Well, whaddya know? Here it is March and I'm excited about two new releases. I highly recommend On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, which I caught at the Twin Cities Film Festival last year, and I've heard good things about the new baseball flick Eephus.
Special Screenings
Thursday, March 20
Origin Story (2018)
Alliance Française
A woman searches for her biological father. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
Rad Day 2025
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
Your annual chance to catch Rad, the 1986 BMX racing movie. $13.40. 7 p.m. More info here.
Boom: A Film About the Sonics (2018)
Cloudland
The great PNW garage band gets their due. $13. 7 p.m. More info here.
Hop (2011)
Emagine Willow Creek
Russell Brand is the Easter Bunny’s teenage son? Under no circumstances. $4.60. 12 p.m. More info here.
Mullholland Drive (2001)
Emagine Willow Creek
Yeah, it’s pretty great. $11.60. 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. More info here.
House (1977)
Grandview 1&2
In March? Is that allowed? Also Sunday. $14.15. 9:15 p.m. More info here.
Elvis: That’s the Way It Is – Special Edition (1970)
Heights Theater
The King at the peak of his Vegas era. $13. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Friday, March 21
Lost Highway (1997)
Alamo Drafthouse
I gotta say, with its nu-metal vibe and its Marilyn Manson appearance, this one has always felt a little too much of its time (derogatory). $10. Friday, Monday 8 p.m. Sunday 7:30 p.m. Tuesday 3:30 p.m. Wednesday 4 p.m. More info here.
Mini Espías (2001)
Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center
I love that this is what Spy Kids is called in Spanish. Free. 6 p.m. More info here.
Phantom Thread (2017)
Trylon
I giggled so much at the ending the first time I saw this. My favorite PTA hands down. $8. Friday-Saturday 7 & 9:30 p.m. Sunday 3 & 5:45 p.m. Monday-Tuesday 7 p.m. More info here.
Saturday, March 22
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Alamo Drafthouse
The casting here is just so good. Rip Torn as a horny king and Asia Argento as du Barry? I mean… $10. 4:30 p.m. Sunday 12:20 p.m. More info here.
Belle (2021)
Walker Art Center
This animated Japanese film screens as part of the Middle School Movie Club. Free. 1 p.m. More info here.
“Cinema Is of the Mind Anyway”
Walker Art Center
Artists Jordan Lord and Tiffany Sia share films that address media literacy and disinformation. $12/$15. 7 p.m. More info here.
Sunday, March 23
Donnie Darko (2001)
Emagine Willow Creek
Have you re-watched this as an adult? Just wonderin’. $10.50. 12 & 5:30 p.m. Wednesday 3:45 & 6:30 p.m. More info here.
Monday, March 24
Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Alamo Drafthouse
Check out an advance screening of the Paul Rudd/Jenna Ortega unicornicide comedy. Also Wednesday. $15.45. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)
Emagine Willow Creek
A Mexican girl joins a street gang after her mother disappears in this dark fantasy film. $7.60. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Heights Theater
The Billy Wilder classic, preceded by the 1928 short The Life and Death 9413 a Hollywood Extra. $16. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Bob Trevino Likes It (2024)
Main Cinema
Two people strike up an unlikely friendship. Free for Film Society members. 7 p.m. More info here.
Tuesday, March 25
Girls Town (1996)
Alamo Drafthouse
Director Jim McKay made some good little movies before he turned to TV. $7. 7 p.m. More info here.
Wednesday, March 26
Live at the Met: Le Nozze de Figaro
AMC Rosedale 14/AMC Southdale 16/Emagine Willow Creek/Marcus West End
The Nose of Figaro? $26.05. 12 p.m. More info here.
Double Agent 73 (1974)
Emagine Willow Creek
A spy has big tits. $7.50. 7:30 p.m. More info here.
Imagine Dragons: Live From the Hollywood Bowl
Emagine Willow Creek
Unfortunately, they seem to be pretty decent guys? $16.60. 6 p.m. More info here.
