THE WEEKEND WARRIOR May 9, 2025

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD, FIGHT OR FLIGHT, SHADOW FORCE, JULIET AND ROMEO, FRIENDSHIP, NONNAS

I wasn’t sure if I was going to write a column this week because let’s face it, we’re one week into the summer, and we’re getting another one of those unsexy weekends where there are a number of wide releases, but many I either haven’t seen or don’t think will make much of a wave despite being in wide release. It’s also hard to talk about some of these movies when the studios don’t even release a theater count in advance, so what? I’m just supposed to guess these things?

This Sunday is also Mother’s Day and looking at three of the four releases, none of them seem like something you might want to bring Mom to go see… and the fourth, does anyone even know the movie exists? That is a real problem that there aren’t more movies that might appeal to women, and it looks bad for MGM Amazon, who could have released the Anna Kendrick-Blake Lively sequel, Another Simple Favor, to theaters this weekend and cleaned up… but nope, it’s on Prime Video, so I guess “stay-at-home Mom” will take on a whole new meaning this weekend.

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (RLJEfilms/Shudder)

Eli Craig, director of the great horror-comedy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, returns with this slasher flick based on the series of horror novels by Adam Cesare. It stars Katie Douglas (Ginny and Georgia) as Quinn Maybrook who has moved to the sleepy rural town of Kettle Springs with her doctor father (Aaron Abrams). Once there, they discover that the town has a crazy tradition surrounding the fact that the town’s main source of income, the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory, burned down, and every few years? Decades? The company’s clown mascot Frendo shows up and starts killing the kids.

The movie debuted at the SXSW Film Festival with stellar reviews, so I was really looking forward to it, but I was massively disappointed by the experience. RLJEfilms will be giving this its widest release ever into over 2,000 theaters as the film tries to surpass last year’s Late Night with the Devil as Shudder’s biggest theatrical release. That movie only opened with $2.8 million, but it expanded the following week and ended up grossing $10 million theatrically. This one has a little more competition in theaters, but a slasher is an easy sell to kids, and many of the other movies will already have been seen. You also have Cesare’s novels, which must be fairly popular, so I could see this opening with $4 million or more as it makes a play to open in the top five.

Over the past few years, I’ve started becoming less and less a fan of the slasher horror sub-genre with a few exceptions like Heart Eyes earlier this year and last year’s In a Violent Nature. Listen, if you’re going to make a slasher film, you have to offer something new and original, and I’m sorry, but killer clowns are nothing new to horror, cornfields are nothing new, and having a group of kids being wantonly slaughtered by clowns is not particularly original either. The fact that this ritual of clowns slaughtering kids on the town’s Founder’s Day makes me wonder if the creators of the awful slasher Founder’s Day may have borrowed liberally from Cesare’s novel, but at least Clown in a Cornfield is better than that.

Katie Douglas’ Quinn makes for an okay protagonist, although the film seems confused by pairing her up with Carson MacCormac’s Cole, causing jealousy in Vincent Muller ‘s Rust, who first meets Quinn on her arrival. We learn later that this jealousy is not for reasons we might assume. But otherwise, the main kids are surrounded by typical Gen Z stereotypes who are so annoying and unlikable that you never care much when they start being killed. In fact, at a certain point, you might feel that the wanton murder is justified. There are some fun pokes at the younger generation, like their inability to take things seriously even as they start dying.

As much I enjoyed seeing the likes of Kevin Durand, and even moreso, Will Sasso from Mad TV and The Three Stooges, they’re also wasted on the worst types of horror movie stereotypes, who offer nothing beyond those simplified roles.

The movie essentially turns into a Scooby Doo-level plot, without being particularly funny or scary or even fun in terms of the kills, because it follows so many of the slasher tropes we’ve seen done better elsewhere. At least this was better than last year’s Terrifier 3, but that’s not saying very much. As Craig’s follow-up to Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, this is disappointing.

