#WhatToWatchThisWeekend TerminatorDarkFate MotherlessBrooklyn TheKing TheIrishman Movies Reviews

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 1, 2019 - Terminator: Dark Fate, Motherless Brooklyn, The Irishman and more

My deepest apologies about there not being a column last weekend, but I needed a little personal time to deal with some things and not spending the five or six hours it takes to write this column to deal with those things was the breath of fresh air I desperately needed. Unfortunately, this week’s column won’t be as rich and hearty as it has been either as I’m still trying to get other things done during this very busy time.

The big movie this week is Paramount Pictures’ Terminator: Dark Fate, directed by Tim Miller and bringing back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, joined by Mackenzie Davis, and newer Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna (Ghost Rider on ABC’sAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). I was kinda mixed on the movie, which I reviewed for The Beat, but I am glad to see Paramount and Skydance trying to keep this stalwart sci-fi action franchise alive despite many hiccups over the past few decades.

The other movie opening Friday in not as many theaters, but one that I enjoyed much more is Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn (Warner Bros), which adapts Jonathan Lethem’s book about a private investigator with Tourette Syndrome who tries to solve the murder of his mentor (played by Bruce Willis in the film). Norton made a bold choice by moving Lethem’s story from modern-day New York City to ‘50s New York, which allowed Norton to play around with some of the major changes in the development of the city by a ruthless developer, played by Alec Baldwin, who is trying to oust African-American communities in Brooklyn. They’re represented by a lawyer, played by the amazing Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I also reviewed thatfor The Beat, and I interviewed Norton, Dafoeand Mbatha-Raw (that last interview will be later this week), but clearly I’m a fan of what Norton was able to do with this one.

I was not as big a fan of Focus Features’ Harriet, starring the fantastic Cynthia Erivo from one on my favorite films of 2018, Bad Times at the El Royale. Usually, I might enjoy a biopic about Harriet Tubman, but I just didn’t really feel like I was learning about this pioneer from this film by Kasi Lemmons, which didn’t really offer much new to what I’ve known since elementary school about Tubman. It’s a shame because stories about slavery times and those who fought against it are important. I just wish this film were better.

I haven’t seen nor will I ever see Entertainment Studios’ animated Arctic Dogs, so I really don’t have much more to say about that one, but you can read more about the above movies and how they might fare this weekend in my Box Office Previewover at The Beat.

We’re going to do things a little differently this week, because I’ve begun to realize that I just can’t do the column the way I’ve been doing it for the last year plus, at least not every week.

As far as LIMITED RELEASES, the big movie of the weekend is Martin Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN, which Netflix is giving a limited theatrical run for about three weeks before it streams on the service.  It reunites Scorsese with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel but also has him working with Al Pacino for the first time, the latter playing Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa as the film follows the events that led to his disappearance. As luck would have it, I’ve also reviewed THIS over at The Beat.

Besides playing at New York’s IFC Center and Landmark at 57th which are usual theaters for Netflix films, it will also play at the 1000-seat Belasco Theater in Times Square, which is something only a filmmaker as prestigious as Scorsese can pull off. I’m really curious to see how the movie does there.

Also, David Michôd’s THE KING will premiere on the Netflix streaming service after its own theatrical run, and if you read my column a few weeks back, then you already know I was a huge fan of this Shakespeare adaptation starring Timothée Chalamet and Joel Edgerton (who co-wrote the screenplay with Michôd), plus there are great appearances by Robert Pattinson and Ben Mendelsohn, as well.  (At one point, The Crown was supposed to debut its third season this Friday but it’s been moved back a few weeks. Maybe it was too confusing to have these unrelated projects appearing at the same time.)

Apparently, Netflix will also be debuting the drama American Son, based on the Broadway play and starring Kerry Washington this Friday.

There are a lot of really solid docs worth seeking out this weekend including Error Morris’ American Dharma, which I saw at the New York Film Festival in 2018 when it premiered. Because it’s a penetrating interview Breitbart founder Steve Bannon, I can totally understand why so many of my liberal colleagues are against this movie existing but to me, it seems like a good follow-up to Morris’ earlier Oscar-winning doc The Fog of War. It will open at New York’s Film Forum this Friday. Opening at the Metrograph on Friday is David Charles Rodrigues’s Gay Chorus Deep South about a group of hundred LGBTQ singers who tour the south to protest the exclusionary laws being written to deny them of their rights. I haven’t seen Josh Aronson’s To Be of Service (First Run Features/Aronson Film Services) but that deals with veterans being paired with their service docs, and that will open at the Cinema Village in New York on Friday.

Other narratives of note are Paul Harrill’s supernatural thriller Light from Light (Grasshopper Films), starring Jim Gaffigan and Marin Ireland, and the Dutch action-thriller Blood Marie.

I’m going to handle REPERTORY stuff a little differently this week as well, just noting some of the highlights like the continuing “Killer Hitchcock” series at Metrograph that will screen the 3D Dial M for Murder over the weekend. This week’s Halloween edition of Late Nites at Metrograph  is Brian  De Palma’s Carrie from 1976, while Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen both the 1933 King Kong and 1965’s The Sound of Music (also part of its Julie Andrews series) this weekend. (You also should check out Metrograph Pictures’ latest release Downtown ‘81 if you haven’t had a chance as it’s a glorious time capsule of the New York music and art scene of the times.)

Film Forum’s “Shitamachi: Tales of Downtown Tokyo” continues this weekend and through November 7, and I’m supremely disappointed in myself that I haven’t been able to get over there to see more. This weekend, there will be screenings of Godzilla and Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel and more. Uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, they’re kicking off a series called “Poetry and Partition: The Films of Ritwik Ghatak” which will screen eight of the Bengali filmmaker’s films.

The newly-revamped MOMA continues its series Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Film and Vision Statement: Early Directorial Works, while the IFC Center’s weekend rep. offerings will include The Thin Man  (1934), Austin Powers: International Man of Mysteryand the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, so a fairly mixed bag.

Out in L.A., there series “A Genre of One: the Cinema of Bong Joon Ho” will run at the Egyptian Theaterand Aero Theater with The Host and Mother playing at the former on Thursday night and a double feature of Snowpiercerwith Barking Dogs Never Bite at the latter on Friday and Okjawith Memories of Murder on Saturday. I’ve been a huge fan of the Korean filmmaker for 15 years or rmore and all of these are worth checking out if you live in L.A.

Tarantino’s New Beverly is still showing his films Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (presumably the extended edition) and Pulp Fiction but this weekend will also be screenings of David Cronenberg’s Rabid on Friday and P.T. Andersons’ Hard Eight on Monday, both as matinees.

As far as festivals, one I’ve been wanting to get to for a long time but just haven’t a chance is the Indie Memphis Film Festival which starts on Wednesday and runs through next week. If you happen to be down in that part of Tennessee, you might want to check out some of their programming.

Continuing in New York this week is the CineCina Film Festival, which I hoped to write about last week but got bogged down in the personal issues mentioned above.  It continues to run this week with some impressive international programming representing 17 countries and regions with screenings all across the city. This weekend, the festival includes a Master Class with Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz (Lebanon, Foxtrot), so this looks like a local festival that should continue to grow and find its own identity in coming years.

Still not sure if I’ll get back to the more robust What to Watch This Weekend column next week but there’s more variety including the Stephen King adaptation of Doctor Sleep, the holiday rom-com Last Christmas, Roland Emmerich’s war film Midwayand the John Cena family comedy Playing with Fire.