THE WEEKEND WARRIOR PRINT EDITION for May 15, 2026
OBSESSION, IN THE GREY, IS GOD IS, FORGE, THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, MAGIC HOUR, DRIVER’S ED, Repertory Roundup
I decided against doing a video Weekend Warrior Show this week, not due to time (though that still continues to be a problem) or anything else, other than me not having a ton to say about the new wide releases this weekend with very few proper comparisons. I mean, the only new wide release this weekend with a big-name filmmaker or cast is Guy Ritchie’s In the Grey, and I won’t even be seeing that until it opens in theaters, so why would I want to spend time talking about a movie that a studio doesn’t want to show to me, right?
So for this week’s installment, I’m back to all-writing all-the-time, though I do have a great video interview with Katie Aselton for Magic Hour and a video review of our first movie out of the gate this week…
The widest new release this weekend is YouTube star Curry Parker’s OBSESSION, which Focus Features will release into over 2,200 theaters, hoping to scare the bejesus out of horror fans with its high-concept premise involving a young man with a crush on his best friend Nikki (Inde Navarette), who wishes on a mystical object that she would love him. Boy, does he get his wish! It stars Michael Johnston as Bear, whose overwhelming crush on his best friend and inability to do anything about it leads him to make a wish on a trinket that allows him only one wish. Little does he know that when he wishes for Nikki to love him, she really REALLY starts to love him, to the point where she won’t let him leave the house…. And things get crazier from there.
Parker’s film doesn’t have any known stars, which as I’ve said many times previously, isn’t that big a deal when it comes to horror. We’ve seen lots of horror hits without big name stars – and that should make Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Exorcist sequel/remake very interesting, since it’s ALL big-name stars. But Focus’ marketing for Obsession has really picked up in the last week, with an absolutely genius campaign involving texting Nikki, with posters that got progressively crazier and crazier, akin to Nikki in the movie. That’s very much in the vein with how Paramount pushed Smile and its sequel a few years back, and clearly, that sort of viral marketing works with the teen horror fans, who are likely to make Obsession their first choice this weekend.
I think Obsession is good for $7 or $8 million this weekend, maybe a little more, although there are back-to-back horror releases over the next two weeks that might make it tough for it to have any kind of legs unless it has great word-of-mouth. Anyway, you can watch my video review for the movie below.
Guy Ritchie is back with the crime-drama IN THE GREY (Black Bear Pictures), reuniting him with Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, and Eiza González, all of whom have appeared in movies directed by Ritchie in the past five years. Some of them were good; some were not. This one also stars Rosamund Pike, who I absolutely love, but sadly, Black Bear Pictures–who hasn’t been able to get a hit to save its attempts at being a distributor – has decided not to screen this movie in advance for critics. Since it’s doubtful many people even know this movie exists, that does not bode well for Black Bear’s continued existence as a distributor, which is a shame since they’re releasing one of my favorite movies of the year next week. From what I’ve seen in trailers, this is an action-thriller about “a covert team of elite operatives living in the shadows” who plan to commit a heist on a dictator’s billion-dollar fortune.
Ritchie’s most recent work has been producing and directing various television shows, and his last film, Fountain of Youth, was an Apple TV+ release. Before that, his last theatrical release was 2024’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, starring Cavill and González, a WWII action-comedy that opened with $8.9 million and made $20.5 million domestically, though that was also a Lionsgate movie released into over 2,800 theaters. I fully expect In the Grey to be in about half that many theters. Ritchie’s prior film was the war drama (Guy Ritchie’s) The Covenant, starring Gyllenhaal, which opened with $6.4 million in 2,611 theaters, that one being released by MGM. In fact, Ritchie directed three other movies since his big Disney live action adaptation of Aladdin, the filmmaker’s biggest theatrical hit to date, other than his 2009 Sherlock Holmes action movie, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.
