#I started the book & was expecting that at some point Pippa & Andie meeting. & Andie would try to kill Pippa just to make her stop...

[givemeasword-callmequeen]

Somebody else just through that Andie Bell faked her dead & killed Sal. Or is it just me

[birdwholanded]

The Goldfinch (Spoiler)

If you want to read the Goldfinch for yourself to get your own understanding and opinion on it, read it for yourself before you read this because this is what I thought about it for myself.

    Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is divided into the chapters Boy with a Skull, The Anatomy Lesson, Park Avenue, Morphine Lollipop, Badr al-Dine, Wind Sand and Stars, The Shop-Behind-the-Shop, The Shop-Behind the Shop, continued, Everything of Possibility, The Idiot, The Gentleman’s Canal, and The Rendezvous Point. At the beginning of the book there is a quote ,“He’s telling you that living things don’t last-it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all of the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer-there it is.” (24) I like this quote because I can relate to this. My grandfather passed away from cancer in December of last year while my aunt was also very ill with leukemia during the time. My hamster passed away and so did both of my parakeets. I didn’t know how to take it when my parakeet passed away at the bottom of his cage with his feet up in the air. It affected me a lot. My mom took him out of his cage and made him a nice home in a box with tissue paper and clothes so he could rest nicely in them. My mom and I had a funeral for him and said nice things about him and the memories that we had about him and then I buried him underneath a tree in my backyard. My hamster was breathing heavily and his heart stopped beating one morning when my dad woke up. He woke me up by coming into my room and telling me that he had passed away overnight. We put him in a nice box too and buried him by my parakeet. I did not know how to cope with the avalanche of sickness and death that has happened to my family members and my pets at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. I grieved in my own way because it was a really sad time. I felt like I shut off and became angry at the world because I did not understand why things happened the way that they did. My family also lost a distant family member this year from a heart attack.       People cope with loss in different ways too. It is very personal.       I enjoyed the section of the book where his mother gave him the painting to keep and hold on to to remember her by. It is a keepsake and an heirloom.   A mother was taking her student son to an art gallery in New York City but an explosion went off in the gallery while they were inside and everyone was rushing to try to escape the gallery. The son left, but the mother never did. She passed away in the explosion and the son has to come to terms with it and where he is going from there. He doesn’t have a home to stay at anymore so the social workers want to put him with his grandparents, but his grandmother’s back is going out and she can’t take care of him properly. He feels out of place and he doesn’t belong anywhere. “But suicide wasn’t the ansswer.” (93) He felt isolated and disconnected. He wanted to go back in time.     His father is not a presence in his life when he is living in New York. He is irritated and cold a lot of the time. He doesn’t  like to come home and wants to stay out drinking. It is described that he has a lot of stressors on his mind and that he even wants to move to Atlantic City and start over again. He is fearful. The son can’t look up to him because he doesn’t want to be involved with anything. The son is taken to a home where his friend is in AP classes and he is dedicated to his studies so he can’t do anything because all of his time is taken up. He watches old Turner classic movies to distract himself. Theo misses his mom and questions if he could have done things differently to prevent her death while he is staying at the temporary house. He wants to leave the house but he has nowhere to go. Theo wants to disappear and hide. He goes to therapy and while he is there he thinks about a girl named Pippa that he saw at the museum with his mom when the explosion happened. He cannot get Pippa off of his mind and he fantasizes about her. He meets with her and he finds out that she is moving away to Texas because her mother had passed away too so she is looking to start a new chapter in a new location. A fresh start.      He gets to move in with his father in Las Vegas and is charmed by his father’s lifestyle. It is a completely different lifestyle living with his father and girlfriend than living with his temporary housing family Andy and the Barbours. He meets a guy named Borris in his class in school and Boris lived in Ukraine and Russia and he introduced him to that culture. Boris is a main character in the book and is almost Theo’s wingman. Boris is not a good influence for him because he introduces him to a darker lifestyle.       