Rating: 5/10

FIGHT OR FLIGHT (Vertical)

Josh Hartnett, who has been killing it in recent years from Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer to his movies with Guy Ritchie, to last year’s M. Night Shyamalan thriller, Trap, returns for this action movie from James Madigan, a second unit and FX guy making his feature film directorial debut. In the movie, Hartnett plays mercenary Lucas Reyes who has been commissioned by his former handler (Katee Sackhoff from the popular Battlestar Galactica reboot of a few years back) to track down a mysterious target on a plane full of killers, working with a flight attendant (Charithra Chandran from Bridgerton) to fend them off in a life or death situation.

As mentioned, Hartnett recently starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, which was fairly well received, opening with $15.4 million and grossing $42.8 million in North America and slightly less than that overseas. Before that he was in a Best Picture winner with Oppenheimer and he’s also been a regular in the movies directed by Guy Ritchie, including Operaton Fortune and before that, Wrath of Man, the latter doing significantly better despite opening in the midst of COVID in May 2021. This is a big movie for both Sackhoff and Chandran, neither of whom have really had many big film roles before.

Fight or Flight is produced by Basil Iwaynk of the John Wick franchise, who also produced other high-concept action films like Dev Patel’s Monkey Man and John Woo’s Silent Night, that last one also for Lionsgate. Monkey Man opened decently with over $10 million, but that opened in 3,000+ theaters while Silent Night opened with just $3 million in 1,870 theaters.

Apparently, this already opened in many European countries, so there are a lot of reviews out there already, and Vertical may have realized this is a fairly crowd-pleasing movie, by getting it placed as Regal’s Mystery Movie Monday to help build word-of-mouth. This opens in just over 1,600 theaters on Friday, which should help it open in the $3 to $4 million weekend, just behind Clown in a Cornfield.

I was pretty excited about this movie when I first started seeing the trailer, mainly because I’m really liking the fact that Hartnett is back and making so many interesting choices as he begins the second act as his career. The central premise for this high-concept action thriller isn’t that original, mainly since it follows a similar path as David Leitch’s Bullet Train a few years back, only set in a plane vs. a train.

We learn that there’s an enigmatic and dangerous individual known as “The Ghost” taking a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco, and Katee Sackoff leads an agency that needs to locate this individual and put a stop to their plans. The only person she can call upon in Bangkok is Hartnett’s Lucas Reyes, a washed-out former secret service agent who is well into his drinks. He agrees to take on the mission despite his reservations and once he gets on the plane, he learns that it is full of killers trying to kill “The Ghost” as well as Reyes himself. He ends up teaming with a flight attendant with special skills (Charithra Chandran) to fight them off while they are tens of thousands of feet in the air.

Again, Bullet Train is a big touchstone from this film, but so are the John Wick movies, since it’s so much more about the violent and gory action than the story or decent writing. For me, it feels like we already have had too many of these types of movies thanks to Wick and the movies of David Leitch, and this one doesn’t offer very much to set it apart.

The main three actors are mostly good for sure, often rising above the weaker writing and material, but they’re surrounded by a cast that are there more for their fighting skills than bringing any weight to their characters. The movie tries to be funny with the way it handles the violence and also with Hartnett’s character, who is in fact one that stands out amidst the mayhem. I didn’t think nearly as much of Katee Sackhoff’s character, as we’ve seen other similar character handled better.

Much of Fight or Flight relies on the groan factor of watching horribly violent kills, and I could see this appealing to those who just love such wanton violence in their action movies, but as with the slasher genre, I’m tiring of how cookie cutter these films have become. Despite the movie’s low budget, it was well filmed, apparently by the cinematographer/cameraman of The Raid. Despite first-time filmmaker James Madigan’s background in visual effects, those definitely seem to be lacking. It feels very obvious that much of the blood and gore is created using visual effects vs. being practical.