Just going by Ritchie’s box office for his most recent two movies, starring three of the stars of In the Grey, one might presume this one to open with $6 to $8 million, but that seems overly optimistic, going by the limited marketing budget Big Bear seems to be putting into the movie. I also don’t have a theater count, but I’m presuming it’ll be around 2,000 theaters. Still, I doubt it will open with more than $4 million, so it will end up on the lower end of the Top 10.
Opening in around 1,500 theaters this weekend is Aleshea Harris’s violent revenge thriller IS GOD IS (Orion Pictures/MGM), starring Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as twin sisters Racine and Anaia, who travel to visit their mother Ruby (Vivica A. Fox), who they believe dead, having been set on fire when they were both younger, leaving them scarred, Anaia worse than Racine. Their mother’s dying wish to her daughters is to find their father and kill him, leading to a cross-country journey to find him. The movie also stars Janelle Monae, Lena Clark, and Sterling K.Brown.
Other than Michael and You, Me, and Tuscany, there haven’t been a ton of movies targetted towards Black audiences and nothing like Is God Is, which is a revenge thriller which might be of more interest to guys than women, despite the protagonists (and filmmaker) being women. Although this might come off a bit more like a Tarantino movie, it reminds me more of last year’s One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer (who is in next week’s I Love Boosters) and SZA, which opened with $11.8 million and grossed $50 million domestic. That benefited from being released by Sony and having two bigger-name stars, while even the more known stars in this like Fox, Brown, and Monea all have smaller roles, which might not help convince their fans to go out to see this.
Fortunately, the studio has made a decent trailer for this movie, though it still might be a harder sell, even for its intended Black audiences. It’s a shame this wasn’t this week’s Monday Mystery Movie or Screen Unseen, as some expected, since that would have helped. There’s also the matter of the awkward title that doesn’t say much about the movie or its plot, which is definitely a problem that won’t help. Still, I could see Is God Is opening with between $2 and $4 million this weekend due to its overwhelmingly positive reviews and strong word-of-mouth could help its legs, if it didn’t have to face Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters opening next week.
I really did not know much about Aleshea Harris’ strangely-titled debut feature before I first started seeing a trailer or two for it. From that trailer,it seemed like a rather bizarre anomaly of a film compared to what the film actually is in reality. The premise is fairly simple, following twin sisters Racine and Anaia (Kara Young, Mallori Johnson), who have both been scarred physically and emotionally since childhood, after witnessing their mother being set on fire by their father. Anaia got the worst of it with her face being horribly burned and left scarred. Now grown-up, the sisters receive a letter from their mother, whom they believed dead, urging them to travel South to visit her on her deathbed. They visit their mother (played by an equally-scarred, make-up-laden Vivica A. Fox), whom they refer to as “God,” she having created them, to learn she wants them to get revenge by killing their father for all he’s subjected on their family. This involves a cross-country trip where Racine and Anaia have to locate him through various colleagues and partners, few of whom care to help them much.
I really wasn’t familiar with Harris’ previous work, but what really blew me away about her debut feature is that it was based on her own play, and there’s absolutely nothing about Is God Is that makes it feel like something that originated as a play. Her film takes full advantage of the fact it’s essentially a road trip movie to all the locations to give it a grander scale, eventually ending up at their father’s luxurious house where the sisters encounter his new wife (Monae) and their two twin sons, who are maybe a few years younger than the sisters.
In some ways, the film reminded me of some of Tarantino’s work, partially due to the revenge aspect of the storytelling, but also how it casually mixes humor and violence without missing a beat. I wasn’t familiar with either of the leads, but they carry this film fantastically with Young’s Racine as feisty, aggressive, and outgoing, compared to Anaia being the quiet one. Some of the other actors, like Fox and Monae, have such small roles, it’s hard to really get much out of their characters other than the effect they have on the sisters.
There are some moments and character interactions that work better than others, but things really pick up when the sisters arrive at the house of their father’s new family. As with many movies, it’s more enjoyable when you don’t know what’s coming. Sterling K. Brown’s presence is felt throughout the film, as people talk about the girls’ father, but we don’t actually see him until the very end, and it feels like a very different role for the actor. It’s not that their father comes off like the horrible individual as he’s been depicted, because he seems quiet and kind, but we soon learn that’s a facade as Is God Is delivers a terrific last act confrontation.