Theo, the narrator of the story gets early admission to go to college and he goes into a European film class. His friends are taking classes like intro to Russian literature. The book, The Idiot by Doeskevsky is referenced too and philosophical things are taken out of the book and questioned by Boris near the resolution of the book. He has a painting called the goldfinch that his mother gave him. When the explosion at the art gallery happened, some paintings got ruined.       He discovers that his friend Andy had died and he is contemplating death some more.     I liked how the beginning of the book connected to the end of it in the way that it explains the characters’ fate and circumstances. At the beginning of the book he is in Amsterdam, but it is not explained why he is there until the ending of the book where he commit capital murder to save the painting his dead mother gave to him.  “It was a social and moral lesson, if nothing else. But for all foreseeable time to come-for as long as history was written, until the icecaps melted and the streets of Amsterdam were awash with water-the painting would be remembered and mourned. Who knew, or cared, the names of the Turks who blew the roof off the Parthenon? The mullahs who had ordered the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan? Yet living or dead:their acts stood. It was the worst kind of immorality. Intentionally or no:I had extinguished a light in the heart of the world. An act of God:that was what the insurance companies called it, catastrophe so random or arcane that there was otherwise no taking the measure of it. Probability was one thing, but some events fell so far outside the actuarial tables that even insurance underwriters were compelled to haul in the supernatural in order to explain them-rotten luck, as my father had said mournfully one night out by the pool, dusk falling hard, smoking Viceroy to keep the mosquitoes away, one of the few times he tried to talk to me about my mother’s death, why do bad things happen, why me, why her, wrong place wrong time, just a fluke kid, one in a million not an evasion or copout in anyway but-I recognized, coming from him-a profession of faith and the best answer he had to give me, on par with Allah Has Written It or It’s the Lord’s Will, a sincere bowing of the head to Fortune, the greatest god he knew.” (701-702)      He describes going through drug withdrawals in some parts of the book and he talks about morphine, xanax, oxycontin, riboxycotin. He was snorting coke too. His father was taking vicodin which is hydrocodone. I didn’t expect for there to be so much discussion about drug use. The father relies on drugs to ease his situation. He got sober however. The father was addicted to drugs because of the relationship he had with his wife, the mother of Theo. The husband and wife got at each other’s throats and they would argue. He didn’t appreciate the situation he had when he was around her. He tried to escape. I think drug use is escapism but is also used for relaxation. Cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol are ok to use because they are soft drugs that put one at ease. When one starts to use hard drugs like cocaine, then it is not so good because they rely on it for its effects and get addicted to it. They have to get enough money for drugs too. It’s a cycle that is hard to break because one always craves the drug rush. I have smoked cigarettes and marijuana and I drink. I don’t care if people drink. I don’t care what people do unless it is illegal. I think that things are ok in moderation.     The Goldfinch is about appreciating every moment in life whether good or bad, its ups and downs because it's a very rare and precious thing. One has to appreciate life because at any second one’s relative could pass away in a car accident, shooting, etc not to say that it will happen, but anything and everything is to be expected and can happen. The Goldfinch is a rare creature that moves quickly. One moment it could be here and the next moment it can be flying away and migrating to a different location with its species to be never seen again for a while.  When I was reading this book, I went outside to sit in my backyard and continue to read and I had my parakeet and dog sitting outside with me. I went inside the house to get something, but my dog alo wanted to come inside the house at the same time while my parakeet’s cage was very close by. My dog was biting my pants trying to get inside the house first, and I had slightly kicked him trying to get him to stop biting me, but in doing that, my parakeet’s cage had toppled over into the flower bed by accident and my parakeet was free. She tried to fly away through a hole in our fence to get into my neighbor’s yard, however I was quick enough to come and get my mom to help save her, because I had thought that I had lost her. She did not go very far and was stuck in the fence. My mom was able to get a hold of her and put her back in her cage. I had fixed her cage after it had fallen down. It was scary because she could have easily been gone for good like my two other parakeets. My parakeet looks like a gold finch because she is golden and bright like the sun. I call her sundrop. Her name is Coronja.        ‘...if bad can sometimes come from good actions-? Where does it ever say, anywhere,that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes-the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out to where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?....What if all your actions and choices, good or bad make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre set?...What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?”  (745-746) This quote discusses predestination. The idea of if you will go to heaven or hell or some other universe. “Predestination is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God usually reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul.” (wikipedia.org) “Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will.” (wikipedia.org) “Therefore as predestination includes the will to confer grace and glory so also reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin and impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin.” (wikipedia.org)     “It’s not hard to see the human in the finch. Dignified, vulnerable. One prisoner looking at another...the bird looks out at us…” (766) From this quote I get the idea of reincarnation and that animals do have human characteristics. Animals have little souls that are like people. They have common traits that cannot be denied.       “...wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and heart open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time-so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers and the next.” (771) This quote talks about even though people are unhappy,achy, fragile, unhealthy and sick, there is still a bright side to things and to see things through, like my grandfather. My grandfather had given up in his elderly age and would lay on his couch and just watch the news or the stock market. He did not want to have that much of an existence when he got old. He had a stroke when I was ten years old and he could not get around that much and his speech was slurred. He had to go to physical therapy. The main message of the book is to say don’t take anything for granted and to be appreciative because everything can be taken away in an instant and your whole life can change by the small actions that you choose to make or not to make.  At the beginning of the story, the main character is on house arrest in Amsterdam and it ties in with the ending of the story to say that he is on House Arrest for the actions he decided to make. He cannot appreciate the city of Amsterdam and everyone there knows him as a criminal. He got charged with capital murder and has to stay where the cops knows where he is at.     People move quickly and do make poor decisions that affect them for the rest of their lives. Small choices have a great impact being if you commit a crime such as embezzling money, committing fraud, stealing, etc then you will have big punishments. It affects a lot of people in negative ways. People’s feelings can get hurt and everything can change for the worse in a matter of seconds.         It is difficult to deal with death of loved ones and animals and even the idea of it is scary and hard to come to terms with. When there are situations where one is faced with it, he or she can make harsh decisions that they will regret later on whatever they may be. Things can be altered so much that there could be no going back to the way things were. Small events can have a large impact. In the heat of the moment though, anything can happen, and regrets made. That is why it is important to be appreciative and loving to everyone, because people can grieve over the loss of their pet, over their loss of money, over the loss of a friend, etc. Even if you don’t want to wake up day after day after day because you did have loved ones pass away, you still need to wake up for yourself and see the good in everything because there are so many wonderful things to appreciate and cherish, so many opportunities to be had and loved and memories to be made. Love the pets that you have and love your family and friends. Cherish everything because everyone and everything is valuable and meaningful and adds to the quality of your life.       Theo comes to terms with his mother’s passing and grows from it and learns how to live with it.      Donna Tartt, the author of The Goldinch, puts in philosophical ideas and examples in this book that I appreciate. She uses quotes from Albert Camus, “The absurd does not liberate; it binds.” What I understand of this quote is absurdity doesn’t make one free, it ties one down and wraps one up. She uses another quote, “When we are strongest-who draws back? Most merry-who falls down laughing? When we are very bad,-what can they do to us?” This is said by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. I get from this quote that who is there to watch people fall when times are hard? “We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.” is a quote by François De La Rochefoucauld. Rochefoucauld is a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. He is part of the literary movement of classicism and is best known for his maxisms. “It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.” by Schiller. I like this quote because people have hearts and want to enjoy the good things and get past the bad things that happen.    “We have art in order not to die from the truth.”-Nietzsche.     Tartt grabs philosophical examples from The Little Prince in some parts of the book.  

