7 Dogs

It's kind of interesting to see 7 Dogs hit American theaters a week after Unidentified; they've got very little in common aside from having "Saudi Arabia" as the first country listed under "Country of Origin" on IMDB, and sort of represent the two poles of a film industry, especially one that is very new: Unidentified is almost all homegrown talent, topical, and has a genuine sense of place (even if that's not a KSA most outsiders would recognize); 7 Dogs has local screenwriters but pretty much everyone else hails from outside the Kingdom, and it is at least partially built for export, with big action that needs no translation and plenty of guest stars that might, say, get a Boston-area computer programmer to go "Giancarlo Esposito and Monica Bellucci? Interesting!"

And, don't get me wrong, a country trying to stand a film industry up from nearly nothing needs both; the local crew probably learned a lot from their Belgian directors and the rest of the international crew's department heads, for example. Also, a large part of the value of the film industry to Saudi Arabia is not just making films for international consumption, but to forge international partnerships. There are some big action sequences here - the poster boasts the largest explosion ever staged for a movie and it just may be the case - and I suspect that this is a bit of a calling card. Movie production is a relatively new industry for Riyadh, but they can work at blockbuster scale.

The result, though, is that it's kind of a weirdly generic movie. It's perhaps trading in cliche, but there were many more ladies wearing head coverings in the audience (and, coincidentally, ripping my ticket) than on-screen; heck, I think the only time Claire & Jessica are wearing something like a hijab is when they are in India. Truth be told, if I hadn't seen Unidentified last week, I might just think that my impression of Saudi culture was a bit out of date, but the two movies seem to take place in different countries. It's possible that Khalid's home life is actually in Egypt, where most of the Middle-Eastern/North African cast is from and where most of the region's movies are made, but the movie appears to be deliberately vague on these points.

Which does sort of get to the question of what KSA is trying to accomplish here; are they looking to present a much more liberal image than reality, compared to Unidentified which is arguably aspirational in its presentation of a community that seems to be moving fitfully in the right direction. It also raises the question of what to make of the Western/Indian stars who took what I presume what was a pretty nice paycheck for the amount of work they did; I've got no interest in boycotting Giancarlo Esposito the way I can easily ignore the mostly-odious stand-ups at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, even before rationalizing that I consume a lot of media from China.

Also, this was excluded from A-List at AMC, and only played matinees, which looks like a four-walled release (especially since there wasn't a distributor logo up front; it sure looks like the KSA's General Entertainment Authority is paying to have it in American theaters). That lack of really good showtimes was probably why the 5:30pm show on Sunday had pretty good turnout, largely MENA and youngish, enough to make me wonder how much this is an underserved demographic in Boston, especially considering it's late June so there aren't that many foreign students around. It makes me wonder (a bit) if we'd be seeing more Egyptian movies had Regal not closed Fenway during the pandemic, or if this has established enough of a market for us to see more Saudi and/or Egyptian movies in the future.


7 Dogs (aka El Kilab El Sabaa)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 28 June 2026 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run/four-wall, DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

7 Dogs is an odd beast, with MENA-Belgian filmmakers directing mostly-Egyptian talent, but with enough Saudi money to hire a bunch of reasonably-familiar Western and Indian talent to get it global attention, although they seem to be booking American theaters directly rather than hooking a distributor. The result is a big action movie that can seem both idiosyncratic and oddly generic, though I must admit to not being familiar enough with Egyptian films to know how this fits that mold. Like a lot of these movies, it's got some pretty good bits but is looking to play to a broad enough audience that it's not much more.

It opens extremely in media res, with Interpol agent Khalid Abazzazzi (Ahmed Ezz) arresting gangster Ghali Abu Dawood (Karim Abdel Aziz) on a jet where a firefight has already killed the pilot and depressurized the cabin, with the plane flying upside down for good measure. Ghali is taken into Saudi custody when they land, and Khalid transfers to desk duty at the behest of his fiancee Rabab (Hana El Zahed). A year later, Rabab and Khalid's mother Nesreen (Hala Sedki) are butting heads over wedding preparations when Khalid is called in for an urgent assignment: The international "7 Dogs" gang is looking to start moving a massive amount of designer drugs into the Middle East, and the only person who can help them track them down is Ghali, who will only talk to Khalid. Thus begins an attempt to track down the other Dogs, who don't even share their identities with each other, a trail that will lead to Beijing, Mumbai, and Las Vegas - but is Ghali co-operating, or is he trying to use Khalid and colleagues Claire (Tara Emad) & Jessica (Sandy Bella) to track down rivals?

Directors Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, credited as "Adil & Bilall" as per usual, have made some stylish movies on a smaller scale in their home country of Belgium and were notably the directors of the Batgirl movie that Warner Brothers decided to write off, but the obvious comparison is to the two most recent Bad Boys sequels, with the mismatched partners, larger-than-life action sequences - it boasts of having some of the largest explosions in cinema history on the poster - and broad jokes about how these guys who can handle the most life-threatening situations at work are kind of helpless goofballs faced with proper procedure or relatively reasonable requests from the women in their lives. They handle all of it with varying degrees of aplomb; they tend to do the sort of flashy virtual camera work zooming through bullet holes (in glass and skulls) or stitching together action on multiple floors that look a bit more fake (but maybe more consciously cool) because they don't quite have an A-list effects budget, and their stunt team does some slick fighting when necessary. It's that kind of movie.

I gather the two leads are big stars in Egypt, and it's not particularly hard to see why; Ahemd Ezz is a handsome and charismatic sort who can come off as kind of square even in the midst of action, and Karim Abdel Aziz does well to find the line where Ghali is kind of goofy and likable but also clearly amoral and a criminal. Tara Emad & Sandy Bella are pleasant enough as the other parts of the team, but the script doesn't give them a lot of chance to establish separate personalities and skill sets; they're there because this sort of movie needs people to handle sniping and tech and have some extra bodies running around in the big action sequences.

The "guest stars" are pretty good, by and large. I do kind of wonder if they reached out to anyone from China or Hong Kong for the Beijing segment, but Max Huang is probably younger and more agile than anyone folks would recognize. Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt fit in well when they hit Mumbai, although Martin Lawrence plays a bit much like him doing a cameo. Monica Bellucci is solidly ruthless and charming even if her segment drags a bit (the script is suddenly trying to do way too much at this point), and they save the best for last with Giancarlo Esposito, who has the juice to show up late, be a threat, but also for in with the light tone.

The ultimate vibe is odd - it kind of feels like Middle Eastern Bad Boys with a noticeably (but not drastically) sub-Bruckheimer budget, and for something where large pieces are set in Riyadh, it doesn't really give the place a personality. That's not all bad, in that for all that I was kind of bracing myself for Saudi propaganda, Adil & Bilall probably spend more time telling us how great Belgian chocolate is. It's not bad, for what it is, and the giant explosions do deliver as advertised .

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 26 June 2026 - 2 July 2026

There's a big-studio franchise movie clocking in at under two hours this weekend. Is that allowed?

• Seriously, Supergirl runs 108 pretty-decent minutes, adapting Woman of Tomorrow in less-idiosyncratic but still entertaining fashion, with Milly Aycox strong as the Girl of Steel. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Museum of Science (Omnimax Friday/Saturday), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D Friday-Sunday), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & XL 2D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including XL 2D & RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The other big opening is Jackass: Best and Last, which promises to be the last time these guys will abuse their bodies like this after 25 years, and pads it out with some classic gags to reach 90 minutes. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  Rod Lurie directs war movie Lucky Strike starring Scott Eastwood as a grunt trapped behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge, with Colin Hanks as his commanding officer for more second-generation casting. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row.
  
  Couture stars Angelina Jolie as an American filmmaker documenting Fashion Week in Paris; writer/director Alice Winocour has made a number of other interesting films, including Proxima.
  
  Minions & Monsters gets a jump start on the holiday weekend, opening at Fresh Pond, the Capitol, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & XL 2D & RealD 3D & Spanish dub), Causeway Street (including XL 2D & RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill on Wednesday.
  