Is God Is works in a very unusual way, as it merges a number of genres together, though it does so in such a cinematic way, few are likely to realize its source material was a play. Either way, the film’s bigger-known stars don’t leave nearly as big an impression as Harris’ two leads, who help carry this material and make it work as well as it does.
Rating: 7/10
Of course, this weekend also brings some anime in the form of MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM HATHAWAY: THE SORCERY OF NYMPH CIRCE (Bandai), which is based on the popular Japanese anime series that goes all the way back to the ‘70s. This is a new film adaptation of the original trilogy directed by Shukou Murase and produced by Bandai Namco Filmworks’ Sunrise Animation Studios with Kenso Ono voicing Hathaway Noa, who is leading a resistance movement against the corrupt Earth Federation. As with the original, this fight involves powerful mobile suits and takes place in U.C.0105. Having not really seen any of the original anime, I don’t have much to say about the movie, although I realized that I have a screener to watch, even though I’m not sure I’ll have enough time or context to properly review this new movie.
Universal are continuing their rerelease spree by rereleasing DreamWorks Animation’s early Oscar-winning 2001 hit Shrek back into theaters ahead of the fifth movie in the franchise (not including the Puss in Boots spin-offs) next year. These have generally shown diminishing returns, though some parents might want to share this experience with their kids.
Box Office Predictions for 5/15/2026
There’s really only the chance of one of this week’s new wide releases breaking into the top 5, so it’s all about which returning movie might make it to #1. With Lionsgate’s Michael returning to IMAX theaters this weekend, it stands a good chance at bumping back up to #1 over the other options. We’ll just have to see how much that and Prada 2 drop this weekend without the bump each received from Mother’s Day this past Sunday.
1. Michael (Lionsgate) - $23.8 million -40%
2. The Devil Wears Prada 2 (20th Century, Disney) - $22.4 million -44%
3. Mortal Kombat II (New Line/WB) - $15.1 million -62%
4. The Sheep Detectives (Amazon MGM) - $8.7 million -42%
5. Obsession (Focus Features) - $8.5 million N/A
6. Project Hail Mary (Amazon MGM) - $4 million -40%
7. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Universal) - $3.8 million -42%
8. In the Grey (Black Bear Pictures) - $3.4 million N/A
9. Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Paramount) - $3.1 million -55%
10. Is God Is (Orion Pictures/MGM) - $2.8 million N/A
– Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe (Bandai) - $1.6 million N/A
– Shrek Re-Release (Universal) - $1.5 million N/A
Box Office Data Provided by The-Numbers.com
Now, let’s get to some of the limited releases for the weekend, not all of which I’ll have time to review, but I’ll do the best I can.
Opening in L.A. on Friday at the Landmark Nuart and in New York at the Quad Cinema on May 22 is Jing Ai Ng’s FORGE (Utopia), starring Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Emily Lee, an FBI agent going after sibling art forgers Raymond and Coco Zhang (Brandon Soo Hoo, Andie Ju), who have been coerced by a millionaire in Miami to forge counterfeit masterpieces from his family’s art collection.
I heard about this movie a few months back, though I only realized later that this premiered at last year’s SXSW. Over the past few months, I’ve seen so many bad movies out of SXSW from the past few years, I’m glad I didn’t realize this fact before I watched it, because it’s a decent feature directorial debut from Ms. Ng, who had directed a few shorts prior to this.
We meet Andie Ju’s Coco as she’s negotiating with an art appraiser in a Miami motel for a piece of American art he thinks is worth shelling out $20,000 for. As her brother Raymond (Brandon Soo Hoo) watches the negotiations from across the street, we learn that these siblings have figured out a method of fooling even the most seasoned art experts into believing Coco’s forgeries are real. Raymond also has a “side gig” forging IDs and passports, which will come in handy later. While working at a Miami beach club, Raymond meets the wealthy scion Holden Beaumont (Edmund Donovan) who knows about the duo’s forgeries through a mutual friend. Holden is in serious financial troubles, not helped by the fact that his grandfather’s multi-million-dollar art collection has been ruined by water damage. He convinces Raymond and Coco to recreate the damaged art so that he can sell it. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the general gist.