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND September 13, 2019  - ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, FREAKS, HUSTLERS, THE GOLDFINCH and more

We’re well into September, and the Toronto Film Festival is slowly grinding to a halt as I continue to sulk for missing so many movies that I won’t be able to see until November or December. At least I’ll be at the New York Film Festival this month, and there’s a little bit of overlap there.

Besides the wide releases, there’s some really good limited releases this week, but I want to focus specifically on three movies that played at the What the Fest?! in New York City back in March:

The first of them is the Japanese zombie horror-comedy ONE CUT OF THE DEAD from director Shin'ichirô Ueda, which Shudder is releasing and streaming after it played a number of festivals including last year’s Fantastic Fest. What can I say about this really innovative film? I guess I can tell you that it’s about a zombie attack on the crew of a zombie movie, but that wouldn’t be the whole story. Honestly, it’s best to go in not knowing too much about it, other than it’s not your typical zombie movie. The complex intricacies of what Ueda does with his cast makes this one of my favorite recent zombie-related movies since the similarly great Korean film, Train to Busan. One Cut of the Dead will be released in New York (at the IFC Center) and in L.A. on Friday but then it will get special one-night screenings next Tuesday (Sept 17) in other citiesbefore premiering on the Shudder streaming channel sometime down the road. And if you’ve been wondering why everyone who sees this movie keeps yelling “Pom!,” well you’ll just have to see the movie for yourself.

Another great movie from “What The Fest!?” is Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s FREAKS (Well Go USA), which will open a little wider than some of the other limited releases this weekend. It stars relative newcomer Lexy Kolker as Chloe, a young girl living in a world where those with powers are considered “freaks,” shunned and captured for experiments. Her father (Emile Hirsch) has been keeping her in hiding, but as Chloe gets older, she has questions about her mother, and also, there’s that weird ice cream man (Bruce Dern) who seems to know about her. Freaksis really a fantastic film from these filmmakers, Lipovsky having directed Leprechaun: Originsa few years back. I was truly impressed with Kolker’s performance opposite much more experienced actors, and Lipovsky/Stein find a way to build up the story to a satisfying climax.

I’ll have an interview with the directors over at The Beat later this week, as well.

I also want to call attention to DEPRAVED  (IFC Midnight), the new film from director Larry Fessenden, which is his take on the Frankenstein mythos with David Call playing Henry, an army medic who decides to build a human being called Adam (played by Alex Breux), but finds his invention hard to control as Adam remembers his past. Another “What the Fest?” vet (actually, this year’s opening night film), Depraved also stars Joshua Leonard, Chloë Levine and Ana Kayne, and it’s so nice to have Larry back making movies. You can read more with Larry in my interview over at The Beat.

And then of course, there are this week’s wide releases, STXfilms’ HUSTLERS and Warner Bros’ THE GOLDFINCH, which I’m hoping I get to see one or both by the time this posts. If so, I’ll have review of both of these movies below. (Note: I did get to them, and they’re both interesting movies in that neither of them was anything like I expected.)

I’m really curious about HUSTLERS (STXFilms), because it’s the third film from director Lorene Scafaria, whose previous films, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and The Meddler, I quite enjoyed, mainly because they featured actresses I like. I can take or leave Jennifer Lopez, but I genuinely love Constance Wu, and I really want to see what she can do in a more dramatic role. And then, of course, there’s the premise of New York strippers scamming a bunch of sleezy rich men out of their money, which is based on a New York Magazine article. That’s just one of those great pitches that makes me think many will be interested in checking it out this weekend, and it might do better than expected.

Mini-Review: I honestly think Hustlers is going to be an interesting litmus test for whether people who usually frown or turn their noses at the very real adult entertainment business that permeates big cities and small towns alike will be able to look past the setting to appreciate it for the skillful crime-drama that it is.

The film begins in 2007 with Constance Wu’s Dorothy on her first day at a big New York City strip club where she has to deal with slimy Wall Street types and equally sleazy bosses who take a big chunk of her earnings. Things change when she meets Jennifer Lopez’s Ramona, the absolute queen of the strip club scene, which you can tell as you first watch her performing. Ramona knows the ropes and takes a liking to “Destiny” (Dorothy’s stripper name) enough to befriend her and give her some tips.

After a bit  more shenanigans explaining how things work in stripping, the story then cuts forward years later after Dorothy has had a child and is a single mother needing money. She returns to the club but business isn’t as good after 2008 as the Wall Street jerks aren’t as anxious to throw their money around. When Ramona reenters her life, the two of them come up with a scheme to drug their marks and then empty out their credit cards of money. It’s going well, and they’re getting away with it to the point where they need to expand.