  Music doc Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul plays Boston Common on Sunday. There are secret screenings Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, The Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row; Minions & Monsters plays Early Access shows Monday at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema), South Bay (Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema), and Chestnut Hill. Assembly Row has the Telemundo world cup feeds. Boston Common has a matinee double feature of both The Devil Wears Prada films daily from Friday to Tuesday; To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar plays afternoon Pride shows at Boston Common; Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby plays 20th anniversary shows at Boston Common Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday. David plays matinees at South Bay on Monday & Wednesday.
• Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language action-comedy Welcome to the Jungle (also at Boston Common) and Tamil-language comedy Con City, with Mirathi-language horror comedy Tumbadchi Manjula playing Sunday afternoon. Held over are Telugu-language action movie Maa Inti Bangaaram, Hindi language romantic comedy Cocktail 2 (also at Boston Common), and Hindi-language Partition drama Main Vaapas Aaunga.
  
  Saudi/Egyptian action movie 7 Dogs opens at Boston Common, mostly off-hour matinees, with an Interpol agent teaming up with a gangster to catch a terrorist in Riyadh. Most of the cast is Egyptian (MENA's largest movie industry) but the money is Saudi, which buys them not just the directors of the last two Bad Boys movies but a number of Western and Bollywood stars in (presumably) smaller roles).
  
  Anime BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Calamity, a big event in the current series, plays Boston Common, subtitled & dubbed.
• The Capitol Theatre holds over Saudi thriller Unidentified through Tuesday, and it's weird there are two Saudi films to choose from, right? They didn't even have movie theaters a few years back! Bull Durham is the Friday "Play Ball!" movie. The monthly Disasterpiece Theater event is Monday, and documentary Coroner to the Stars plays Tuesday, with Globe film critic Odie Henderson discussing the film with director Ben Hethcoat.
  
  The Somerville Theatre plays the original Django for Saturday's Midnight Special. Monday's Jodie & Kurt double feature is the sci-fi night, with Contact & Stargate on 35mm film. Documentary Down by the Riverside plays Wednesday & Thursday, with directors Jodie Childers & Dan Messina on hand for a Q&A the first night.
• After The Brattle Theatre plays Mare's Nest every day this week, featuring Moon Guo-Barker as a child wandering a world seemingly free of adults.
  
  They also celebrate Mel Brooks's 100th! (hopefully not jinxing his making it to Monday) with films he directed and produced, including The Elephant Man (Friday), Young Frankenstein (Saturday & Sunday), History of the World: Part I (Saturday), The Fly (35mm Saturday/Sunday), The Producers (Sunday), Spaceballs (Monday). Tuesday's Free Elements of Cinema screening is The Friends of Eddie Coyle, often called the quintessential Boston Movie, at least of its era. On Wednesday, they start a "National Treasures" series with Nic Cage in National Treasure, with a 35mm double feature of Mission: Impossible & Charlie's Angels '00 on Thursday, with the series continuing through the 8th and including the annual Jaws shows.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre keeps Disclosure Day in 70mm on the main screen, though one show Sunday is digital and thus regular matinee prices. The wrap clown month with midnight shows of House of 1000 Corpses (Friday) and It: Chapter 2 (Saturday), with Swedish rock doc Jawbreaker also playing midnight Saturday.
  
  Sunday morning starts with Geothe-Institut presentation Red Stars Upon the Field, with The Wiz for Monday's Big Screen Classic, Catch Me If You Can on 35mm for Spielberg Tuesday, The Dark Knight on 35mm for Nolan Wednesday (the 7pm screening is sold out, but a 3:30pm show has been put on), and Coming to America plays Thursday for another Big Screen Classic.
• As happened with the Tohoscope selection last month, The Seaport Alamo scheduled one screening of Godzilla vs. Biollante on little screen #3, sold it out, and now has matinees Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday/Wednesday. They also show BUFF selection Camp (which, uh, I was not a fan of) Friday & Thursday, De Palma's Blow Out Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday, and Australian LGBT crime drama Body Blow on Tuesday.
• RoxFIlm has their closing night films, If I Go Will They Miss Me?, preceded by short "Cycles", and Montmartre on Friday night at The Museum of Fine Arts. Friday also has their online portion start, continuing throughout the week.
• Landmark Kendall Square is down to seven screens right now, with screens 1 & 2 closed for construction that will merge them into one deluxe screen, and the concession offerings seem a bit limited as they begin their renovations. Anyway, Moonlight is the Pride feature on Tuesday.
• Joe's Free Films shows free outdoor screenings of SpongeBob: Search for SquarePants in Kenmore Square's Urban Park Roof Garden on Saturday and She's the Man at TimeOut Market on Monday.
• In addition to Supergirl on the Omni screen at The Museum of Science Friday & Saturday; tickets are on sale for The Odyssey in a few and RSVPs are open for documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story Saturday afternoon.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week but Mpnday with Disclosure Day (through Tuesday) and Toy Story 5, with Minions & Monsters coming Wednesday. They also have Maine-set mockumentary Canoe Dig It? on Friday, a free screening of vintage Japanese monster movie Daimajin on Sunday morning, and comedy Influenced on Tuesday & Thursday evenings.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Supergirl and Our Hero, Balthazar, with the latter getting a "Behind the Screen" show on Sunday. Sticking around are Girls Like Girls, Toy Story 5, Disclosure Day, Pressure, and The Sheep Detectives. Minions & Monsters opens Wednesday.
  
  The Dedham Community Theatre picks up O Horizon, starring Maria Bakalova as a scientist who discovers a way to speak to her recently-deceased father (David Strathairn), and Pressure, with Tuner sticking around.
  
  Cinema Salem plays Supergirl (with a dog-friendly show on Saturday), Disclosure Day, Girls Like Girls, and Toy Story 5 from Friday to Monday. Eraserhead is the Friday Night Light show, the Teseracte Players dance in front of Rocky Horror on Saturday (Full Body, as always, at Boston Common). The Wednesday Classic is my Letterboxd page.

Unidentified

I feel like I say some variation on this every time I see something released by Sony Pictures Classics these days, but it's odd that I'm heading out to Arlington to see this one, rather than it playing in Kendall Square or at the Coolidge. SPC used to be the Kendall's bread and butter, putting out a bunch of foreign and indie material that maybe wasn't as high-profile as what Focus, Searchlight, and the Weinstein Company picked up, but there was something new every couple weeks. It's a different world, now - streamers hoover worldwide rights up up so things don't get theatrical releases abroad, Neon and A24 want to be late Miramax more than early Miramax, Kendall Square has chosen to focus more on mainstream fare than boutique fare since the pandemic, as has the Coolidge to a lesser extent (they've added two screens but play more mainstream material), while AMC Boston Common is casting a larger net with fancier places nearby, but not so much when there are big releases - and that sometimes means that the unusual releases wind up in Arlington but nowhere else.

It's a bit of a pain; if you use transit, it means transferring to the 77 or 350 bus, or walking a bit from Alewife, which filters some of the audience out, and the layouts could really use an upgrade. Like, if they are showing movies on screen #1 on one day and screen #anything else on another, you go on that first day. But, hey, at least they're open to sometimes grabbing something like this on occasion, even if it is mostly just keeping a screen warm for a week. The area needs that.

Anyway, on another note, I've already gotten one like on the hastily-jotted paragraph I put on Letterboxd while riding the bus, and following it to the person's own review, there's a lot of time on calling this Saudi propaganda. And, sure, I've been thinking that Saudi Arabia has seemed to be making a push to fund and be portrayed more favorably on film recently, although the amount seems to be coincidence; Desert Warrior and In the Grey were delayed a different amount of years each to wind up coming out so close to Hokum. But I don't know to what extent this is a propaganda push to make the country look good so much as it's an Arabian filmmaker reflecting a country that is changing but maybe not as fast as some, probably including people like director Haifaa Al-Mansour, may like.