Fly Fishing Film Tour
Parkway Theater
The annual collection of fly fishing flicks. $15/$23. 6 p.m. More info here.
Women’s Adventure Film Tour
Parkway Theater
Women be adventuring. $16.13/$21.20. 9 p.m. More info here.
Cult Film Collective Secret 16mm Show
Trylon
Sorry, it’s sold out. 7 p.m. More info here.
Opening
Follow the links for showtimes.
The Alto Nights
De Niro vs. De Niro.
Always Have and Always Will
Two Chinese girls become rivals.
Ash
Flying Lotus made a movie. I’m curious.
The Assessment
In the future, couples need permission to breed. Hm, that doesn’t seem like the dystopia we’re headed towards.
Eephus
We haven’t had a good baseball movie in a while, have we?
Disney’s Snow White
I’ll stick with the cartoon, thanks.
Locked
A would-be SUV thief is trapped in the vehicle by a nasty vigilante.
Magazine Dreams
Long-delayed due to Jonathan Majors’s, uh, issues.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Dressed like Missy Elliott in the video for "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)," a woman named Shura (Susan Chardy), who has recently returned to her home country of Zambia, is driving home from a party at night when she spots her Uncle Fred’s corpse in the road. That’s how writer/director Rungano Nyoni’s second film begins, with Shura a modern, westernized woman who seemingly wakes up in the middle of an ancient folk tale. But though the absurdist humor persists, the film gets darker as the long funeral preparations wear on and Sura’s female cousins discuss Uncle Fred’s abusive past. As with her previous film, I Am Not a Witch, Nyoni sees much of her nation’s traditions as a smokescreen that conceals how petty male buffoons cling to their power. Chardy is remarkable as the quiet Shura who is forced into action, and Nyoni herself is just as observant as her lead, never overplaying the drama but letting her imagery speak for her as the repercussions slowly sink in. A-
Ongoing in Local Theaters
Follow the links for showtimes.
Anora
From Kitana Kiki Rodriguez’s enraged trans sex worker in Tangerine to Simon Rex’s washed up porn star in Red Rocket, Sean Baker knows how to let a character loose upon a movie, and Mikey Madison’s Ani may be the most fully realized of Baker’s high-powered, self-deluded survivors. A stripper and occasional escort whose charm and sheer self-determination haven’t failed her yet, she’s eking out a life in Brooklyn’s least glamorous southern reaches. (Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island are captured in all their drab, offseason outer-borough-ness.) Her life changes after a dance for a Russian oligarch’s son parlays into a paid fuck, which in turn goes so well he hires her for an extended stint. Baker captures their whirlwind spree through all forms of excess, ending with a Vegas wedding, as an audiovisual sugar rush that makes Pretty Woman’s shopping montage look like amateur hour. But when Ivan’s parents find out, they sic his handlers on him; he runs off like the spoiled little fuckboy we always knew he was and Ani is left to unleash her rage on the hired muscle as they hunt for him. Madison can be as subtle here as she was on Pamela Adlon’s Better Things and even more furious than she was in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood before Tarantino thought it’d be a hoot to immolate her with a flamethrower. This decade, we’ve seen plenty of commoners enter the worlds of the wealthy, often ending with fantasies of vengeance. Anora’s trip through the looking glass ends on a far more ambiguous note. A
Becoming Led Zeppelin
I’d hoped that the sensory bludgeoning of IMAX Zep would be ideal Super Bowl counterprogramming last Sunday, but this all-too-authorized doc (no sex or drugs or mudsharks) is way scarcer on live footage than I’d been led to believe. Well, actually there’s lots of footage (and hell, I’d watch silent film of John Bonham slapping and stomping) but too much of it is set to the studio recordings. The ’60s studio recordings, that is—Becoming Led Zeppelin is true to its name, wrapping up with the band’s Royal Albert Hall homecoming in 1970, which I’d honestly rather watch in full rather than listen to so much jawing from three elderly Brits who really need to get over a certain 1968 Rolling Stone review already. (At least give me visuals of the wonderfully sloppy Eddie Cochran covers that are instead relegated to the credits.) Those studio LPs do sound great over a cineplex soundsystem, of course, but first you’ve got to wade through 45 minutes about skiffle and life as a ’60s session man in London. Some of that's engaging enough, but sorry I did not pay $20 to see and hear Lonnie Donegan and Lulu in The World’s Most Immersive Movie Experience. B