Although Scafaria uses a fairly standard format to tell this story in the screenplay – basically having Constance Wu telling Julia Styles’ reporter the story as it plays out -- it’s the way she allows the story to unfold which allows the film to improve as it goes along. Sure, it’s a little predictable where and how things are going to go wrong, but the movie still works on quite a few levels beginning with the performances by Wu and J-Lo that a lot of people will be talking about later. When we first see Lopez dancing, she looks absolutely amazing, and it must be incredibly empowering for a former dancer now 50 years old to be able to get on stage with barely any clothes on and strut her stuff.

A lot of why the movie doesn’t come across as sleazy as it might otherwise (such as in the hands of a male director) is the way that Scafaria focuses so much on the friendship between Ramona and Dorothy and what happens as things start breaking down between them, especially when Dorothy starts growing a conscience. The rest of the mostly-female cast is great, although most of the men in the movie are depicted as such slimy and disgusting pigs, it’s hard to feel sorry for them either.

Hustlers is the type of movie that we wouldn’t blink if Scorsese or even producer Adam McKay had directed, but the fact that Scafaria can transition so smoothly from her light comedies to something so well-constructed is part of why the movie is so impressive.

I’m not sure if women who see this movie will rush out to take stripping classes in order to fuel their sense of empowerment, but Hustlers is a genuinely enjoyable film that tells a fascinating story and Scafaria should get full credit for making another movie this good.

Rating: 8/10

I don’t know nearly as much about THE GOLDFINCH (Warner Bros.) except that it’s based on a best-selling Pulitzer price-winning book by author Donna Tartt, and it has an insane cast that includes Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman and Jeffrey Wright. I know that reviews out of TIFF were not good, and I’m not sure it will find an audience even with the popularity of the book.

Mini-Review: I haven’t read The Goldfinch, and actually, I’m kind of glad I didn’t read it before seeing this John Crowley-directed movie, because it might have taken away from one of the main reasons I enjoyed it.

The basic premise is simple but the overall story and movie that tells the story is quite complex, maybe needlessly so, but if I didn’t know this movie was based on a beloved book, I could totally have guessed that was the case since so much of what happens in the movie is more literary than cinematic… though not necessarily in a bad way.

The story revolves around Theo Decker, played as a youngster by Oakes Fegley and about ten years older by Ansel Elgort. We meet Theo shortly after his mother was killed in an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, after which he’s turned over to the wealthy Barbour family, his friend Andy’s mother overjoyed to bring Theo into their family of five. Just when things are going well, Theo’s real father (Luke Wilson) shows up and drags the boy back to his home in a desolate area outside Vegas with his white trash girlfriend (played by an unrecognizable Sarah Paulson). There, Theo makes a new friend in Boris (Finn Wolfhard), and the two of them get into trouble, smoking cigarettes, drinking and doing drugs. And then stuff happens.  

If you haven’t read the book, I’m not going to do a play-by-play on the plot, because SO MUCH happens in this movie, and that’s part of why it’s enjoyable because it’s such rich and dense storytelling ably pulled together by Brooklyn director John Crowley.

One of the things I will mention is the movie’s title “The Goldfinch” which is a priceless work of art that Theo takes from the Met after the explosion, and he holds onto it for years, for reasons we won’t learn until much later. Another piece of the puzzle is Jeffrey Wright’s Hobie, who restores antiques into convincing fakes. There’s also Pippa (Ashleigh Cummings), the granddaughter of Hobie’s business partner who also died in the explosion.

There is a way that these people connect together, and a reason why almost all of them have an important place in Theo’s journey, but there is absolutely nothing predictable about how many of these pieces will come together. To say that The Goldfinch is full of unexpected surprises would be an understatement.

I generally liked Oakes Fegley better as Theo than Ansel Elgort, but Finn Wolfhard quickly steals the movie as Theo’s eccentric friend, who returns later in the guises of Aneurin Barnard. Both pairs of actors make their portions of the film particularly interesting. In fact, I thought that Nicole Kidman probably brought the least to her role as Theo’s adoptive mother.

Filmed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous, leaving little question why he is considered the master. Every actor and location looks amazing, and there’s a lot of variety in environments in which the story takes place. On top of that, the choices in music really helped me to enjoy this movie, even if it’s the choice of New Order to introduce Finn Wolfhard’s Boris, all dressed in black, to the rest of the score by Trevor Gureckis that helps bolster the film’s more dramatic moments.