Ultimately, Fight or Flight ends up basically being on par with Flight Risk and Love Hurts from earlier this year, maybe slightly better, but to me, it was obvious that Madigan was a first-time director, since a filmmaker with more experience could have done more to make this a more tonally-balanced experience.

Rating: 5.5/10

Look for my interviews with Hartnett and Sackhoff over at Cinema Daily US soon.

SHADOW FORCE (Lionsgate)

Also, there’s another new action movie, this one from the far more experienced director Joe Carnahan (one of my favorite filmmakers and people), starring Kerry Washington and Omar Sy from the Jurassic World movies, as an estranged couple who were once part of a shadow ops organization who has put a bounty on their heads, sending them on the run from their former boss, played by Mark Strong (one of my favorite actors).

I haven’t seen this movie, and I’m not sure anyone has, but I’ll be honest that I was kind of looking forward to this movie and hoping to do interviews, but Liongate… and sorry for my blunt honesty here … have no fucking idea what they’re doing. Originally, this was supposed to open last week against Thunderbolts, which would have been absolute suicide, but then it got delayed a week, and now it’s opening against the (presumably) much-stronger high concept Fight or Flight starring Josh Hartnett.

I don’t have a theater count for this one at the time of this writing, but looking at John Woo’s Silent Night (cited above), this one looks like it might struggle to open with more than $3 million this weekend. Another Lionsgate bomb.

JULIET & ROMEO (Briarcliff)

Shakespeare’s classic romantic tragedy gets the musical treatment… again. No, seriously, did people already forget Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes? Sure, it’s been almost thirty years since it came out, and it’s not my favorite movie from Baz, but it’s odd that someone felt it was a good time to make another musical based on it, let alone Timothy Scott Bogart, who directed the biopic Spinning Gold about his father, record producer and Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart a few years back. This is pretty much how it sounds, but it’s a pop musical based on the “real story that inspired Shakespeare,” starring Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward. The cast also includes Jason Isaacs (who just made waves on HBO’s The White Lotus), the ubiquitous Rupert Everett, Rebel Wilson, Dan Fogler, Derek Jacobi, and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from Sing Street.

This is being released by Briarcliff into an unknown number of theaters, but I can’t imagine it’s more than 1,000, and with almost zero promotion and marketing, I can’t imagine this even gets into the top 10 with less than a million. I was hoping to find time to watch and review this, but I might not get to it before this column goes live.

THE BOX OFFICE CHART

I will mention once again that only one of the four new wide releases has reported an estimated theater count, making it extremely difficult to make any sort of educated prediction, but I only think one of them has a chance at opening in the top five, and even that isn’t definite. Essentially, this is another “dumper weekend” where smaller distributors are going to do their best to hope that moviegoers have already seen last week’s top movies and are looking for other experiences. Will it work? Probably not. And there isn’t anything that I feel will get a bump on Sunday for Mother’s Day either.

1. The New Avengers* (Marvel/Disney) - $34.5 million -54%
2. Sinners (Warner Bros) - $26.5 million -20%
3. A Minecraft Movie (Warner Bros) - $8.4 million -39%
4. The Accountant 2 (MGM Amazon) - $5.2 million -45%
5. Clown in the Cornfield (RLJEfilms/Shudder) - $4.7 million N/A
6. Fight or Flight (Vertical) - $3.6 million N/A
7. Shadow Force (Lionsgate) - $3.2 million N/A
8. Until Dawn (Sony/Screen Gems) - $2 million -48%
9. The Amateur (20th Century/Disney) - $1 million -47%
10. Juliet & Romeo (Briarcliff) - $800k N/A

*You suck, Marvel.