One of the things that immediately struck me about Ng’s film is that this is very much an Asian-American story, full of things like Coco working in her parents’ Chinese restaurant and Raymond lying to his mother about being a successful banker. As I know from my decades in Chinatown and watching other movies, Chinese culture tends to be about maintainig “face” and that’s very much present in the scenes with the sibling’s parents.
Kelly Marie Tran’s Emily is in the art forgery department of the FBI, who has come down to Miami (also from New York, oddly) to investigate a series of forgeries and scams that we already know the Zhang siblings are responsible for. She’s good, but I thought Andie Ju was terrific, a beautiful young woman who has such an expressive face with many scenes where all of Coco’s emotions come from that even when she doesn’t have so many lines. Ng does an interesting thing with the film in that it doesn’t just spend all its time with the siblings or Emily but actually follows Holden and his fiancé, so we learn more about them, but also the art dealer acting as a conduit to find a buyer for Coco’s forgeries. That’s something that keeps the viewer invested in the story, because there are so many moving pieces.
With an abundance of crime, heist, and forgery movies this year, Forge may be one of the more pleasnt surprises. Ms. Ng has created something on par with Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can with strong writing and character developments, making Forge a movie that absolutely should be sought out.
Rating: 7.5/10
Katie Aselton (The Freebie) returns to write, direct, and star in her new drama MAGIC HOUR (Greenwich), co-starring Daveed Diggs, playing Erin and Charlie, a couple dealing with marital issues while staying out at a remote house in the Joshua Tree desert. As the film progresses, Erin starts to realize that things aren’t quite what they seem, as she has to come to terms with her new reality. Co-written and produced by Mark Duplass, the movie also stars Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond as Erin’s father, and I really enjoyed seeing Ms. Aselton back making more personal indie films such as this one. Magic Hour opens at the IFC Center in New York this weekend with tons of QnAs with Katie, her husband and co-writer Mark Duplass, and a few with Diggs. You can also watch my own interview with the filmmaker below:
A movie I saw at “Rendezvous at French Cinema” earlier this year – despite it not having a lick of French dialogue – that’s finally getting released theatrically, is Olivier Assayas’ THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN (Vertical), starring Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov, a Russian filmmaker who becomes advisor to Vladimir Putin (played by Jude Law) as he rises to power in post-Soviet Russia.
The film begins with Jeffrey Wright as an American journalist writing a book on a famous Russian author and meeting up with Dano’s Vadim, who has some memorabilia of said author. This is essentially a framing device for Vadim to tell his story, a rather typical biopic told in a fairly linear way. Granted, Assayas adapted this from a (possibly fictionalized) novel about this time period in Russian politics by Giuliano Da Empoli, so we follow Vadim through school, as he works as a filmmaker and theater director, finding his muse in Alicia Vikander’s Ksenia, a beautiful and intriguing woman we meet as she’s doing some sort of musical performance art in the period following the end of the Soviet Union.
Vadim ends up losing her when she meets his gregarious and rich friend Dimitri, played by Tom Sturridge, but he’s a character who appears so briefly before he and Vikander vanish from the story. Sturridge never returns, just adding to me wondering why that part of the story.
Law’s Putin doesn’t show up until about 45 minutes into the movie, making you wonder why this movie just wasn’t about him, since that’s essentially what might make this movie of any interest to anyone. Also involved in the plan to put Putin in charge is Will Keen’s Boris Berezovsky, one of the Russian oligarchs profiting after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The scenes between Law, Dano, and Keen are by far, the highlight of Assayas’ film in that it shows how Putin came to power.