Yes, the movie does feel long at times and maybe a little slow, but it’s also quite captivating because you never know where things are going, and everything is so unpredictable. You have to give props to screenwriter Peter Straughn for tackling such difficult material in such a fluid way. (I will mention that there’s at least one aspect of the film’s big plot twist that is almost impossible to believe, but I won’t ruin it.)

In my opinion, all of these seeming tangents that take Theo on this wild journey does pay-off with an ending that got me quite teary-eyed. Sure, it’s long at 2.5 hours but Theo’s story is a complicated one to tell, and it all adds up and pays off eventually.

Rating: 7/10

Amazon Studios has been advertising that Paul Downs Collaizo’s BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON nationwide this Friday but that could mean anywhere between 500 and 1500 theaters or more. I hope it’s somewhere in the middle, as I’d like to see it make a play into the top 10 like The Peanut Butter Falcon did last weekend. It’s a terrific film and Jillian Bell is quite wonderful in it, oh, and if you haven’t read my interview with her, you can find that over at Next Best Picture. It’s a fun interview and a fun movie, so I hope people make an effort to check it out.

LIMITED RELEASES

One of the more interesting releases of the weekend is the Colombian film MONOS (Neon /Participant Media) from director Alejandro Landes that centers on a pack of wild gun-toting teenagers living on a mountaintop in the South American jungles where they run sort of wild but also are well-trained as a fighting unit. They actually have taken a hostage, a doctor played by Julianne Nicholson, who is just great in this role, continuing to show off how she’s one of the most underrated actresses working today. There’s definitely a “Lord of the Flies” feel to Landes’ film which has been submitted by Colombia as its Oscar submission for the newly-labelled “Best International Film Festival,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if it finds enough fans to get into the short-list, at least. Not sure about the nomination as this is already a tough year with high-profile submissions like the new Almodovar and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Still, I think this will find its share of fans, and I can recommend it for its artistry more than as something you must rush out to see.

GKIDS’s latest animated release is ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, based on the book by journalist Ricardo Kapuscinski that looks at the outbreak of civil war in Angola after being freed of its independence from Portugal in 1975. The autobiographical film follows  Kapuściński’s search for the rebel leader Farrusco through wartorn Angola, so this is very much an animated documentary similar to Waltz with Bashir. It will open in New York at the IFC Center and in L.A. at the Laemmle Glendale this Friday.

And then there’s Michael Tyburski’s THE SOUND OF SILENCE (IFC Films), which stars Peter Sarsgaard, an actor I generally like, as a “house tuner.” Basically, he goes into people’s apartments and find out what notes or tones are causing them anxiety or preventing them from sleeping. One of his clients is a woman, played by Rashida Jones, and they sort of have a thing going, but Sarsgaard’s character is so strange and the movie is so slow, I didn’t really get more than an hour into this before I gave up.  This was based on a short film called “Palimpsest,” and while “The Sound of Silence” is a much better title, this is a concept that probably works best as a short, since as a feature, it’s boring as fuck.

Another Friday the 13thhorror release is Scott Becks and Bryan Woods’ HAUNT (Momentum Pictures), which follows a group of friends who go into an “extreme haunted house” on Halloween in a night that turns deadly. Unlike the movies mentioned above, I feel that this really should have been held until next month, because it’s just going to get lost in the shuffle of all of the releases this weekend.

Since this column doesn’t post until Wednesday, I should probably mention that Rob Zombie’s new movie 3 from Hell will get a three-day wide release on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in about 500 theaters, each day offering another bonus. It’s a direct sequel to The Hell’s Rejects, a movie I actively hated, and this one is more of the same, so I can’t recommend it at all. I hated this movie, and it’s use of violence for entertainment. UGH. 

Let’s get to a few documentaries, a few of which I’ve seen...

Opening at the IFC Center is Michelle Esrick’s Cracked Up, a movie about “Saturday Night Live” vet Darrell Hammond and the history of childhood trauma he kept locked up for 40 years. I missed this at Doc-NYC last year but both Hammond and Esrick will be at the IFC Center Friday evening to answer questions.