I didn’t get around to reviewing or writing about Alex Ross Perry’s semi-doc Pavements last week before it opened at the Film Forum in New York City, but it’s still playing there, just sans QnAs, as the movie will open in L.A. at Vidiots on Thursday night and at Landmark’s NuArt Theater starting on Friday with Perry and the band and doing QnAs over there on Saturday. If you have ever been a fan of Pavement, you’ll want to check the movie out

FRIENDSHIP (A24)

Paul Rudd and comedian Tim Robinson star in this darkly comic thriller opening in New York and L.A. this weekend and then expanding over the next few weeks to be wide over Memorial Day weekend. Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, who has mostly directed television and shorts, so I believe this is his feature directorial debut (?), Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a suburban Dad who isn’t too happy with his life but finds new meaning when he meets his new neighbor, weatherman Austin (played by Rudd). Craig immediately finds a new person he can bond with, but Austin soon has misgivings and tells Craig he no longer wants to be friends, as Craig’s life starts falling apart. The movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September and played at SXSW in March, so it’s already racked up a bunch of reviews with a respectable 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite the movie’s festival play, I went into it fairly blind, though I knew that it was going to be a mix of comedy and thriller, which was pretty much what it was. I wasn’t familiar with Tim Robinson at all compared to Paul Rudd, but Austin is a very different role for Rudd, since normally he would be the funniest part of any comedy, but here, he holds back to let Robinson shine.

Robinson’s Craig is the type of lovable doofus that’s on par with Steve Carell’s character from “The Office,” where he says and does things in such a dorky way, but you still feel for him and the fact that he is so awkward around other people. You also feel for Craig when it’s obvious that his wife (Kate Mara) has been having an affair with a man whom she keeps talking about, and he seems fairly clueless about that fact.

It’s definitely interesting to see Rudd in this kind of movie, since he has made other movies about friendship with Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, and David Wain, but his character of Austin is one that could have played more like a villain in the way he upsets our protagonist. Rudd takes things in a different route, and it’s his scenes with Robinson that really make Friendship a fun crowd-pleasing film.

I don’t have a ton more to say about this movie without seeing it a scond time, but Friendship is a strong feature debut from DeYoung and quite a breakout role for Robinson, whose comedy I’ll be looking to check out in the near future based on what he does in this movie.

Rating: 7.5/10

NONNAS (Netflix)

Hitting Netflix and select theaters this Friday is the new film directed by Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), starring Vince Vaughn as Joe Scaravella, a real-life Staten Island man whose mother died. To help honor her, he opens an Italian restaurant with actual grandmother as the chefs. Some of the actresses playing those grandmothers include Talia Shire, Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, and Brenda Vaccaro, so Chbosky has a decent cast for this one. Because Nonnas is under embargo until Thursday night, after this column goes live, I’m not sure I’ll be able to review it, though it will play at the Paris Theater starting Friday, as well as be on Netflix.

ABSOLUTE DOMINION (Giant Pictures)

Filmmaker Lexi Alexander, who directed the brilliant Green Street Hooligans twenty years ago (!!!), is back with a new sci-fi apocalyptic action movie set in the year 2063, involving a holy war between zealots and extremists that leads to a martial arts tournament called The Battle of Absolute Dominion. It faces the best fighters in the world to determine a champion to restore peace for the future. The cast includes Alex Winter, Patton Oswald, and a bunch of others that I don’t know, but Alexander is great at directing action, so I’m looking forward to watching this.

Up at Film at Lincoln Center, this year’s New York African Film Festival begins this Wednesday, but as with many of the series up there, I really haven’t been paying much attention to it. I’m sure that it has lots of great movies, but I just don’t have the bandwidth to cover something like this.

Other movies out this weekend…

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (Sideshow Films/Janus)
SEW TORN (Sunrise Films)
UNIT 234 (Brainstorm Media)
HENRY JOHNSON
A WU-TANG EXPERIENCE: LIVE AT RED ROCKS AMPITHEATER (Breaking Glass Pictures)

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REPERTORY

Yeah, not doing a column last week meant that I fell behind on the repertory stuff

METROGRAPH

The Metrograph’s Mother’s Day offering this Sunday is Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life from 1959. Also this weekend, you can celebrate “Night at the Cinema with Tyler Mitchell” (an artist I’ve never heard of) with screenings of Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Mati Diop’s 2019 film Atlantics, and Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005), starring Juliette Binoche.

