#and i see what lio looks like in a couple centuries and how he's feeling and. if he's good. maybe make him a mans

[altfire]

i am thinking so much about. lio of all people. and how he is just my most miserable oc and like even the small happinesses he finds dont last. i want to do more for him but i have no idea what

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND September 20, 2019  - VILLAINS, BLOODLINE, DOWNTON ABBEY, AD ASTRA, RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

It’s hard to believe that September is almost over, and we’re just sailing through the September festival season with the New York Film Festival starting (for real) next week.  There are three wide releases, but I will only have seen one of them before writing this, so instead, I’ll talk about a couple genre movies opening Friday, both of which played at Lincoln Center’s “Scary Movies XII” last month.

I remember writing quite extensively about VILLAINS (Alter/Gunpowder and Sky) when I was over at the Tracking Board, mainly about the casting of Bill Skarsgard from It, Maika Monroe from It Follows, as well as Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick. It’s the new movie from Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, who directed the horror sequel The Stakelander and have written a pretty amazing comedy-thriller twist on the home invasion movie. Skarsgard and Monroe play a young couple who hide out in a seemingly abandoned house after robbing a store. They soon learn that not only is it not abandoned, but there is a young girl chained in the basement. The owners of the home, played by Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Donovan, then return and things go sideways for the young couple as they find that maybe their petty crimes make them the good guys in this scenario.  Villains is getting a fairly hearty release into roughly 100 theaters across the country, so check your listings to see if/where it will be playing near you. (It mainly seems to be playing in Regal theaters across the country.)

Another interesting genre film opening Friday is Henry Jacobson’s psychological thriller BLOODLINE (Momentum Pictures), starring Seann William Scott as Evan, a high school social worker with a secret – he’s also a serial killer who tries to help his patients by ridding them of their issues. Evan is also experiencing a new baby with his wife, which might keep him from his killing habits, except that his mother (Dale Dickey) has shown up to help them, and she was the one who taught him his ways. This is a really dark and gory film that I quite enjoyed in a similar way as some of my favorite serial killer thrillers, from Hitchcock’s Psychoto Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer and others. It honestly can’t be a better time for this with all the true crime television we’re getting, and I was pretty blown away by Scott’s performance in this. Bloodlineisplaying at the IFC Center for Friday and Saturday late night screenings and probably will be available On Demand as well.

You can read my interview with Seann William Scott and the directors of VILLAINS over at The Beat, the latter posting Friday.

The one wide release I have seen this weekend is Focus Features’ DOWNTOWN ABBEY, a continuation of the PBS series with an absolutely amazing British cast that includes Dame Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton and so many more that I won’t name all of them. I feel that I’m not the best person to properly review the movie since I haven’t seen a second of the series, but I generally liked what I saw and might give it a look if I can find a good streaming source on which to binge it. I actually liked the movie enough to recommend it without having any previous knowledge of the series.

Probably my biggest disappointment of this week is that I didn’t have a chance to see James Gray’s AD ASTRA (20thCentury Fox), starring Brad Pitt, before Thursday night, because I wasn’t able to get to the press screening. It’s been one of my more anticipated movies of the year, mainly because I generally love outer space movies, but I also have been interested in seeing what Gray and Pitt do with the material, especially with such a great supporting cast.

Another movie that I only got to see just before this column posts is Sylvester Stallone’s RAMBO: LAST BLOOD (Lionsgate), which I reviewed over at The Beat. I had very few expectations for the movie, as I’ve never been a huge Rambo fan. I’m not sure why, but I guess I just never got into the Rah! Rah! USA! Stuff that permeated the United States in the ‘80s, and I was more into music than movies at the time. Reading my review, it’s obvious that Stallone’s latest attempt to revive a franchise didn’t do much for me.

You can read what I think of the above’s box office prospects over at The Beat, as well.

LIMITED RELEASES

I’m not quite sure why there are so many limited releases this weekend –I count almost 30 (!!!!) over on Rotten Tomatoes– but I’ll see what I can get to this week since I’m already a little behind. If you missed, Rob Zombie’s 3 FROM HELL on Monday and Tuesday night and more importantly, missed my scathing review of it over at The Beat, well, then you’ve missed it since this column is posting after it played its last night before its blu-ray release next month. Sorry!

A fantastic documentary opening at the Metrograph this week is Jacqueline Olive’s directorial debut ALWAYS IN SEASON (Multitude Films), a stirring film about the history of lynching, circling around the death of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy from Bladenboro, North Carolina, which is ruled as a suicide but his mother Claudia is convince that her son was lynched. Olive’s powerful film provides a background for how lynching became so prevalent in the early part of the 20thCentury, including an eerie annual reenactment by the town of Monroe, Georgia that wants to make sure that the county’s atrocities aren’t forgiven or forgotten.  Narrated by Danny Glover, Olive’s directorial debut is powerful and moving and a film that must not be missed – maybe it’s no surprise that it won a Special Jury prize at Sundance Film Festival for “Moral Urgency” earlier this year. I was pretty shaken up when I saw it at this year’s Oxford Film Festival.