Irene Taylor Brodsky’s Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements (Abramorama) opens at New York’s Landmark 57 Friday and in L.A. at the Lammle Royal on Friday, Sept 20, and it’s an interesting film for the director of Beware the Slenderman, an excellent doc from a few years back. It looks at three people dealing with deafness, a young boy, an aging grandfather and no less than Ludwig van Beethoven, their stories weaved together to explore what it means to be deaf.

I had mixed feelings on Liam Gallagher: As It Was (Screen Media), which will be in theaters this Friday, available via Digital Download Sept. 17 and on VOD platforms Oct. 8.  I saw and liked the Oasis doc Oasis: Supersonic a few years back, but Gavin Fitzgerald and Charlie Lightening’s doc focuses on the former Oasis frontman and his fall from grace after his very public feud with his brother Noel Gallagher put the spotlight on a singer who I personally feel is an egotistical prat… and he goes about proving that in every scene of this movie. The movie covers how the break-up of Oasis led to Liam immediately starting Beady Eye, which proved to be a failure before he decides to go solo. Maybe it isn’t a coincidence that this is being released a week before Gallagher’s new solo album “Why Me? Why Not.”

After playing last year’s Fantastic Fest and the recent Fantasia and BAMCInemaFest, Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life will be released at the IFC Center on Weds and at the Landmark Nuart in Los Angeles on Friday. The movie stars Jess Weixler as movie star Mabel, who has been slumming it in art-horror film being shot in a hospital opposite Rosenthal (Adam Pearson), a gentle young man with a severe facial deformity, as their relationship grows.

Elise Duran’s high-concept rom-com Can You Keep a Secret? (Vertical) is based on Sophie Kinsella’s novel and it stars the super-cute Alexandra Daddario as a New York woman who is having troubles in life and when turbulence hits her plane, she confesses all her secrets to her neighbor, who turns out to be the company’s CEO.

Next up is a bunch of odds and ends including some VOD specials. Opening in New York and L.A. is Larry Clarke’s comedy 3 Days with Dad (Unified Pictures), starring Tom Arnold who returns home to deal with his dying father. There’s also the Bollywood courtroom drama Section 375 (Reliance Entertainment), directed by Ajay Bahl.  Jim Gaffigan’s second movie of the year, American Dreamer (Saban/Lionsgate), co-written and directed by Derrick Borte (The Joneses), has him playing a ride-share driver who kidnaps the child of a drugdealer. It opens at New York’s Cinema Village Friday and in L.A. and VOD next Friday. There’s also Garrett Batty’s Out of Liberty (Purdie Distribution), and I’m not even sure what to say about Seth Prices’ Redistribution, opening at the Metrograph, except that it’s a “reflexive work on art and interpretation.” Make of that what you will…. Or just check out the weird trailer.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

On Thursday begins the Tribeca TV Festival, which will showcase some of the newest and most anticipated television shows of the fall season including ABC’s Bless This Messwith Lake Bell, Dax Shepard and Pam Grier in attendance; the Apple+ series Dickinson, starring Hailee Steinfeld and Jane Krakowski; the CBS series Evil; and much more. Click on the link above to see what’s going to be screening, but it’s a pretty impressive line-up if you’re an avid TV watcher.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Welcome To Metrograph: Redux series continues this weekend with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) and Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), while Late Nites at Metrograph  will screen Buñuel’s Belle du Jour (1967) and Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 film City Lights.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Monday night is Franc Roddam’s 1979 film Quadrophenia, based on The Who’s concept album, while this week’s “Tuesday Terror” is Dario Argento’s 1975 film Deep Red, which ironically, Italian rockers Goblin will be in town playing the score for LIVE at the PlayStation Theater on Friday in case you miss it at the Alamo. (Although tickets are obviously much more expensive for the concert.) Next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is the Rutger Hauer movie Split Secondfrom 1992.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Thursday will be a 40thAnniversary screening of Breaking Away with some of the cast in person, while Friday is a hockey double feature of Slap Shot  (1977) and Sudden Death  (1995). Saturday is a 70mm screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, while Sunday is a double feature of The Godfather  (1972) and The Godfather Part II  (1974). Also Sunday, the George Lucas Family Foundation sponsors a screening of the 1919 silent film The Son-of-a-Gun (in 8mm!!!)with musical accompaniment, as well as some of Gilbert Anderson’s other shorts from the time.