This weekend also continues “Candy Clark: The Girl Who Fell to Hollywood” with screenings of Fat City but more importantly, Ms. Clark will be at the Metrograph on Saturday to do a QnA after George Lucas’ pre-Star Wars movie, American Graffiti (1973), and introduce Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), which literally just played at Metrograph in January.

I know less about painter Louise Giovanelli who gets a series called “Louise Giovanelli: Still Moving,” on the advent of a new exhibition, showing the Maysles’ doc, Grey Gardens (1975), Ulrike Ottinger’s Ticket of No Return (1979), Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ‘66 (1998), and Harmony Korine’s Gummo (1997).

The “Guided by Animals” series continues this weekend with one more screening of Isao Takahata’s 2013 Anime The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, which will be joined by Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are from 2009, so that’s two good reasons to bring the kiddies to the Metrograph this weekend.

Sadly, I really wanted to see A Christmas Tale as part of “The Time That Remains,” but it only played once on Friday night when I had other plans. This weekend you can see Judd Apatow’s Funny People, starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, from 2009, or you can do like me and do a double feature on Sunday with the Oscar-winning The Barbarian Invasions from Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand. Oh, did I mention that this series is about people dying from cancer. Cheery stuff, but honestly? No Love Story?!?

“Scenes from the ‘End of History’” is an odd series that I can’t even begin to explain, something about movies made at the end of the Soviet Union, that somehow includes Gremlins 2: the New Batch (which I saw this weekend, and it sucked), but also includes Alexsei German’s Khrustalyov, My Car! And Jean-Luc Godard’s Germany Year Ninety 90 Zero, as well as Chantal Akerman’s 1993 film From the East.

“Syd Mead: Illustrating the Future” continues this weekend with a single screening of Aliens: Special Edition on Thursday night and a single screening of Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland on Saturday. (I’m VERY bummed that they’re only doing one screening of the 1982 sci-fi movie Tron next weekend, which I’ve never seen on the big screen!)

FILM FORUM

René Clément’s 1952 film Forbidden Games gets a 4k restoration release with its story set in 1940 France about what happens when a five-year-old girl’s parents and dog are killed by a German fighters strike, leaving the girl (played by Brigitte Fossey) to deal with the aftermath with an 11-year-old farm boy, played by Georges Poujouly. It would be Clément’s second Oscar win after Purple Noon.

Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Claude LeLouch’s A Man and A Woman, both which must end on Thursday.

This Sunday’s “Film Forum Jr.” offering is one of Pixar’s greats, Brad Bird’s The Incredibles from 2004, so you can take the kids to see TWO Brad Bird movies this weekend.

IFC CENTER

“Time and Tide: The Films of Jia Zhang-Ke” comes to an end as the auteur’s new film, Caught by the Tides, is released. The rerelease of the 1987 film Withnail and I, starring Richard E. Grant, also will continue to play through the weekend, and the Faye Dunaway Mommie Dearest from 1981 also screens a few times this weekend. This weekend’s “Waverly Midnights: Ecstasy in Polychrome” offerings include Stephen Sayadian’s 1989 Dr. Caligari and Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond from 1986. Bertolucci’s 1993 film, Little Buddha, will also continue playing through the weekend.