We all fall prey to this, whether it's trying to wedge every movie from Hong Kong into a box about it being about Hong Kong's relationship with mainland China or watching a Vietnamese movie that takes place in what looks a lot more like a comfortable American suburb than the image of the poor farming villages we're carrying from 50 years ago and being surprised. There's truth to both points of view: What it's like to be a Saudi woman is going to permeate Al-Mansour's movies the way China is going to loom over films about Hong Kong whether that's the point or not, and I think a lot of movies like this are going to be made with the folks who live in the middle-class neighborhoods where the malls and multiplexes are and can afford to go to the movies in mind, reflecting their lives (and be aspirational for others).

Ultimately, Unidentified feels more like the sort of movie that someone like Al-Mansour who has lived and worked internationally and seen changes in her homeland would find to be an interesting yarn about its present, more so than something aiming to make a point, and certainly not to outsiders. If KSA was looking to use it to present itself as a more modern, liberal country than it is, they've certainly got the funds to four-wall it better! I suspect that it's more the thriller that folks like Al-Mansour and her characters would like to see than how they want outsiders to see them.

I do also suspect that KSA is liberalizing somewhat because its leaders can see the writing on the wall on how good renewable energy and batteries are getting and they're going to have to deal with the rest of the world on the world's own terms and sell their desert grandeur as much as what's underneath, even though the ruling class is not going to let go of power any faster than they can, but that's probably the background more than the point here.


Al-majhoula (Unidentified)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 June 2026 in Arlington Capitol #3 (first-run, DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

I suspect that many Westerners who see Unidentified will be drawn by the novelty of it being a female-directed/led mystery from Saudi Arabia. That is a thing that, depending on our assumptions, things like it should not exist, but here it is, and it's actually pretty impressive, a solid crime story that plays on the audience's assumptions and satisfies when it reveals the depth of its sleight of hand.

It opens with the body of a young girl being dumped in the desert outside of Riyadh before introducing Nawal (Mila Alzahrani), who has moved to the city since her husband divorced her about a year ago, a box labeled "baby clothes" implying a tragic story. He brother Arif (Mishal Aleanzi) thinks she should move back home, but she seems to be enjoying her job at the North Riyadh police station, scanning documents for digitalization, chatting with Lt. Majid (Shafi Alharthi) over their shared fandom of an Arabic-language true crime podcast (she likes the combination of lurid violence and makeup tips, while he notes the forensic work is surprisingly solid). With the station's sole woman in uniform at training in Jeddah, Majid brings Nawal to the crime scene to handle duties that would be unacceptable for a man. He probably should have predicted that Nawal would start trying to solve the crime herself, figuring the men at the station would not prioritize it.

There's an odd feel to how Nawal goes about trying to solve the mystery, in that she's more or less attacking it like a cop, making lists of possibilities and doing a great deal of footwork to cross things off, even though she is pointedly not one. The crime itself stays tantalizingly out of focus for some time, with the attention not quite shifting to Nawal's life even as her reasons for this being so important to her snap into clearer focus. Director Haifaa Al-Mansour and her co-writer Brad Niemann never minimize the actual crime even as the focus often shifts to what Nawal has to do to make progress in solving it, but they dole out new information slowly enough that the more personal elements have to fill the space.

That's fine, because in a lot of ways the film is what it's like to be a young woman in today's Saudi Arabia, which is in some ways not quite so restrictive as the images that took up residence in this viewer's head around Operation Desert Storm and haven't necessarily been updated despite the occasional news story about women being allowed to drive and movie theaters opening, but that often winds up highlighting just how arbitrary and dangerous the limits that do remain are. Intentionally or not, Al-Mansour plays with westerners' assumptions on that count, and also lets it heighten the tension. There's an extra dollop of danger to every bit of Nawal's amateur sleuthing as the audience is acutely aware, just by the nature of the crime, that she is in danger not just for getting close to the truth, but for being a woman with the nerve to be nosy or exceeding her nonexistent authority. Fascinatingly, the resistance often comes from other women, who often display a combination of having internalized their place in the order of things, fear that they might not be able to get away with what Nawal does, or (especially among the teenagers) nihilistic resignation at their limited futures.

It gives star Mila Alzahrani a lot to work with, and she's magnetic throughout. As the movie goes on, she does great work merging the young woman enjoying freedom and being able to indulge her unladylike interests with someone whose marriage collapsed with tragedy, trauma, and rejection. She's a ton of fun to watch, a little bit cocky and sarcastic and plenty smart. Shafi Alharthi is an enjoyable foil for her, maybe not quite a father figure but likable in how he often seems to respect her even if he's old enough to need some effort to keep traditionalism and condescension at bay. Mishal Aleanzi only has a couple scenes as her older brother but they form a great bookend in terms of being a patrician busybody and how clear it is that he's going to have his sister's back. It also highlights Abdullah Alqahtani's performance as the religious calligrapher/graffiti artist who was close enough to the victim to be the prime suspect - how Arif and Nawal interact helps flesh out Mishal and Amal.

Al-Mansour is good at making scenes like that perform double duty, because this is a mystery even if the themes of grief and needing closure assume greater prominence as the film goes on. She never exactly lies to the audience but she does misdirect, enough to make the end of the movie a pretty nifty set of dominoes as new bits of information click into place. What's great about it as the last act of a mystery is that the flashbacks highlight what was in plain sight as much as what was hidden, with there being a great deal of satisfaction in how people were never truly misrepresented. The characters can be seen struggling with their assumptions, much the same way the audience is (presumably at home and abroad).

The effect is that of a good mystery paperback: A pretty breezy tale that nevertheless has something to say about the environment in which it takes place if one is inclined to look, while also keenly aware that the audience is there to play a shell game with the writers and commentary does not necessarily come before crime. It's a smart genre story that the filmmakers pull back down to earth when it threatens to get too close to prestige drama.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 19 June 2026 - 24 June 2026

I occasionally joke about how it's weird that the folks who saw the first Toy Story and Shrek movies in theaters could conceivably be bringing their grandchildren to the the new ones, but also consider the number of characters whose distinct voices have been recast due to infirmity and death. I dunno, seems like like there's some sort of lesson here.

• But, nonetheless, we get Toy Story 5 this weekend, hoping for a third perfect endpoint as the toys call Woody back in to help as Bonnie's latest toy, a tablet, begins to monopolize all of her time and make her antisocial. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D Friday-Sunday), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & XL 2D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including XL 2D & RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  On the opposite end of the spectrum is The Death of Robin Hood, which stars Hugh Jackman as the title character, a thief and murderer well aware of the legend already sanitizing his reputation, with his one last raid having unexpected consequences. Michael Sarnoski, who did Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, directs, and it's a strangely thoughtful hard R playing the Coolidge, the Captiol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  Two LGBTQIA+ films open for Pride this week, with Levitcus a horror tale in which a demonic entity makes use of the attraction between two teenage boys, appearing to each as the other. It's at the Coolidge, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Coming of age film Girls Like Girls - which writer/director Hayley Kiyoko has previously recorded as a song and a book - opens at the Somerville, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, and the Seaport. Moonlight also has daily screenings at Boston Common.
  
  Ocean's Eleven has 25th anniversary shows at Boston Common on Sunday; Raiders of the Lost Ark, meanwhile, celebrates 45 years at Boston Common and the Seaport on Sunday (also Tuesday at the Seaport and Coolidge Corner); Paddington in Peru plays matinees Monday & Wednesday at South Bay. There's a surprise preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday. Not a surprise are the "Fan First" screenings of Supergirl Wednesday at Boston Common (Imax Laser), Causeway Street (XL), South Bay (Imax Xenon), and Assembly Row (Imax Laser), or the "Fan Event" shows of Jackass: Best and Last Thursday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. The Spanish-language broadcasts of the World Cup will be playing on the big screen at Assembly Row.
• Indian movies at Apple Fresh Pond (and elsewhere) this weekend include Telugu-language action movie Maa Inti Bangaaram with Samantha Ruth Prabhu as a mother defending her family; Hindi language romantic comedy Cocktail 2 (also at Boston Common), which returns writer/director Homi Adajania but features a new pair of friends finding themselves attracted to the same man; Malayalam-language thriller Balam: The Boy; and Gujarathi-language comedy Jindagi Once More. Hindi-language Partition drama Main Vaapas Aaunga continues at Fresh Pond through Sunday.
  
