly Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, but you probably should know going into this whether it will be your thing or if it might just be triggering. I mean, there’s nothing really particularly erotic about this movie, nor is it meant to be, as Bella learns the ropes and what’s involved with really making it in the adult film trade.
It’s actually somewhat educational, since Thyberg clearly did her research to learn what was involved with working in porn, including all the paperwork and legalities involved. As Bella learns, it’s hard to make and keep friends, as she ends up befriending her housemate Joy and then betraying her. The further up the ladder Bella gets, the more she deals with absolutely awful treatment by men who basically abuse her desire to succeed to get her to do things she might not have done otherwise. (And fair warning, the movie does get into some “butt stuff” that might be awkward to watch if you decide to go see this with a parent, which I would not recommend to my worst enemy.)
Part of the reason why Thyberg’s film works so well because Ms. Kappel is quite a fantastic actor, and this isn’t a role that merely involves being comfortable with nudity or simulating sex, but dealing with a wide range of emotions as we follow Bella on her difficult journey.
Pleasure is a particularly well-made and researched drama that brings an unnerving authenticity to its subject matter while driving home the point that porn is a pretty awful industry to try to succeed in. I’m not sure if that’s the message Thyberg was going for but it is one that comes across loud and clear regardless.
Rating: 7.5/10
MONTANA STORY (Bleecker Street)
Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s family drama premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last year, and it will be released in New York and L.A. this Friday and will expand over May. It stars Owen Teague as Cal and Haley Lu Richardson as Erin, half-siblings who have been apart for seven years until their respective father has a stroke and is lying in a coma close to death. Erin has been estranged after running away seven years earlier, and she’s uneasy about returning, but when she realizes that her brother is going to put their father’s horse Mr. T to sleep, she decides that she should take them.
I’ve been a fan of McGehee and Siegel going all the way back to The Deep End, starring Tilda Swinton, which came out (wow!) over twenty years ago. I’ve liked quite a few of their movies since then even if a few of them were rather lower profile. It’s hard to believe that their last movie, What Maisie Knew, which starred Julianne Moore and Alex Skarsgård, came out ten years ago, so I was pretty excited for their return.
Unfortunately, while this has two characteristically great performances by Teague and Richardson – and getting great performance has become the trademark of Siegel/McGehee’s films – this is not my favorite movie they’ve done, maybe because it’s kind of a weepy and dour drama but not a lot happens in terms of plot developments. Basically, Erin shows up after being estranged from her brother, making it quite obvious from the beginning she left home due to the actions of their father, though it’s a while before we find out why. Instead, we follow her as she tries to figure out how to transport the horse from Montana back to upstate New York, and we learn more about the half-siblings as they go on a trip to buy a trailer to do so.
The thing is that both are great, and the filmmakers have a gorgeous landscape to act as a backdrop for the drama in the Montana mountains. Other than that, this one comes across more like a play that would have worked just as well or even better on stage in terms of the family dynamics between Cal and Erin and dealing with their dying father. It’s more of a character study in some ways, as we learn more about them, but it’s not like anything major happens, which makes it somewhat of a chore to get through.
Unfortunately, Montana Story is not Siegel/McGehee’s most compelling or engaging work. That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily bad, since the two main actors do a fine job elevating what otherwise might have been a rather dreary drama. It’s just a slower and more meditative film than what we normally get this time of year.
Rating: 7/10
IL BUCO (Grasshopper Films)
Michelangelo (Le Quattro Volte) Frammartino’s is a bit of an anomaly, which usually is quite common for modern Italian films, but this one especially since it involves the 1961 exploration of Europe’s deepest cave, the Bifurto Abyss, but it’s done in a way that made me think for almost hour that this was just a rather boring cinema verité doc, but no, it’s actually a drama which recreates the 1961 event while also showing the last days of a farmer whose cattle herd continually intrude into the speleologist’s campsite. Once I figured out what was going on, it was easier to enjoy this, although the decision not to translate any of the dialogue with subtitles was just an odd decision that did not make it any easier to enjoy the experience watching this. It’s an interesting experiment that involved Frammartino and his actors spending hours inside these caverns filming, which does produce some amazing footage… but this isn’t going to be for everyone, that’s for sure.
HOMEBOUND (Brainstorm Media)
Sebastian Godwin’s psychological thriller follows a young woman named Holly (Aisling Loftus), who travels her husband (Tom Goodman-Hill) to meet his estranged family, only to find his ex-wife is missing and their children are behaving in strange ways.
THE LAST VICTIM (Decal)
Naveen A. Chathapuram’s directorial debut is a “neo-Western” survival thriller starring Ron Perlman, Ali Larter, and Ralph Ineson. The latter plays Jake, a killer whose gang commits a bloody murder that’s investigated by Perlman’s sheriff, but more importantly, it shows what happens when Larter’s character cross patches with the gang as they’re on the run.
JAYESHBHAI JORDAAR (Yash Raj Films)
The latest Hindi comedy from Bollywood will open in probably 300 theaters or so nationwide. It’s directed by Divyang Thakkar and stars Ranveer Singh and Shalini Pandey, making her debut as a lead actress in the Hindi film industry. Set in Gujarat, Singh plays Jayeshbhai, a man who becomes an unlikely hero for championing women empowerment in his village.
Streaming…
THE KIDS IN THE HALL (Prime Video)
I can’t tell you how excited I am that the Kids in the Hall are back for another season on Prime Video, along with a two-part documentary called The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks, which will debut next Friday. I actually got to watch two or three episodes of the new season, which is back to the original format, and the guys are definitely on fire. I haven’t managed to watch the doc yet, but will try to write more about it in next week’s column.