VILLAGE EAST

There’s a lot more rep stuff here than usual this weekend including screenings of Parasite and Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality on Wednesday night, the Richard Curtis time-spanning rom-com About Time on Thursday (two screenings), Channing Tatum’s Magic Mike on Saturday (two options), and for Mother’s Day, you have a choice between Bridge Jones’ Diary, The English Patient (only one 2pm screening), and the animated Wolf Children. The ‘80s sci-fi classic (?) Flash Gordon screens in 35mm on Monday, again two screenings. Clearly, the Village East realized that the studios weren’t releasing anything appropriate for the moms and decided to program movies they may enjoy.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE

I guess the strikes at the Alamo have ended, so I can try to cover their repertory movies again. They’re currently doing an Alamo Time Capsule 1975 with Chantal Akerman’s acclaimed Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles screening in Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan on Saturday.. So that’s a lot of Akerman options for New Yorkers this weekend. On Sunday, as part of “Moms Love Movies,” they’ll be screening the musical Mamma Mia! At all three New York locations, but Ari Aster’s Hereditary is screening Friday in Lower Manhattan and Monday at Staten Island. The Anime Wolf Children is also screening both dubbed and subtitled on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, but only in Lower Manhattan.

ROXY CINEMA

Let’s see if the downtown Roxy is doing anything for Mother’s Day… Yup! There’s a free screening of the animated Cinderella, Barbara Stanwyk in 1937’s Stella Dallas, and Almodovar’s All About My Mother. That’s all on Sunday, although Stella Dallas is also screening on Thursday and Saturday. Michael Mann’s Heat is screening on Thursday and Friday, and 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath will screen in 35mm on Saturday. The very strange 1987 Ryan O’Neil movie, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, in 35mm on Monday.

JAPAN SOCIETY

The Japan Society up in midtown is beginning a new film series looking at the work of Mikio Naruse called “Miko Naruse: The World Betrays Us” running from May 9 through May 31, before continuing at the Metrograph in June. I’m not really familiar with his work, though the Japanese filmmaker had a four-decade career, and this is the first New York retrospective of his work in twenty years with 16 films playing at Japan Society, most of them showing on imported 35mm prints. (Friday night’s 70th anniversary screening of Floating Clouds is already sold out.)

PARIS THEATER

Besides screening William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. on Wednesday night, part of the ongoing “Academy Museum Branch Selects” program (picked by the Cinematographers Branch), “The Ingredients of Life,” tying into the release of Nonnas, will wrap up on Thursday with a screening of Tampopo on Wednesday night, and then Pixar’s Ratatouille, Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, the Wife and Her Lover, Babette’s Feast, and Julie & Julia on Thursday. There’s a showing of Ron Shelton’s baseball comedy Bull Durham on Saturday at noon presented by the New York Film Critics Circle, introduced by Matt Singer.

NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG

The series “All About Their Mothers” will show Xavier Dolan’s 2009 I Killed My Mother on Wednesday night at Propect Park, and also, Chantal Akerman’s 1976 News from Home on Saturday and Sunday at brunch time to coincide with Mother’s Day obviously. Also on Weds night at Prospect Park, you can see Mark Mylod’s The Menu as part of “Film Feasts” with accompanying courses for $125 a person!! (But that is already sold out.) On next Wednesday night’s “Adventures in Black Cinema” at Prospect Park, you can see Tim Story’s 2002 movie, Barbershop.

At Williamsburg on Wednesday night, you can see John Carpenter’s Christine (1983), and on Friday and Saturday near midnight, you can see Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010), starring Oscar winner Natalie Portman, as part of “Dance, Girl, Dance.” Williamsburg’s “All About Their Mothers” offering is John Waters’ Serial Mom (1994), starring Kathleen Turner, which will play Saturday and Sunday at brunch time… so yeah, that seems like a good thing to take your Mom to see.

MUSEUM OF MOVING IMAGE

MoMI’s “See It Big: Stunts!” series continues with the Asian martial arts classic, Johnnie to’s The Heroic Trio (1993), starring Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons – take Mom! – and its sequel, Executioners (1993) – which honestly, isn’t very good – Saturday and Sunday evenings in case you want to do a double feature. MoMI got the same idea as Nitehawk, and will be showing John Waters’ Serial Mom on Friday night and Sunday at 1pm.

Next week, it’s the release of my #2 most-anticipated movie of the year (which I’ve already seen!!!), Final Destination Bloodlines, as well as a few other odds and ends