  Vietnamese horror fantasy Hell Trotter opens at South Bay, mostly late shows.
  
  The anime feature adaptation of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Adolescence of Utena, plays Boston Common Sunday & Monday. Independent anime Jinsei also continues at Boston Common.
• The Capitol Theatre opens Saudi thriller Unidentified, with Mila Al Zahrani as a true-crime podcaster investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Major League play Friday as part of the "Play Ball!" series.
  
  The Somerville Theatre Bottle Rocket for Saturday's Midnight Special, a 35mm double feature of Breakdown & Flightplan for Monday's Kurt & Jodie pairing, and Shaun of the Dead for Thirsty Thursday.
• After The Brattle Theatre's has 35mm matinees of Malcolm X for Juneteenth on Friday & Saturday, while the weekend's main event is a new 75th Anniversary of Giuseppe De Santis's Bitter Rice from Friday to Monday.
  
  Well, one of them, as they have a 35mm print of The Shining for five Father's Day shows from Saturday to Monday. During the work week, they team withWicked Queer for Pride-themed anniversary shows, with Desert Hearts & Bound on Tuesday, Beautiful Thing on 35mm Wednesday, Macho Dancer later Wednesday, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Thursday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre has more clown midnights this weekend with Terrifier 2 on Friday (and The Room for a different value of "clown") and Chiodo Brothers classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space on Saturday. Spielberg X Nolan continues with Raiders of the Lost Ark on 35mm Tuesday (7pm sold out but a 9:30pm show added) and The Prestige on 35mm Wednesday (Disclosure Day plays the main screen on 70mm film all week long). Tuesday also features a screening of BUFF standout Rose of Nevada with director Mark Jenkin on-hand and author Paul Tremblay leading the discussion. Thursday's Cult Classic is Xanadu.
• The Seaport Alamo has I Am Not Your Negro and Female Trouble (separately!) on Friday, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Force Majeure, and Body Double, plus an open-crafting show of Toy Story 5, on Saturday; Aftersun on Sunday; Johnny Guitar on Monday; and a preview of Maddie's Secret with livestreamed Q&A on Wednesday.
• RoxFIlm continues all week with screenings at Hibernian Hall, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, The Museum of Fine Arts, and JustBook-ish, plus daily online script readings and filmmaker hangouts.
• Landmark Kendall Square holds over Netflix film In the Hand of Dante, although it's going to be missing some prime showtimes.
  
  Brokeback Mountain is the Pride feature on Tuesday, and Interstellar is the week's "Saving Matt Damon" show on Wednesday.
• The Regent Theatre has documentary Linda Perry: Let It Die Here on Saturday, with filmmaker Don Hardy on-hand for a Q&A led by The Boston Globe's Victoria Wasylak.
• Joe's Free Films shows free outdoor screenings of Clueless at TimeOut Market on Monday and 50 First Dates at Boston Landing on Thursday.
• Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu on the Omni screen at The Museum of Science Friday & Saturday; tickets are on sale for Supergirl and The Odyssey in coming weeks and RSVPs are open for documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story the afternoon of Saturday the 27th.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week but Mpnday with Disclosure Day (with an open-caption show followed by post-film discussion on Wednesday) and Toy Story 5..
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Girls Like Girls and Toy Story 5; keeping Disclosure Day, Everyone to Kenmure Street, Tuner, Pressure, and The Sheep Detectives. Rebel with a Clause plays open-captioned Saturday afternoon, with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert playing Sunday with a post-film reception.
  
  The Dedham Community Theatre adds Unidentified to Power Ballad and Tuner.
  
  Cinema Salem plays Disclosure Day, Girls Like Girls, Toy Story 5, and Obsession from Friday to Monday. Saturday features a "Food in Film" encore presentation of Jiro Dreams of Sushi in the afternoon and Spooky Picture Show hosting Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. The Wednesday Classic pairs Grace Kelly with Bing Crosby & Frank Sinatra in High Society, with Weirdo Wednesday down the hall.

Female-led mystery from Saudi Arabia? Interesting! I'll probably also check out Toy Story 5, Dante, and some rep, especially since the Sox are heading out west and you can watch a movie and then baseball! Follow my Letterboxd page for updates!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 June 2026 - 17 June 2026

Last week, barely anything to see. This week, stuff's blocking each other!

• The clear big deal is Disclosure Day, a new science fiction adventure from Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp, starring Josh O'Connor as a man who has discovered humanity is not alone and intends to get the word out to the entire world at once; it also features Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, and Eve Hewson, and some are saying it's among his best. It's at the Coolidge (70mm), the Somerville, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax Friday-Saturday), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema & XL), Causeway Street (including XL), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema) Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill. The 8pm Friday night Imax screenings at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row will feature a live-streamed introduction with Spielberg & Blunt.
  
  BUFF closer The Furious, in which two men searching for their missing wife and daughter fight their way through a phenomenal amount of human traffickers, opens at Fresh Pond and Boston Common. The action is amazing (and amazingly violent), culminating in a closing brawl that took 18 days of a six-week shoot.
  
  Also opening is Stop! That! Train!, with RuPaul as the President and most of the roles played by other drag queens, as stewardesses on a high-speed train face a natural disaster. Crazy how this is opening on a bunch of screens - including the Coolidge, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, and South Bay - when this sort of thing supposedly makes mainstream America uncomfortable, huh?
  
  Call Me By Your Name has late-afternoon shows at Boston Common as the week's Pride selection; Amores perros has a new restoration at Boston Common Saturday & Monday. BTS World Tour Arirang will have "live viewings" at South Bay and Assembly Row on Saturday. Mystery previews play Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday; horror movie Leviticus has a non-mystery preview at Boston Common Tuesday. KPop Demon Hunters returns for sing-along shows at the Seaport (Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday), Arsenal Yards (Tuesday/Wednesday). Music doc Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul plays the Coolidge and Boston Common on Wednesday. Assembly Row is showing a number of World Cup matches live, possibly the Spanish-language Telemundo broadcast.
• Landmark Kendall Square has Netflix film In the Hand of Dante before it hits the streamer, with Julian Schnabel's latest featuring Oscar Isaac in a dual role as Dante Alighieri and a present-day writer recruited to steal a copy of The Divine Comedy written in the poet's own hand. Heck of a supporting cast on it, too.
  
  Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the Pride feature on Tuesday, and Elysium is the week's "Saving Matt Damon" show on Wednesday.
• Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language Partition drama Main Vaapas Aaunga (also at Boston Commo and, Causeway Street); Hindi-language thriller Bharat Bhhagya Viddhaata, featuring Kangana Ranaut as one of a group of nurses keeping patients safe during a terror attack; Hindi-language historical drama Governor: The Silent Saviour; and Telugu-language comedy/drama Sing Geetham. Telugu-language sports drama Peddi continues at Fresh Pond & Boston Common.
  
  Independent anime Jinsei, which follows a man through his 100 year life in idiosyncratic, hand-drawn form (with writer/director Ryuya Suzuki nearly a one-man crew), opens at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, the Seaport. Ponyo is the week's Studio Ghibli Fest selection, showing Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday (dubbed) and Monday/Tuesday (subtitled) at Boston Common and Assembly Row. There's a Crunchyroll Anime Sneak Peek at Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row on Monday.
  
  Hong Kong animated film Another World gets a second week of limited showtimes at Boston Common (it deservedly had a pretty good crowd when I saw it last week).
• Since the 70mm print of Disclosure Day has the main screen all week, The Coolidge Corner Theatre has a bit less rep than usual. Midnights for the rest of June are apparently creepy clowns, with It a bit early (11:30pm) on Friday and Blood Harvest on Saturday, plus the monthly Eraserhead. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Paper Moon on 35mm film, and Space Jam is the Thursday "Rewind!" show.
• After The Brattle Theatre's Friday Fim Matinee of Sandra Bernhard's Without You I'm Nothing, they host Noir City Boston, this year highlighting movies with a jazz bent, most introduced by the Film Noir Foundation's Foster HIrsch. The double features are Black Angel & Blues in the Night (both 35mm) on Friday; Anatomy of a Murder (35mm) & All Night Long Saturday afternoon; Gilda & To Have and Have Not (both 35mm) Saturday evening; The Man with the Golden Arm & A Man Called Adam Sunday afternoon; and The Yellow Canary & The Crimson Canary (35mm) Sunday evening. There's also a bonus screening of Sweet Smell of Success on Monday (without Hirsch).
  