Black Bag
I’m not saying Steven Soderbergh’s second release of 2025 offers nothing more than well-dressed attractive people in swank settings trying to outwit one another for 90 minutes—but if it did, would that be so awful? Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are married spies George and Kathryn; he’s a stone-faced expert at ferreting out lies and she’s, well, Cate Blanchett. When George is tasked with discovering who leaked a sinister program to Russian dissidents, he invites the suspects (including Kathryn) to a dinner party where the chana masala is laced with a truth drug, with hilarious (and violent) results. That scene is neatly mirrored by an “I expect you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today” finale—screenwriter David Koepp, who’s made a living off Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and late-model Indiana Jones sequels, has clearly always wanted to wed le Carré and Agatha Christie. (There’s also just a touch of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Soderbergh’s digital camerawork, with its occasional glares and bends and blurs, isn’t exactly made for the big screen, but it does have its nice touches, like the long introductory shot that follows Fassbender from behind into the bar where he learns of his mission, or a fishing boat shot from below the waterline. In George, the director has a character just as clinical and masterful as he himself can be, yet for all the geopolitical intrigue and lives on the line, the stakes feel comfortably low. Above all, this is a parlor game, and our only concern is whether its hot married leads will get back to having hot married sex. A-
Captain America: Brave New World
The Captain America movies are where the MCU gets “serious,” where comic book idealism clashes with the dark side of U.S. history, where unfettered heroism encounters the restraining forces of bureaucracy. With Anthony Mackie inheriting the shield, Brave New World adds race to that equation. After shouldering endless Steve Rogers comparisons, Mackie's Sam Wilson gets a little speech where he wonders if he'll ever be enough, while for contrast we have Isaiah Bradley (Carl Bradley), an older Black super soldier who’d been imprisoned by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) nearly gets us into a war with Japan (couldn’t be China—Disney needs that big overseas market) over adamantium, a new substa—ah, you know, don’t worry about it. Since in the real world, an authoritarian prez is seeking to purge the military (and everywhere else) of non-whites while saber-rattling with the nation’s historic allies, theoretically the film’s themes should resonate, at least in a half-assed pop culture thinkpiece kinda way. But this slapdash entry is more concerned with callbacks to the MCU D-list like the Eternals and 2008's The Incredible Hulk. Its one big reveal (unless you’re genuinely wondering, “Will Liv Tyler appear?”) was torpedoed by the need to fill seats: This would have been 10 times more fun if we didn’t know Ford was gonna Hulk out at the end, but the theaters would have been ten times emptier if the trailers didn’t spoil that. Brave New World is about one thing only: The MCU struggling to justify its continued existence. C
A Complete Unknown (read the full review here)
Timothée Chalamet’s relative success here—he gets that Bob Dylan himself has always been a guy performing as Bob Dylan—is just one reason that James Mangold’s new biopic is so relatively un-embarrassing. The source material also helps: Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! is a thoroughly researched and reported account of Newport ’65 that’s preceded by an even-handed evaluation of what was at stake. Wald represents the ethos of the folk scene with a respect that rockist triumphalists could never see past their ingrained generational narratives to allow, and the film’s climax, Dylan’s amplified defiance of the Newport folkies, doesn’t feel as triumphant as we might expect. Dylan comes off less as a genius coming into his own than a cornered, confused guy lashing out at whoever comes closest; when his pal Bobby Neuwirth asks him point blank who he wants to be, it’s hard not hear a hollowness in the defiance of Dylan's reply: “Whoever they don’t want me to be.” When he returns to visit Woody Guthrie one last time after Newport, reflecting on what he’s done and lost, Bobby Zimmerman is now as completely Bob Dylan as Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. How does it feel? Not great, Bob. B