The Metrograph is also screening two National Geographic shorts, Alexander A. Mora’s The Night Crawlers and Orlando von Einsiedel’sLost and Found, over the next week. The Night Crawlers looks at a group of Filipino journalists known as the “Manila Nightcrawlers” who seek to expose the truth about President Duterte’s war on drugs and the number of people who lost their lives over it. Lost and Foundi s a new doc short from the director of the Netflix doc The White Helmets which looks at the Myanmar’s ethnic violence against the Rohingya people through the eyes of a man in a refugee camp seeking to reunite children with parents.

Japanese animation house Studio TRIGGER’s first feature film PROMARE (GKIDS) will get a limited release on Friday, following Fathom Events showings on Tuesday (already passed) and Thursday (tonight). It will then be opening in New York at the Metrograph and AMC Empire on Friday for a one-week run. It’s an apocalyptic sci-fi thriller set in a world thirty years after a race of flame-wielding mutant beings called the Burnish set half the world on fire an the battle between the anti-Burnish Burning Rescue and Lio Fotia, leader of the aggressive new “Mad Burnish” mutants.

Paolo Sorrentino, director of the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty and its follow-up Youth, returns with LORO (Sundance Selects), about a young hustler named Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio) managing an escort service who sets his sights on the egotistical billionaire Italian ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (Tony Servillo) who is trying to bribe his way back into power. It will open at the IFC Center Friday.

A couple other docs opening this weekend, the first two opening at New York’s Film Forum…

Now playing is Hassan Fazili’s Midnight Traveler (Oscilloscope) about how the filmmaker received death threats from the Taliban in 2015 for running Kabul, Afghanistan’s Art Café, a progressive meeting place, so he, his wife and two young daughters must travel 3,500 miles over 3 years across four countries to get to Hungary, a journey documented via mobile phone cameras. It will open in L.A. on October 4.

Then on Friday, there’s Matt Tyrnauer’s new film WHERE’S MY ROY COHN? (Sony Pictures Classics) looks at the lawyer and power broker who was part of Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist activities and who was pivotal in molding a young Queens developer named Donald Trump. I wanted to like this movie more because Roy Cohn is such an interesting human being in such a despicable way, but this doc really didn’t do much for me.

Opening in New York (Cinema Village) and L.A. (Laemmle Glendale) is DIEGO MARADONA (HBO Sports), the new doc from Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna), which will show on HBO on October 1. If you don’t know international football (or soccer), the Argentine Maradona is one of the most famous footballers of all time, a bit of a legend since signing to Naples in 1984 for a record-setting fee. I haven’t watched this yet but hope to soon.

Opening at New York’s IFC Center Friday is Max Powers’ Don’t Be Nice (Juno Films), focusing on the Bowery Slam Poetry Team as they head to the national championships, and there will be QnAs almost every night in its week-long run, and then it will open in L.A. on September 27.

Completely unrelated but also at the IFC Center is a full-week run of National Theatre Live: Fleabag, screening a pre-recorded performance of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show that inspired her hit Emmy-nominated show from the Soho Playhousein London’s West End. Heck, I might try to get to one of these since it won’t be on television or any other format for at least a year.

After opening for “one night only” on Tuesday, Louie (The Cove) Psihoyos’ new movie The Game Changers will get a release on New York this Friday and L.A. the 27th. Exec. produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan, it explores the rise of plant-based eating in professional sports along with Special Forces trainer James Wilks and features segments on Schwarzenegger, Formula One racer Lewis Hamilton, tennis player Novak Djokovic and NBA star Chris Paul.

Demi Moore, Ed Helms, Karan Soni (from the “Deadpool” movies) and Jessica Williams star in the horror-comedy Corporate Animals (Screen Media), the new comedy from Patrick Brice (Creep, The Overnight) about a corporate team-building adventure that turns to cannibalism when an office group find themselves trapped in a cave system. The movie has a great cast but the strange concept and weak screenplay really keeps the movie from delivering.

Other movies out this weekend include James Franco’s Zeroville (MyCinema), co-starring Megan Fox and Seth Rogen; Nicolas Cage’s new movie Running with the Devil (Quiver DIstribution), a drug thriller co-starring Laurence Fishburne, Barry Pepper, Leslie Bibb and more; and the award-winning Chinese drama Send Me to the Clouds (Cheng Cheng Films), opening in L.A., NY, Toronto and Vancouver.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Maybe the movie I’m most excited for this week is Zak Galifianakis’ BETWEEN TWO FERNS: THE MOVIE (Netflix), which I’m sure is going to be silly, maybe even stupid, but I’m still amused by his style of humor. I also haven’t seen the new Netflix doc Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, and I also no absolutely nothing about the movie other than what’s in the title.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

On Tuesday, the Metrograph began a series called “Bleecker Street: The First Five Years” running through Thursday withsingle screenings of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, Sebastian Lelio’s Disobediance and Brett Haley’s I’ll See You in My Dreams with talent doing QnAs. On the weekend, the theater has special screenings of the dance film The Red Shoes   (1948) on Saturday with an introduction by Jillian McManemin – I honestly have no idea who that is. On Saturday, the Academy is back with its monthly series, this month showing Milos Forman’s 1979 musical Hair with actor Treat Williams and Annie Golden in person. On Sunday, there’s a similarly special screening of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 crime classic Goodfellas with producer Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Nick Pileggi -- $35 tickets, a little pricey for me. You also have just two more days (today and tomorrow) to see Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress on the big screen.