  After that, they fill in the work week with Stop Making Sense on Tuesday and Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy: Sunrise on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, Sunset Wednesday/Thursday, and Midnight on 35mm Thursday as the end of a triple feature.
• The Capitol Theatre has Eephus (which is delightful) for Friday's "Play Ball!" show; documentary HOPE: The Courageous Response in the Face of Adversity, which follows a young South Sudanese refugee, plays Thursday.
  
  The Somerville Theatre has a packed-enough schedule that Friday's Indie Spotlight, Rats! with directors Carl Fry & Maxwell Nalevansky, is playing in the Micro-Cinema. The centerpiece of the Kurt & Jodie series, a double feature of The Silence of the Lambs & The Thing, plays Saturay night, while Tombstone & Maverick play Monday, the latter on 35mm film. In between, the Saturday Midnight Special is Blue Velvet and Jeff Rapsis accompanies a 35mm print of silent cut-out animation The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a thoroughly unique take on Arabian Nights. The Thirsty Thursday show is From Dusk Till Dawn.
• The Seaport Alamo continues their Brian De Palma films with Dressed to Kill Friday night. Saturday features a But I'm a Cheerleader movie party, Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur, and The Graduate; Ingmar Bergman's Persona plays Sunday & Tuesday; a new 4K restoration of Boogie Nights plays Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Thursday; and the Weird Wednesday show is The Devil Queen. There are advance screenings of The Invite on Tuesday and Leviticus on Wednesday
• RoxFIlm curates a screening of She Was There at the West End Museum on Saturday (free with RSVP) before opening the festival proper at The Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday with Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story, preceded by short "The Bill Patterson Story", with a number of filmmakers from both films and Best himself on hand. The in-person festival continues through the 26th, at which point it will move online for another week
• The Regent Theatre has a second screening of beat poetry documentary Fugs Film! on Wednesday evening, maybe featuring featuring a live Q&A with director Chuck Smith (or maybe they just copied last week's listing).
• WBUR's CitySpace restarts their "Set in Boston" screening/conversation series with Girl, Interrupted on Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films shows a free outdoor screening of The Good Dinosaur at CambridgeSide on Friday and does not yet seem to be updated with the Coolidge presenting But I'm a Cheerleader at the Allston Speedway on Wednesday.
• The Museum of Science has Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu on the Omni screen Friday & Saturday evenings for the next two weeks, with tickets on sale for Supergirl and The Odyssey after that.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week with Disclosure Day, Pressure, and The Sheep Detectives. They also have free screenings of Maigret Sets a Trap Saturday morning, Maigret And The Saint-Fiacre Case Sunday morning, and documentary The Extraordianary Caterpillar, with guests from The Caterpillar Lab, on Tuesday evening.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Disclosure Day and one of my favorites from IFFBoston, Everyone to Kenmure Street, holding over Power Ballad, Tuner, Pressure, Backrooms, The Sheep Detectives, and Project Hail Mary. There's also The History of Sound with post-film panel discussion on Sunday and a rough-cut screening of documentary feature Nine on Wednesday, with proceeds going to complete the film. They also host the final film of Belmont World Film's refugee series, Promised Sky, with speaker Haleigh Burgon, who recently recorded oral histories in the film's Tunisian setting.
  
  The Dedham Community Theatre continues Power Ballad and Tuner.
  
  Cinema Salem plays Disclosure Day, Scary Movie, Backrooms, and Obsession from Friday to Monday. The Friday Night Light show is Austrian lesbian sci-fi adventure Flaming Ears, while Saturday features a "Food in Film" encore presentation of Tampopo, as well as the theatrical premiere of Clownspiracy paired with short film "Chompers" (with the latter's Chef Joe Gatto on hand for a Q&A). Sunday has a Whodunnit Watch Party, while the Wednesday Classic Grace Kelly month continues with To Catch a Thief, with Weirdo Wednesday down the hall, and Jiro Dreams of Sushi as that night's Food in Film movie, with another, Big Night, on Thursday.

So, my schedule is set with Noir City Friday to Sunday, Kurt & Jodie Monday, 70mm Disclosure Day Tuesday, a Red Sox game Wednesday, and, well, let's see if Jinsei or In the Hand of Dante continue for second weeks or even have evening shows to see what's up Thursday. Follow my Letterboxd page for updates!

This Week in Tickets: 1 June 2026 - 7 June 2026 (Thin at the multiplex)

Not sure whether this attempt to get back to doing TWIT as warm-up for Fantasia is working or not - my big problem is getting started, which probably won't be as much of a problem in Montreal, but which also means a lazy morning could totally derail me.

The Somerville's new tickets (and presumably the Capitol's) are kind of weird - like, are they meant to be ripped in half, although that would mess with the QR code, which they don't (yet) scan…? They also seem to fade pretty quickly, although I'm not sure how many folks are buying them for a couple days (or even hours) in advance and I imagine there around something like four of us putting them in scrapbooks. Anyway, the guy at the box office accidentally hit the Backrooms button, but it's no big deal, because there was plenty of room in the main theater for The Accused and Silkwood.

For the rest of the week, there was a fair amount of futile watching of the Red Sox, and sort of performative sighing about not being interested in a lot of the new releases, but that they were taking up so many screens that the release of one of last year's biggest movies from Hong Kong, animated fantasy Another World, was one showtime a day at inconvenient times, which is why I was at Boston Common at 11:45am on Saturday. There's just really been nothing between the extremes of franchise entries that may not excite you and horror for the past month.

Then Sunday, it was off to the Seaport Alamo for Trainspotting, which I somehow missed during its initial run and just never got around to. Anyway, one of the reasons I'd like to see self-applied hashtags on Letterboxd's stats page is so I can easily see to just what extent most of the movies I see at the Seaport Alamo are on screen #3, which I believe is the smallest, so half the rep playing there is saying something about its audience.

Anyway, this week already has nearly this much posted on my Letterboxd account, and next week will be a challenge!


The Accused

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 June 2026 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Kurt & Jodie, 35mm)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

I had just turned 15 when this came out, so I didn't see it in the theaters, but I was aware enough of it that it seemed like someone setting a bomb off in pop culture, like it was the first time sexual assault was so central to something this mainstream. Of course, I was 15, so a fair amount hadn't crossed the path my folks kept relatively clean, but even if it wasn't such a first for anyone at least a little bit older, the movie still feels like dragging something into the open, because the broad complicity and encouragement is just as central as the actual rape, along with the sometimes heavy-handed but earnest demand for Jodie Foster's Sarah to say what happened to her on her own terms.

In a lot of ways, The Accused has the feel of a TV movie-of-the-week minus the sanding off and euphemising necessary for it to be shown over the air, with HBO maybe just starting to do this sort of original programming. That's not really a strike against it, because it's doing the job of one of those presentations, presenting a social issue in a way that will feel relatable to a very broad audience, and there's value in doing it in a relatively familiar form. A lot of the cast beyond stars Kelly McGillis and Jodie Foster are fairly forgettable, the story is paced to allow things to sink in rather than surprise or send one's thinking off in a different direction, and it explains things rather matter-of-factly. It's the sort of straightforward filmmaking where things like a conversation happening at a hockey game where McGillis's prosecutor is clearly not enjoying herself as much as her male colleagues could be an attempt to make a point or a situation where a point gets made because the filmmakers did something that seemed ordinary.