Conclave—ends Thursday
Edward Berger may think he’s cooked up something more substantial than a chewy Vatican potboiler here—a meditation on faith in the modern era, or some other middlebrow (papal) bull. Who knows and who cares? The crowd I saw it with thought Berger’s flamboyant pope opera was funny as hell (pardon the expression, Father) and they were right. Watching old guys from around the world in funny clothes politic, gossip, and backstab is just solid entertainment. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine milks everything he can from the ornate setting and bright costumery, and this cast knows how to project an ominous seriousness that’s forever camp adjacent. We’re talking Ralph Fiennes working his timeworn visage of existential indigestion, John Lithgow looking more like Donald Rumsfield than ever, Sergio Castellitto as a gregarious bear who wants to repeal Vatican II, Isabella Rossellini as a mysterious nun, and, for the ladies, a little Stanley Tucci. You’ll guess most of the twists, groan at some, and even get blindsided by a few. Still, without giving too much away, it’s hard not to notice that none of the scandals here are as horrific as those the Catholic Church has covered up in real life. B+
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
Flow
Every house cat stalks through its domain like some fierce jungle predator indifferent to any challenge. Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis calls that supposedly independent beast’s bluff, tossing a kitty into a flood and saying “How tough are you now, huh puss?” Flow is in part a unique hangout movie, a kind a postdiluvian animal Real World where a prickly black cat is forced to coexist on a boat with a wounded secretarybird, an acquisitive lemur, a stolid capybara, and an all too friendly Lab. None of the critters speak—aside from knowing how to work a rudder, they generally behave as animals would. And while the computer animation isn’t exactly beautiful, and can’t avoid an occasional cutscene quality, we pass through computer-generated environments with an unmatched three-dimensional ease that's its own reward. Though we never learn what happened to the humans—Flow is blessedly free of any backstory—there’s also an element of wish fulfillment here. If humans ever do finally off themselves en masse, it suggests, at least the animals we love will find ways to survive. If they learn to work together better than humans did, that is. A-
I’m Still Here
There’s a lot to admire about Walter Salles’s newest film, which documents the struggle of Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) to learn the truth about what happened to her dissident husband Rubens (Selton Mello) after his abduction by the Brazilian military dictatorship. Mostly there’s Torres’s performance, which projects an astonishing dignity and perseverance. (As a nice touch, Torres's mother, Fernanda Montenegro, the jaded teacher from Salles’s 1998 breakthrough Central Station, plays the older Eunice.) Salles’s timing couldn’t be better: Surely the film’s Oscar nominations (Best Picture and Best Actress for Torres) owe something to the mood of “it can happen here?” now belated descending upon the privileged in the U.S. But as a director Salles lacks the historical sweep required to tell a multi-decade story, and the film loses direction in it's final third. I'm Still Here exists for a worthy goal, bearing witness to the fact that repressive regimes someday come to an end—sometimes even with a single lifetime. But it’s more testimonial than art. B
Mickey 17
More like Mickey Infinity. (Because it’s too long.) I will say, I’ve never seen a better Jerry Lewis-indebted anticolonialist sci-fi tragicomedy. Then again I’ve never seen a worse one either. For whatever it’s worth, Mickey 17 is sui generis—unlike its protagonist (Robert Pattinson), an "expendable" on a longterm space mission who is resurrected via 3D printer after each harrowing death. (It’s a metaphor! For capitalism!) Robert Pattinson is entertaining as both the schlubby title character and the much cooler Mickey 18 (as both the Julius Kelp and the Buddy Love, if I may), the latter hatched prematurely when 17 is believed gobbled up by some spectacularly designed wormy creatures with whom he develops a strange rapport. Bong Joon-hoo’s cheap gags and obvious critiques hit as often as they miss, yet your enjoyment of Mickey 17 relies primarily on how long you can tolerate Mark Ruffalo’s Trump impression and Toni Collette doing her usual rubberfaced mugging. Mostly Mickey 17 leaves me to wonder why the tonal clashes feel so much klutzier in Bong’s English-language efforts than they do in his Korean films. Do they just go down easier when I have to read subtitles? Or do I just miss Song Kang-ho? B-