This weekend’s Welcome To Metrograph: Redux offering is Jean Vigo’s 1934 film L’Atalante,  Late Nites at Metrograph is showing Fantastic Planet(again) and the Japanese horror film Hausu (1977). This weekend’s Playtime: Family Matinees is Alfonso Cuaron’s fantasy A Little Princess (1995)

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

The Alamo is also celebrating “Arthouse Theater Day” on Wednesday with Robert Downey Sr.’s Putney Swope. They’re also doing a “Rambo Marathon” on Sunday to tie-in with Stallone’s latest Rambo movie -- $35 for all five Rambo movies. Now THAT is a great deal, and there are a few tickets left. On Saturday afternoon, the Alamo is showing Almodovar’s 2000 classic All About My Mother to celebrate the Spanish filmmaker before the release of his newest film Pain and Glory.  Monday’s “Out of Tune” is Lars von Trier’s 2000 film Dancer in the Dark, starring Bjork. Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is the amazing Vera Farmiga thriller Orphan from 2009, and the Alamo is also playing Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown from 1988. Next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is 1995’s Tank Girl, starring Lori Petty.

AERO  (LA):

Wednesday is (or rather, was) a screening of the 1969 film Putney Swope as part of Art House Theater Day 2019, Thursday is a screening of the 1984 adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: The Year We Made Contact. In honor of Downton Abbey (I guess?), the Aero is beginning a series called “Upstairs, Downstairs,” beginning Friday with a 70mm print of 1993’s The Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins an Emma Thompson, then Saturday is a double feature of Hitchcock’s Rebecca  (1940) and Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol  (1948), and then on Sunday is a double feature of Ruggles of Red Cap (1935) and By Candlelight  (1933), as well as a separate free member screening of Downton Abbey with some of the cast in person.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Robert Altman’s classic 1975 film Nashville will screen as a new 4k restoration for the next week with screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury appearing on Saturday night. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is Howard Hawk’s 1940 movie His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant.  Joseph Losey’s Holocaust drama Mr. Klein ends on Thursday.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

The Quad is back with another great series called “Laws of Desire: The Films of Antonio Banderas” beginning Wednesday, showing so many films starring the Spanish actor who is likely to get nominated for his first Oscar for Almodovar’s Pain and Glory.  It will even show Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming The Laundromat, which premieres on Netflix next week. Instead of going through all 13 of the movies, click on the link above and get ready to be Banderasized!

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is Tony Scott’s vampire flick The Hunger (1983), chosen by “Todd,” Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is the anime classic Akira, chosen by “Katie,” and Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019 is Satoshi Kon’s Paprika(again?)

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

This weekend begins a “See It Big! Ghost Stories” series with the Japanese horror Ugetsu from 1953, then Saturday is The Phantom Carriage (1921) – this is with live piano accompaniment! --The Ghost and Mrs. Muir(1947), and then Sunday they’re screening Olivier Assayas’ more recent Personal Shopper (2006) with Kristen Stewart.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

Although Lincoln Center is preparing for next week’s New York Film Festival, this weekend it’s holding special screenings of two Gershwin films, Otto Preminger’s 1959 musical Porgy and Bess on Thursday (with panel) and then Vincente Minelli’s An American in Paris on Friday.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

“The Purpose and Passion: the Cinema of John Singleton” ends on Friday, but there are screenings of his 2000 Shaft movie, starring Samuel L. Jackson, and another screening of Boyz n the Hood before then.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Thursday night is a screening of David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai  (1957), but the rest of the weekend is the “Guadalajara Film Festival.”

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

Friday night’s midnight offering is John Waters’ 2004 movie A Dirty Shame, starring Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville and Selma Blair.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

The New Bev continues its “time out” at the bottom of this section as long as Tarantino uses his repertory theater to show Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, and currently it’s booked through the end of September. Since this week’s column is late, you already missed the 1952 film The Narrow Marginas the Weds. matinee, the New Bev will also show the Hanna/Barbera animated feature Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964) as this weekend’s “Kiddee Matinee.” Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is the Saturday night midnight movie, and then on Monday, the theater will show David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive  (2000) in two matinees (the 2pm is already sold out).

A quieter week with only one wide release, the Universal/DreamWorks animation fantasy-adventure Abominable.