I am not a fan of shitting on Dano ala another famous filmmaker, but his performance here is so bland and monotone, it’s hard for Vadim to hold much interest when not interacting with some of the other farmore interesting characters. Thankfully, Vikander does return later, because it would have been tough to maintain my interest with neither Law nor Keen bringing so much to
The Wizard of the Kremlin has many interesting aspect of Russian politics post-Communism, giving us a general idea of how Putin rose to power, though I’m guessing anyone who knows far more about this subject might find plenty of holes in Assayas’ biopic. The film is somewhat reminiscent of The Apprentice a few years back, since it’s also about a generally hated political figure, telling their story in a way that may be far more entertaining than any truth might have been.
Rating: 6.5/10
Peter Farrelly just had a comedy on Prime Video called Balls Up, and now, his younger brother Bobby Farrelly returns to theaters with DRIVER’S ED (Vertical), which will get a limited theatrical release and be available on VOD. It’s about a group of teens (including 2nd-gen actor Sam Nivola) who steal their Driver’s Ed car to go on a road trip to help a high school senior win his college freshman girlfriend back. The movie also stars Kumail Nanjiani as the driver’s ed teacher and Molly Shannon as the school’s Principal Fisher.
Apparently, Farrelly’s comedy played at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last year after being made by Amazon MGM, and yet, it’s not premiering on Prime Video or getting a theatrical release by MGM, so clearly, it got dumped and then picked up by Vertical for this minimal release. Having just rewatched There’s Something About Mary, easily one of the funniest comedies of the past thirty years, I’m just puzzled how far the Farrellys have fallen.
Sam Nivola plays Jeremy, a sadsack whose girlfriend Samantha (Lilah Pate) has gone off to college in Chapel Hill, forcing them to have a long-distance romance, but when he learns she won’t be coming back for Homecoming, he steals the car from the Driver’s Ed teacher (Nanjiani) and goes on a road trip with three other friends, despite none of them actual having their drivers’ licenses yet.
Literally as soon as you meet Sophie Telegadis’ Evie, you know she’s probably into Jeremy and there will probably be something between them, while Mohana Krishnan’s Aparna and Aidan Laprete’s Yoshi are essentially Asian stereotypes, her the brainiac, he the stoner. Nivola isn’t bad, though he’s literally a chip off his old block in that he has very little charisma, even if his character is likeable enough that you do root for him, despite Jeremy being such a pathetic sadsack of a loser. Despite being stereotypes, something that mostly comes down to bad writing, the four young actors are able to sustain the viewer’s interest better than you might expect.
Even so, there have generally been so many better iterations of this movie and not just recently, but over the past thirty years in which the Farrellys have beenmaking movies, including Todd Phillips’ early film Road Trip and two of my personal faves, Sex Drive and Euro Trip. It just seems odd that in this point in his career, the younger Farrelly would tackle the type of comedy that’s been done so much better.
A bigger problem is that the movie just isn’t very funny, even when it falls back on what would normally be its ringers in Nanjiani and Shannon, who just aren’t given anything particularly funny to do or say. (Nanjiani spends the entire film with both arms in awkward casts, because…???) Even worse is that the film just keeps getting sentimental as it tries to create more depth in these generally unexciting young characters by exploring their relationships.
Driver’s Ed is just so obvious and predictable from beginning to end, but worst than that, it’s just not very funny, and that’s just hugely disappointing. Have both of the Farrellys just completely forgotten how to be funny?
Rating: 5.5/10
The Spanish animated film DECORADO (GKIDS) from filmmakers Stephanie Sheh and Alberto Vázquez (the latter whom also wrote the film) will open at the IFC Center on Friday, as well as other theaters I’d imagine. It follows the life of a mouse named Arnold who is having a mid-life crisis, living in a world that’s an artificial theater set, leading him to search for a more realistic reality. I hope to have time to watch the rest of this one, but from what I did watch, it’s pretty strange.
Also opening in New York, this time over at the Quad Cinema, is David Usui’s verité doc, BEEN HERE STAY HERE (Grasshopper), which looks at the Chesapeake Bay area of Tangier Island, a close-knit Christian community known for its crabbing, a lifestyle being threatened by rising waters. I knew right away that this wasn’t going to be my thing, cause I’ve rarely been a fan of cinema verité, and this subject and the people held zero interest for me. Either way, this will also open in L.A. at the Laemmle Theaters, beginning on Wednesday night, May 27.