The familiarity helps a bit for when it's not going to be painting in the lines as much. Though parts are heavy-handed, they are in a familiar way, and the film is surprisingly deft in how it seldom feels like the filmmakers are hiding What Really Happened until they hit the audience with it. At that point, it's very clearly from a specific point of view, but one we've been primed to trust despite Bernie Coulson's Ken being a fairly minor character despite also being the first guy we see. The flashback that the audience gets through his testimony is a barn-burner of a scene, as screenwriter Tom Topor and director Jonathan Kaplan let go of what restraint they were showing to draw a clear line with a right side and a wrong side. Though there's some of the usual courtroom movie stuff after it - summations, waiting for the jury to come back, that sort of thing - it's rightfully positioned as the climax despite having no real new revelations, with the rest just necessary business.

Foster's great even before that section, especially since a lesser actress might have lost the sympathy she'd generated as a shell-shocked survivor trying to stand tall given how reckless she seemed in retrospect; it's a terrific evocation of the imperfect victim to the extent that it doesn't actually require someone making a speech about how the law isn't just for the perfect victim. This is also one of Kelly McGillis's most solid roles (Hollywood never really figured out what to do with her after Witness, it seems), and the cast has a working-class feel to it that seldom seems too affected.

This movie came out four or five years after the one that followed it, which I called the last gasp of New Hollywood, and it's a much more commercial movie despite the confrontational subject matter; it seldom fails to underline its drama and fits a familiar template. But it works, and I imagine that it can still serve as a shock to the system today.


Silkwood

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 June 2026 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Kurt & Jodie, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

1983's Silkwood feels a bit like the last gasp of 1970s New Hollywood, an exceptionally down-to-earth film that sometimes boosts its authenticity by meandering rather than staying laser-focused and is full of fine work by people who would thrive in the more consciously-commercial cinematic environment that would replace that movement. It's a good movie, but I must admit that when viewed as the back-end of a double feature with The Accused, I found myself much more aware of where it doesn't quite engage than when it does. It's the sort of film based on a true story that doesn't aim to dramatize in the sense of highlighting its dramatic elements so much as by having talented people meticulously recreate a situation in the hopes that the immersion becomes resonance and sympathy more than voyeurism.

The vibe of it is in many ways the most important part, showing how things like nuclear power/weapons that we tend to think of as high-tech and cutting-edge science, produced in pristine white clean rooms, are actually having the grunt work done in destitute small towns by blue-collar folks scared enough of losing their jobs and the area's main employer that companies can cut corners down to the bone. Karen Silkwood's specific story didn't do a lot for me - in some ways Meryl Streep makes her too airy to get a hold of even when she's at her most focused - and the finale makes it seem all the less consequential, having characters flash back to what we'd just seen a few minutes before rather than highlighting the rest of the story. It feels real - this is absolutely what her boyfriend would worry about - but this is a movie that occasionally manifests genuine terror about the effects of working with plutonium for an unscrupulous corporation - I will put every time Karen sets off the radiation monitor off at a moment one is expecting the scan to be perfunctory up against any jump scare in a horror movie since - but that's the final example of many of it perhaps being too eager to emphasize character over plot.

Also, 43 years later, it almost distractingly filled with That Guys, creating the odd sensation where movie stars like Kurt Russell and Cher playing unglamorous supporting roles doesn't quite knock one out of the movie so much as recognizing David Strathairn, Craig T. Nelson, Bruce McGill, James Rebhorn, Fred Ward, Ron Silver, or Will Patton every five minutes.


Shì Wài (Another World)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 June 2026 in Boston Common #21 (first-run, DCP)
Prime Video pre-order link)

GKids really needs another imprint that doesn't imply my brother should bring his 5-year-old son to something like Another World, because yikes. There weren't a lot of kids in my Saturday morning screening, but there could have been; aside from the studio name, the posters (and presumably the previews) scan as a more Ghibli-esque sort of eerie, and the folks at the theater loaded it up with previews for G & PG-rated family movies. It's a rather darker fantasy than that.

It opens with narrator Gudo (voice of Chung Suet-Ying) informing the audience that he used to be a spirit guide, helping the recently deceased through the netherworld to a waterfall where they can pass through to their next life, leaving behind their memories and a rope whose knots represents their resentments. The latest lost soul he encounters is Yuri (voice of Christy Choi Hiu-Tung), a green-haired girl looking for her brother Keiji, seemingly not aware she has died. He figures that it cannot hurt to help her find him, but soon we follow another path, as Princess Goran of Flower City (voice of Goofy Yeung Nga-Man) learns that her father the king has died in battle, with her uncle (voice of Raymond Fung Chi-Fai) accusing General Mok (voice of Antonio Cheung Chun-Shing) of murdering him. Considered cursed by the people because her beloved mother died in childbirth, Goran may find it difficult to maintain her kind heart in this situation.

It is not much of a stretch to guess that Goran is Yuri's reincarnation, even before Gudo somehow appears outside of Another World, guardian Dark Sky (voice of Louis Cheung Kai-Chung) by his side with a flame where his head should be, but that's just the start of how writer Polly Yeung (adapting Saijo Naka's novel Sennenki) and director Tommy Kai Chung-Ng are going to both do some impressive world-building and move up and down history. It's also unusually sophisticated narratively, promising that it will be doing interesting things with the timeline early without getting too cute about it: You can feel good about catching on, but it's got a lot more to reveal, and the result grows into something epic without losing track of what's grabbed the audience on a personal level.

It's an impressive movie in other ways, in part because you can see that it's maybe had to stretch a fair amount for its ambitions to fit into its budget - it looks a bit grainy and low resolution at times, and never seems to have the digital creatures and backgrounds that other animated films in this style do. It feels like a throwback to ambitious 1980s anime in terms of where it makes some extra effort and where it lets the background fade back and be static, even if it does feel more Chinese despite its origins (character designs and much of the mythology is fairly specifically Tibetan). Rather than jumping between styles by using CGI for its more complex monsters and machines the way a lot of other modern animated features do, it maintains consistent technique but changes coloring and detail. There's a sharp contrast between the human world and Another World though they do seem to be of a piece, and the design of the creatures and settings is terrific.

It gets pretty harsh at times, though, not necessarily working hard to emphasize how cynical it is even though the sweep of the story certainly indicates a pessimistic outlook on humanity over the course of history; the horrors eventually revealed are not for the squeamish. The filmmakers never really have Gudo doubt himself, or explain what sort of life form he is directly, but they also make it clear that, as this sort of otherworldly being, he doesn't necessarily understand humanity; he's detached and naive about human suffering in a way that a rich person may be about poverty only more so, though his intentions are never bad. There's an intriguing bit of philosophy to consider in its view of reincarnation where the cycle of life, death, and rebirth does not hone a soul to perfection through its suffering so much as the absorbed suffering of individuals seems to corrupt the underlying society, and the focus on untying individuals' knots or waiting for a pivotal moment to remove their Evil Seed just doesn't get the job done.

It's a visual stunner and an epic, though quite a bit heavier than one might expect from the previews. Pretty impressive on the big screen, though, and will probably manage to translate to the living room better than most films with this much spectacle do.


Trainspotting

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 June 2026 in Alamo Seaport #3 (30th anniversary, laser DCP)
Where to stream it, or buy the disc at Amazon

How did I avoid seeing this when it came out? I was a college kid working in a movie theater and not afraid of Scots accents!

(Honestly, it seems quaint how worked up people got about that!)

Thirty years later, with Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor's careers to look back on, it's amazing how much is right here from the start: Boyle is a director who really demands to be noticed, so clearly wanting you to see his style and clever decisions that it could become obnoxious if he weren't so assured; McGregor is probably too charming to really sell you on Renton being an actual lowlife. Maybe that's the point, that the heroin high is so good that it blots out his better self, but everybody involved is having too much fun to really underline the point except at important moments.