AERO  (LA):

Wednesday’s Greg Proops Film Club will screen Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear (1944) in 35mm, while Thursday begins a series of “Anime Double Features” of Ninja Scroll (1993) with Vampire Hunter D (1985). Friday is a Satoshi Kon anime double feature of Millennium Actress  (2001) and Perfect Blue  (1997). Saturday’s Anime double feature isRedline  (2009)and Ghost in the Shell (1995), while Sunday is a Studio Ghibli double feature of Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and Only Yesterday  (1991).  Tuesday’s “Heptember Matinee” is a new 4k restoration of Katherine Hepburn’s Holiday from 1938.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

BAM begins an awesome appropriate series called “Purpose and Passion: The Cinema of John Singleton,” showing a lot  (if not all) of the late filmmaker’s work, including Boyz in the Hood, Poetic Justice, Higher Learningand even more recent movies like Four Brothers, Abductionand his 2000 Shaft, starring Samuel L. Jackson. This week’s “Beyond the Canon” offering on Saturday is a double feature of Valie Export’sInvisible Adversariesfrom 1977 and Invasion of the Body Snatchersfrom 1978. It’s also showing Craig Brewer’s Hustle and Flow, starring Terrence Howard, which Singleton produced.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

On Thursday, Film at Lincoln Center begins a short series called “Two Free Women: Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner” which should be fairly self-explanatory, focusing the spotlight on the actor/comedian and her life partner, which will include a conversation with the two women on Saturday evening. The series will open with John Bailey’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1991) on Thursday night with a QnA  with the two women. The rest of the series includes All of Me (1984), 9 to 5 (1980), Big Business (1988), Nashville (1975), the recent Grandma  (2015) and many more films, including Nick Broomfield’s doc Lily Tomlin.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is Sean R’s pick Labyrinth (1986) while Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is the GREATEST STAFF PICK OF ALL TIME… Alex Cox’s 1984 classic Rep Man, picked by Jeff!  Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019 is a 35mm print of Scorsese’s Mean Streets. (As far as I can tell, the 4k restoration of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is ending on Thursday.)

FILM FORUM (NYC):

This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is three Laurel and Hardy shorts and on Monday is a screening of Preston Sturges’ 1941 film The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyk, with a QnA and signing with Sturges’ son Tom. Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein will continue running through Thursday, Sept. 19.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

Not really repertory but MOMI is playing the director’s cut of Ari Aster’s Midsommar this weekend as well as Makoto Shinkai’s amazing 2017 film Your Name, the latter on Saturday and Sunday at noon.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

On Weds., Thursday and Sunday, the Roxy is showing a 35mm print of David Byrne’s True Stories from 1986, which seems to have found new life over 30 years since its debut.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This week’s midnight movie on Friday isJohn Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch from 2000!

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Sorry, Quentin, but as long as you use your excellent rep theater just to show Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, the New Bev will remain at the bottom of this section. The Wednesday matinee is Possessed (1947), starring Joan Crawfors, while the weekend’s “KIddee Matinee” is a classic… 1965’s The Sound of Music! There’s a special Cartoon Club on Saturday morning and Pulp Fiction is the Saturday midnight and then Monday’s matinee is Fast Times at Ridgmont High (1985) in 35mm.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Probably more than anything, I’m excited for the return of Jon Favreau’s The Chef Show this Friday, but there’s also a new original film called TALL GIRL, directed by Nzingha Stewart and starring Ava Michelle as the tallest girl in school (hence the title), who deals with being so tall until she meets Luke Eisner’s Stig, a Swedish foreign exchange student who is even taller than her. It’s another cute teen-targeted rom-com from Netflix that I’m not sure I’ll ever see.

Next week is a mix of stuff including James Gray’s Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt; Sylvester Stallone is back as Rambo: Last Blood and Downton Abbeyr eturns… but only in theaters.