Now playing on Disney+ is THE PUNISHER: ONE LAST KILL (Disney+), starring Jon Bernthal and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Bob Marley: One Love), which I assumed would act as a tie between the recent second season of Daredevil: Born Again and July’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. In actuality, it’s a standalone 47-minute special that follows Bernthal’s Frank Castle (aka The Punisher) as he’s going through a bit of an existential crisis after killing off the Gnucci crime family who were responsible for the death of his wife and daughter. Little does Frank know that he’s about to encounter the family’s matriarch, Ma Gnucci, as played by Judith Light from Broadway and “Who’s the Boss?” as well as all-out mayhem as gangs of hoodlums run wild on New York City. There’s no mention of Spider-Man or any other part of the MCU (including Daredevil), and the situation with Ma Gnucci is left unresolved, so maybe Marvel is planning another The Punisher series after his appearance in the upcoming Spider-Man movie? Who knows? I probably should have watched more of the Netflix Marvel shows while I still had access to Disney+... maybe I’ll catch up on that stuff someday, but for now, I really need to stay focused on movies and music.
Also out this weekend…
AN ENEMY WITHIN (Saban Films)
AGATHA’S ALMANAC (Icarus Films)
THE REPERTORY ROUNDUP
This Friday, Kimi Takesue’s 2016 doc 96 and 6 to Go will play at the DCTV Firehouse Cinema as a one-night-only “special event” commemorating her entire filmography streaming on the Criterion Collection. 96 and 6 to Go is a film about the filmmaker’s 96-year-old grandfather Tom in Hawai’i. I actually interviewed Ms. Takesue as one of my last interviews at Above the Line, and you can read that interview here.
Over at FILM FORUM, FLEISCHER “père et fils” continues through May 28 with a retrospective of legendary cartoonist Max Fleischer and his son, Richard Fleischer. This has been a pretty amazing series so far, and there’s some great stuff this weekend, including “Fleischer Head Cartoons” on Saturday, as well as Fleischer’s Superman shorts and “Oddball Fleischer” on Sunday, as well as a replay of “The Evolution of Betty Boop.” That’s not to discount the work of Richard, who made some great films with a trio of sci-fi films – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Soylent Green, and Fantastic Voyage – on Saturday. This Sunday’s “Film Forum Jr” offering is Fleischer’s animated Hoppity Goes to Town (1941). While I love regularly seeing Fleischer cartoon shorts at Metrograph as part of Tommy Stathes’ “Saturday Afternoon Cartoons,” this series is one of the better ones at Film Forum with lots more to come. So happy that my pal Phil Hartman’s No Picnic has been extended once again until May 21 – if you want to see what the East Village was like in the mid-80s, this is the movie for you! Luchino Viconti’s Bellissima has also been extended. Next Tuesday’s “The Lubitch Touch” is 1934’s The Merry Widow in 35mm, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanett McDonald.
Over at the METROGRAPH, the “Wallace Shawn: The Master Builder” continues this weekend, and pretty much every Friday with Shawn appearing in person. This Friday, they’re showing Louis Malle’s 1994 film Vanya on 42nd Street with a QnA with Shawn and his good friend Andre Gregory, as well as Davis Hare’s 1997 movie The Designated Mourner with filmmaker Thelma Hammel moderating that QnA.
That series is curated by actors Lucas Kane and John Early, the latter who has a great movie called Maddie’s Secret coming out next month, and Metrograph is keeping the love going with “Thrust It!: The Films That Inspired Maddie’s Secret,” in which Early will present exactly that, beginning this Sunday with
Jill Sprecher’s 1997 indie film Clockwatchers, starring Parker Posey, Toni Collette, Lisa Kudrow, and Alanna Ubach, as well as John Waters’ 1981 film Polyester.