But, then, Boyle is skilled enough to handle the ebb and flow of the movie, and his last little trick where the camera loses focus until Renton is a kind of featureless horror sort of primes one to reconsider things in the way out of the theater, about how Begbie was the obvious psychopath all along, but the rest of them are nearly as bad in how they just don't seem to care. Renton, in particular, is a piece of shit for whom the audience is always given a reason to look the other way - he can't be that bad if his parents care that much for him, he freaks out when he realizes Diane is just a teenager, he's loyal to but annoyed by his friends who have graduated beyond petty crime when they reunite in London, he leaves a share for Spud - but considered in whole, he's arguably the film's greatest monster in part because he is able to slide: It's not clear he's got any probably with Diane being that young other than the chance he might get in trouble, he segues into being an estate agent a little too easily, and he uses that to hopefully dispose of Sick Boy & Begbie. Worst, though, is that he's responsible for Tommy's spiral, and never comes clean when there was a chance to stop it at pretty much no cost to him.

The central question here, I guess, is whether Boyle and company make things too entertaining for the film's central message about how heroin is so good that people will have no compunctions being monstrous pursuing the high. Its best moments deliver a gut punch, but some of its more memorable ones reduce horrors to surreality or slapstick, and for as much as it's not subtle in many ways, there's something odd thirty years on about how casually the film treats the HIV/AIDS epidemic: It's mentioned regularly but casually, and a modern audience may need to be reminded that this was a huge deal in a way that someone seeing this in the mid-1990s might not, but everything else in the movie had an exclamation point.

Anyway, I should probably actually watch that copy of T2 Trainspotting soon, considering I'd intended to watch the first before seeing the sequel, but didn't find the time, so missed it. The original is messy but fascinating, and I'm curious to see where this group landed, 20 years later, on whether the heroin made these guys monsters or whether it kept their awful nature in check.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 5 June 2026 - 11 June 2026

Hey, could the next huge hit from some 20-something YouTuber be a romantic comedy or a heist movie or something featuring a great young martial artist? I like horror well enough, but let's switch it up!

• I guess it's time to see if anyone really wants a Masters of the Universe movie; the one we're getting has Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man, Jared Leto as Skeletor, some half-decent folks picking up paychecks, and maybe a little hope offered by director Travis Knight, who in addition to Kubo and the Two Strings also made Bumblebee, aka the good Transformers movie. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  IFFBoston feature Power Ballad stars Paul Rudd as a wedding singer who sees the fading boy-band member played by Nick Jonas make his song a hit and goes a bit off the handle, with director John Carney clearly a specialist in inspiring musical stories. It's at West Newton, Dedham Community Theatre, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Another IFFBoston alum, Carolina Caroline, opens in limited showtimes at Boston Common; it follows Samara Weaving & Kyle Gallner on a crime spree across the South.
  
  The Wayans Brothers are once again running the Scary Movie show, with movie #6 doing the number-eschewing thing and bringing back Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and others to parody recent horror movies. It's at Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & XL), Causeway Street (including XL), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act gets a run at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Boston Common starts a series of Pride matinees with Milk playing at 4pm daily; The Birdcage has anniversary shows at Boston Common on Sunday & Wednesday. Assembly Row will be showing World Cup matches on the big screen starting Thursday.
• Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language romantic comedy Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai, Hindi-language crime drama Bandar, and Tamil-language dark comedy Parimala and Co. Malayalam-language comedy Mollywood Times plays Friday & Saturday, while Marathi-language drama Deool Band 2 plays Sunday. Telugu-language sports drama Peddi continues at Fresh Pond & Boston Common.
  
  Hong Kong animated film Another World opens for pretty limited showtimes at Boston Common; it follows a spirit guide in the afterlife whose latest charge carries enough anger to reincarnate as a monster.
• The New England Aquarium adds "Ocean Dreams" to their their Imax film rotation starting on Sunday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre continues Bleak Week with Time of the Wolf at 9:15pm Friday and a 35mm print of Elephant at midnight; animated films It's Such a Beautiful Day and Grave of the Fireflies on Saturday afternoon with a 35mm print of A History of Violence at midnight; and Béla Tarr's 539-minute magnum opus Sátántangó on Sunday.
  
  After that, Monday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Set It Off with a pre-film seminar by Mikal J. Gaines, and then they start the Spielberg X Nolan series with a 35mm print of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Tuesday and a 70mm print of Interstellar on Wednesday (evening sold out, but there's a matinee). Thursday also has a (sold-out) big screen classic of Orlando and Sugar & Spice for the Cult Classic afterward, both on 35mm film.
• The Brattle Theatre hosts the Community Art Center's 29th annual Do It Your Damn Self National Film Festival on Friday night, before beginning their run of The Last One for the Road, an Italian indie road trip story running through Monday.
  
  They also celebrate Prince's birthday with Sign 'o' the Times (35mm) and Purple Rain on Saturday & Sunday, and have a craft-along show of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on Monday evening. After that, they've got a "Jim Jarmusch x3" series, with Mystery Train (35mm) Monday & Wednesday, Father Mother Sister Brother from Tuesday to Thursday, and Night on Earth Tuesday & Thursday.
• The Capitol Theatre has Field of Dreams for Friday's "Play Ball!" show. One Wednesday they have a mystery 16mm "Celluloid Confidential" movie.
  
  The Somerville Theatre starts the summer's Midnight Specials on Saturday with a 35mm print of Carrie. Monday's Jodie & Kurt show is Panic Room & Backdraft, with the latter on 35mm.
• The Seaport Alamo starts a Kids' Camp series with matinee screenings of Matilda Friday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday (and maybe Thursday). The original Hideo Nakata Ringu plays Friday night, Brian De Palma's Sisters on Saturday night, 30th Anniversary shows of Trainspotting on Sunday, a preview screening of Girls Like Girls with livestreamed Q&A from director Hayley Kiyoki on Monday, an afternoon show of Cave of Forgotten Dreams (apparently 2D) on Tuesday, with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Chime" & Serpent's Path the "Terror Tuesday" show later, and a Showgirls Movie Party on Wednesday.
• Landmark Kendall Square has But I'm a Cheerleader for the Pride feature on Tuesday and Saving Private Ryan for "Saving Matt Damon" on Wednesday.
• The Regent Theatre has beat poetry documentary Fugs Film! on Wednesday evening, featuring a live Q&A with director Chuck Smith, and another documentary, Roads of Fire, including a Q&A from director Nathaniel Lezra.
• The Museum of Science has Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu on the Omni screen Friday & Saturday evenings.
• The Lexington Venue closed Monday & Tuesday and shows Pressure, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and The Sheep Detectives on the other days.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Power Ballad, Tuner, and Pressure, keeping Backrooms, Silent Friend, The Sheep Detectives, and Project Hail Mary are held over. Do the Right Thing plays Saturday, with a WIP presentation of program manager Tim Leong's Summerville afterward; Casablanca plays Thursday fo Ty Burr's movie club. They also host Lost Land, which follows Rohingya refugees on a perilous trek to Malaysia, for Belmont World Film with lawyer Jacqueline Bhabha as the pre-film speaker.
  
  The Dedham Community Theatre adds Power Ballad to Tuner.
  
  Cinema Salem plays Scary Movie, Backrooms, Obsession, and The Sheep Detectives from Friday to Monday. They have an encore presentation of Rear Window on Saturday with post-film discussion. Another starring Grace Kelly, The Country Girl, is the Wednesday Classic with Weirdo Wednesday down the hall, and then on Thursday they have a "Food in Film" presentation of Tampopo.
  
  The AMC at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers has an English dub of German animated family film The Last Whale Singer

Man, it would be kind of cool if there were more interesting alternatives to Masters of the Universe, so I'll probably catch up with Obsession and the Trainspotting restoration, on top of Another World and some rep. Follow my Letterboxd page for updates!

This Week in Tickets: 25 May 2026 - 31 May 2026 (Don't Get Used to This!)

Gonna try and do these at least until Fantasia, trying to get the knack of getting these expansions of my Letterboxd entries done in a few hours, because I always get halfway through and sputter out.

So (hits timer at 7PM), let's go! The week starts off as a lot of weeks will this summer, at the Somerville Theatre for their Kurt & Jodie double feature, this week featuring Kurt Russell in Used Cars and Jodie Foster in Carny. The former was on 35mm, probably an original release print, and was a bit faded with some wear, but that's probably the optimum way to watch it, reminiscent of how it would have been after it bounced from first-run to second/third-run and drive-in theaters.