OUR FATHER (Netflix)
Luci Jourdan’s doc, co-produced by Jason Blum (busy guy), hits Netflix streaming this Friday, looking at a shocking case of “fertility fraud” surrounding Jacoba Ballard, an only child conceived via sperm donor who discovers through a DNA test that she has seen half-siblings, and as they set out to explore their family tree, they find out the horrifying truth, that their parents’ fertility doctor has been inseminating his patients with his own sperm. Yes, this the most horrifying version possible of Vince Vaughn’s Delivery Man. Yup, someone found a way to make a doc that’s even more disturbing than Three Identical Stranger, as hard as that may be to believe.
Other stuff hitting Netflix this week include John Madden’s WWII drama, Operation Mincemeat, starring Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Flynn, and Jason Isaacs. There’s also Senior Year, a new comedy starring Rebel Wilson, and a new series based on The Lincoln Lawyer. (Apparently, there’s also an animated Marmaduke movie on Netflix, but I heard absolutely bupkiss about that one, so…)
SNEAKERELLA (Disney+)
This original pop/hip-hop musical is set in the “vibrant street-sneaker subculture of New York City” in order to put a twist on the fairy tale, Cinderella. Chosen Jacobs stars as El, an aspiring Queens sneaker designer El, who works as a stock boy at a shoe store. When he meets Kira King (Lexi Undersood), the daughter of sneaker royalty, he is urged by his friend to go for his dreams. I haven’t seen this but it will stream on Disney+ starting Friday.
Odds and ends…
Up at Film at Lincoln Center, they’re kicking off the 29th New York African Film Festival, running from Thursday, May 12, through Tuesday, May 17. It opens on Thursday with Gessica Généus’ Freda set in Haiti, which last time I checked isn’t in Africa, but honestly, I never really have covered this festival even though there’s a lot of great films coming from Africa these days, and I’m sure there’s some great discovery stuff among the roster.
Repertory stuff….
I’m pretty excited about the ongoing “Late Night: Hong Kong Goes International,” which includes works by many Hong Kong filmmakers and actors as they work in Hollywood and European films. This weekend, you can see Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973), Chow Yun Fat’s Bulletproof Monk (2003), Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep (1996), and Ronny Yu’s Bride of Chucky (1998), and there’s lots more cool surprises over the next two weekends
“Playtime: Studio Ghibli” will screen Miyazaki’s 1986 film Castle in the Sky this weekend, on Saturday in Japanese with subtitles and on Sunday dubbed into English. The incredibly timely “It Happens to Us: Abortion in American Film” continues this weekend with screenings of Rashaad Ernesto Green’s amazing Premature (2019) and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), plus a variety of other movies that deal with the subject. (They’re even screening the 1987 classic, Dirty Dancing, just as they announce a sequel!)
This is also the 2nd weekend of “All them Witches: Inspirations for Lux Aeterna Selected by Gaspar Noé,” which will include screenings of Witchfinder General (1968), The Wicker Man (1973), Haxan (1922), and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) (the latter a terrific print, if I do say so myself). “Metrograph Presents A to Z” offers two films this weekend, Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela (2020) and Gregory La Cava’s 1941 film, Unfinished Business. Apparently, last week I missed that Metrograph is doing a retrospective of Cookie Mueller called “Stumbling onto Wildness: Cooke Mueller on Film,” which will include screenings this weekend of John Waters’ Desperate Living (1977) and Multiple Maniacs (1970), and Bette Gordon’s Variety (1983), and then Waters’ Polyester on Tuesday.
On Friday, the Paris is screening Brian De Palma’s classic Stephen King adaptation, Carrie (1976) as part of their series connected to the David Fincher-produced series, Voir, which is followed on Saturday by screenings of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009), the Coen Brothers’ True Grit (2010) on Sunday, Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise and Gladiator on Monday and Tuesday, and then John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967) and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven later next week.
The Mai Zetterling retrospective continues through the weekend and Sunday’s Film Forum Jr. offering is Follow the Fleet (1936), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
This weekend’s “Late Night Favorites” include David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981), the Hong Kong martial arts classic, The Heroic Trio (1993), David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), and the animated Perfect Blue (1997). They’re once again showing Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016) as part of “Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks” also on Friday and Saturday night quite late.
The Peter Bogdonavich retrospective continues through the weekend with 1975’s At Long Last Love on Wednesday afternoon (today!) and Saint Jack (1979) on Friday. “Forgotten Filmmakers of the French New Wave” (not really my thing) continues through the weekend, as well as “Movies from Earth.”
MOMI is launching a really innovative series, giving praise to one of the unsung heroes of Hollywood: The Cinematographer. “How It’s Done: The Cinema of James Wong Howe” runs from May 13 through June 26, paying tribute to the China-born cinematographer. This weekend, you can see Hud (1963), The Thin Man (1934), and Mantrap (1926).
“In the Images, Behind the Camera: Women’s Political Cinema 1959 - 1992” continues through Thursday if that’s your sort of thing.
ETC…
FOXHOLE (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
MAU (Greenwich Entertainment)
BUTTER (Blue Fox Entertainment)
THE VILLAGE HOUSE (Deaf Crocodile Films/Gratitude Films)
CASTRO’S SPIES (Gravitas Ventures)
MONSTROUS (Screen Media)
Next week… the popular people who reside within Downton Abbey return with Downton Abbey: A New Era, while Alex Garland returns with his horror(ish) film, Men, which I already reviewed here.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.