“The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters” continues this weekend with the anthology New York Stories (1989) with segments by Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen being one of the standouts on Saturday, as well as a screening of Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film Basquiat (in black and white!) with Schnabel doing a QnA.
“The Dog Dies” screens the David Fincher-directed Alien 3 (1992) on Friday night, and then Don Bluth’s Disney animated movie All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) and JC Chandor’s Margin Call (2011) on Saturday. I do not recommend taking the the kiddies to the first two of those as a double feature.
“Fraenkel Gallery Presents” with films selected by various artists from San Francisco’s Fraenkle Film Festival, will show Ari Aster’s Hereditary on Friday night and the Japanese thriller The Face of Another on Saturday night. Metrograph’s latest HK series “The Last Dreamers” will screen Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels (1995) a couple times this weekend as well as the 1992 film I Have Graduated.
Mother’s Day may be in the rearview mirror but “All the Single Mothers!” will continue screening Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter (2022) on Saturday and Ozu’s Late Autumn (1960), Grey Gardens (1975), and Fincher’s Panic Room (2012) on Monday. “Spotlight on Moon So-Ri” is showing two Hong Sang-soo movies on Sunday – 2014’s Hill of Freedom and 2010’s Hahaha – so expect Dennis Lim from Filmlinc to be there in the front row/
Speaking of FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER, opening for a nine-day run up at FilmLinc is the new series “Korean Cinema’s Celluloid Fever: The 1970s,” which will include Kim Ki-Young’s Woman on Fire (1970), Ieodo (1977), and A Woman After a Killer Butterfly (1978), as well as Kim Soo-yong’s Night Journey and A Splendid Outing, both from 1977, and movies from Lee Doo-young and Lee Jang-ho. Basically lots of Korean filmmakers with similar names, but a lot of movies that may never have been shown in the US if not for this retrospective. Despite not knowing much about this era of Korean films, I half wish I lived closer to Lincoln Center and could afford to check out some of these movies. Sadly, money and time are both a premium right now.
IFC CENTER will begin to screen a new 4K restoration of Elaine May’s 1971 rom-com A New Leaf, starring Walter Matthau and May on Friday, while continuing to play a 4k rerelease of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher, but only on Friday and Saturday late. A few of the films associated with the “Modern Romance: Renegade Rom-Coms” series continues with daily screenings of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude (1971) and The Graduate. The 6K 3D rerelease of Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) continues through the weekend as well. Some films in the “Blue Films: Transgressive Cinema” series continues as well.
“Pop Star Vehicles, Vol. 3” (focusing on pop stars turned film composers) continues this weekend at NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK with Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz (1978), starring both Diana Ross AND Michael Jackson on Saturday and Sunday at brunch time, and Alejandro Landes’ Monos on Monday night. WILLIAMSBURG is also taking part in that series with Michael Mann’s Thief on Wednesday night (probably last night depending on when I post this) and then again on Tuesday night.
It’s been a while since I checked out on Astoria’s MUSEUM OF MOVING IMAGE, mainly because I do not like travelling out to Queens on the weekend, but they’re screening Takeshi Koike’s anime Redline (2009) on Friday night and Saturday afternoon and Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) on Saturday, a leftover from Mother’s Day.
The PARIS THEATER begins its new series “Never Say Die: Ageless Adventures That Built The Boroughs,” which as you can guess, is tied into the new Netflix supernatural series, “The Boroughs,” which I know nothing about. The series will be showing some classics,though, in Cocoon, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, The Dark Crystal, Poltergeist, Super 8, Thelma and Louise, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Fright Night, The Lost Boys, and are you kidding me? The Goonies?!? Seriously, if I had more money, more time, and lived closer to midtown, and didn’t hate travelling to midtown on the best of days, then I’d be all over this series.
Other theaters doing rep stuff around town (and on Long Island) include…
BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)
Next week is Memorial Day weekend, marked by the return of “Star Wars” to movie theaters for the first time since 2019 (not including rereleases) as The Mandalorian and Grogu, along with the Paramount horror film Passenger, and Boots Riley’s heist comedy I Love Boosters.