Moana 2—ends Thursday
The Monkey
I’ve got a conundrum: To accurately convey just how irritating this movie is, I’d have to spend more time thinking about it than is good for my mental health. So I’ll just punt and say if the ridiculously overpraised Longlegs suggested that Oswald Perkins was a dumb but talented guy, this Stephen King adaptation reminds me that a talent with no idea how to use it is just a fancy hack. The story is simple enough: Twin brothers inherit a cursed toy monkey from their dad and every time they turn its key someone dies in a ridiculous manner. But that’s ridiculous, not ingenious—if the Final Destinations understood their place in the world and just went about their business; Perkins can’t stop reminding you he’s slumming here. I haven’t been so impatient for a movie to end since Argylle, and this one was only 90 minutes long. With its swearing pre-teens, occasionally decent splatter, and elbow in the ribs humor, this may the perfect sleepover movie for none-too-bright 12–year-olds. Thirteen-year-olds might find it a little corny though. C
No Other Land
Maybe the Oscars can be a force for good? Certainly a Best Documentary nomination has helped this acclaimed look at the Israeli displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank belatedly access U.S. theaters, after major distributors ignored it for more than a year. But the struggle for distribution shouldn’t overshadow the film itself, which is much more than just a competent document of brutality. No Other Land is the product of four directors (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor), two Israeli and two Palestinian; the various sources of footage from cameras and phones are brilliantly edited, and the strained friendship between two of the filmmakers—the Palestinian Adra and the Israeli Abraham—is central to the story it tells of the limits of empathy and humanitarian universalism. There are plenty of horrors to catalogue here, and even if months of violent clips from Gaza have desensitized you, watching a settler casually gun down a displaced Palestinian will still make you gasp. Yet it's the everyday cruelty that's most unsettling, the sight of an army pouring concrete into a well and bulldozing the homes of families forced to relocate to caves. Humans really are capable of doing anything to one another, and in cold blood. A
One of Them Days
A Keke Palmer/SZA buddy comedy with an Issa Rae imprimatur, and I waited almost two months to see it? What was I thinking? Then again, what was Sony thinking burying this fun little romp in the doldrums of late winter? Conscientious waitress Dreux (Palmer) and spacey artist Alyssa (SZA) are roommates who get swindled out of their rent by the latter’s no good boyfriend, and they’ve got an afternoon to rustle up $1,500. Before running afoul of the neighborhood’s baddest bitch and its thug kingpin, the duo barely survive a visit to a blood bank staffed by Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James and risk doing business with a payday loan servicer that’s proud of its readiness to dole out cash and its draconian enforcement policies (motto: “We gotcha—and we’ll getcha!”). The jokes in Syreeta Singleton’s script could occasionally be a little snappier, but the situations are perfect and SZA’s timing is a match for Palmer’s, which is saying something. At a time where every comedy is some blaring high-concept cross-genre nonsense (I’m looking at you, Novocaine), what a relief to laugh a little and hope things turn out all right for a couple of characters you’re happy to have met. B+
Paddington in Peru
The third Paddington installment has all the hallmarks of a Part Three: a new setting, a cast replacement (Emily Mortimer gamely standing in for the much-missed Sally Hawkins), developing characters whose charm has always been that they don’t change, a resolution that could end the story but, if everything works out at the box office, probably won’t. Still, it’s fun to watch Antonio Banderas ham it up as a tour boat captain who is not what he seems, haunted by gold-hungry ancestors (also Banderas). Likewise for Olivia Coleman as a grinning, singing nun who is not what she etc., running a home for retired bears. Paddington, bless him, remains exactly what he seems, causing good-natured mayhem whether he’s failing to operate a photo booth correctly, racing on llamas, or steering a ship. But this is merely cute where Paddington 2 was irresistible. B+