After that, I spent a couple days tormenting myself with the Red Sox on TV, but also started watching Spider-Noir (black-and-white version) when it dropped on Prime. It was easy to be kind of skeptical at first, because Nicolas Cage is Doing A Voice, which I didn't really recall being the case in Enter the Spider-Verse, but my eyebrow raised when I saw "and Brendan Gleeson" in the opening credits and that was a really pleasant surprise. Eventually it became clear he was doing Bogart - episode 2 opens with an homage to Philip Marlowe investigating the rare-bookstore front in The Big Sleep, sadly without a cute bookstore girl across the street - and there's worse ways to keep things entertaining until it starts to add more Spider-Man stuff to the noir.

It's a fun cast - aside from Nic Cage doing Nic Cage all over the place, Lamorne Morris and Li Jun Li clearly understand the blend of comic book/hard-boiled pulp that they're working with, and Gleeson is a delight. The folks making it do okay with what kind of hems both comics and limited TV series in these days - you're just not going to get a new short story with noired-up versions of Spider-Man villains ever week, and it's necessarily going to be about the main character in some way as opposed to a new adventure. Every new case is the most important case which most reflects the characters personally.

Thursday night it was back at the Somerville for a Backrooms day-before show, not crazy-packed like some have been, but folks were there for it.

After that, it was one of those streaks where I actually use my Alamo membership when I'll typically go weeks without. Friday night was Tuner, mostly because they had the first show of the evening and I had ideas of getting home and catching the end of the ballgame. Saturday afternoon was the AGFADrome mystery show, which previously had been on Monday evenings but either got confused with the regular mystery previews or just got pushed off to a quieter slot because only five or six of us tend to show up, as was the case on Saturday. I always wonder how these things do in other locations; the last couple ones I went to, I was pretty sure that they would have done better not making it a mystery or teaming with the Brattle/Somerville/Coolidge (or even Landmark), because I don't know that folks in the Boston area are excited to get on the airport bus for something that may kind of suck while there's not really a vibe to match in the Seaport, but that's pretty specific to where Alamo set up shop in this market. I enjoyed The Shaolin Invincibles, but it's an odd one. The next day I was back for Godzilla vs. Hedorah, which was actually sold out and had a number of other showtimes put on, so I guess the branding worked. I naturally ended up right next to the guy who liked to gesticulate at the screen when something campy was going on.

Once that ended, it was a couple stops up the Red Line to catch Pressure, which I liked a lot, and not just because I'm Dad-aged and it's pretty Dad-coded.

If you look at the stats page on my Letterboxd account, seven movies is a bit of a light week for me, but it's just busy enough that there's not a whole lot of time for write-ups outside what I do on the subway. Part of my plan here is to try and get myself to not feel like I need to add too much to that first impression lest I fall too far behind when we're really busy in Montreal!

Used Cars

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 May 2026 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Kurt & Jodie, 35mm)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

The introduction mentioned both that the best way to see this was on slightly faded 35mm, and that this was the movie that really established Kurt Russell's adult screen persona. I'm not entirely sure about the former, but Russell so clearly hit on something here that it's kind of surprising that he would wind up paired with John Carpenter rather than Robert Zemeckis, though I don't know that Zemeckis ever made a movie that would fit him again (Romancing the Stone or Death Becomes Her, maybe).

Russel plays Rudy Russo, a salesman at New Deal Used Cars, which is run down but whose owner Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden) is generally a pretty decent guy. Rudy is looking to run for state senate but needs to sell a fair amount of cars to pay off the political machine to get on the ballot, while Luke is anticipating a reunion with daughter Barbara (Deborah Harmon), who he hasn't seen since she left for a commune a decade ago. What they don't know is that Luke's twin brother Roy (also Warden), who owns the lot across the street, is scheming to take control of Luke's lot, since a new highway would go straight through his and make Luke's prime real estate. He manages to trigger a heart attack, so desperate Rudy and co-workers Jeff (Garret Graham) and Jim (Frank McRae) hide the body, scrambling to make excuses for both Roy and Barbara.

Though Russell had previously been a Disney kid and would go on to play a wide variety of roles as an adult, Rudy Russo is what a lot of his parts from Overboard to Big Trouble in Little China to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 would riff on, an evocation of almost-slick bluster with an inconvenient core of decency, and both Russell and Zemeckis make sure the audience sees all of that throughout the film, even in its meanest moments of black comedy. Russell is the unlikely linchpin of the movie, cheerfully eager to not just do all the fast-talking nonsense that you expect from someone with his job, but also willing to push it into the increasingly absurd places that the script by Zemeckis and Bob Gale go. There's earnest concern for Roy in their first scenes, though, enough that there's layers of awkwardness around Barbara later, because he is capable of caring about her and kind of knows that he's doomed when she finds out the truth.

In addition to re-introducing Russell, Used Cars also shows what Zemeckis and Gale ('the Bobs") are capable of, arguably the start of Zemeckis's prime, and you can see the template that he would use: A big, kind of absurd, high concept, a bunch of gags that maybe don't work in any other context, the occasional surprising and in-character bit of sincerity, a pretty good ensemble around the leading man, and a terrific climax - 45 years later, I wonder if Quentin Tarantino was being clever casting Russell in Death Proof as an homage to him leaping around on car roofs with no obvious harnesses or green screen work. It's the tail end of the 1970s when folk were wrecking a lot of cars in their chases, and Zemeckis has been gleefully smashing stuff up for the entire movie, but the finale is impressive beyond that.

It's kind of a bummer that Zemeckis would leave this sort of thing behind for some combination of the big idea well running dry, a desire for respectability, and increasing focus on how you get that big visual moment; even at his messiest, this movie is a lot of fun, and both he and his star have a knack for not making it feel quite so mean as what's in the script.


Carny

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 May 2026 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Kurt & Jodie, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

Carny isn't the usual sort of movie I find myself respecting more than loving, but that's about where it lands anyway, doing interesting things fairly well but not quite cohering into something that totally works.

It starts with Frankie (Gary Busey) applying his makeup; he's the "bozo" in the dunk tank for a traveling carnival, with his friend and bunkmate Patch (Robbie Robertson) handling the front of the booth when he's not wandering the grounds and helping maintain some semblance of order. A bozo isn't a clown - clowns, Frankie will explain, are funny, while his job is to insult the customers enough to rattle them, that includes the boyfriend of Donna (Jodie Foster), an 18-year-old waitress who will wind up leaving home to join them. She's not the first girl who has run off with them, but sticks long enough to get under Patch's skin, even as she eventually tries to earn her keep.

Part of me suspects that Carny is actually pretty true-to-life and that this is what makes it kind of drab compared to a lot of other movies set among traveling carnivals: It's not all that lurid or romantic, just sort of scuzzy without getting to the point of being grotesque, and not that interesting as a result. Freaks makes you uncomfortable, while others create a sweet sort of found family out of the outcasts, but for most of the movie, these guys are basically fringey working stiffs. There's drama and interest there, but not quite a hook, especially when there's also not really a strong plot.

What sort of fascinates about Carney is that in retrospect, and probably at the time, you can see that Jodie Foster is going to be Jodie Foster - a hugely charismatic movie star that takes risks that seem even bigger because of her Disney kid background - but that her character Donna is not actually as interesting as Frankie & Patch. They feel like they've got this odd, specific backstory that has adapted them for this particular life, surprisingly mild-mannered despite having a nasty edge they can bring out, while she's just any pretty 18-year-old fleeing a quiet town. Donna's interesting entirely because Jodie Foster plays here, while Busey & Robertson bring out what's intriguing about Frankie and Patch.

Heck, would Foster's best scene without them, where she's running a game and feels a bit of a rush of power when she flirts with a girl, be nearly as noteworthy if she hadn't come out later? It makes me wonder if there's a version of the screenplay or deleted scenes that make it more explicit that this was what she was trying to find in running away from an unsatisfying life, which is ironic because Frankie & Patch don't realize what sort of closet they're in. Maybe that's a little obvious, but the movie gets more intriguing every time it leans in that direction, at least compared to what else it's doing.

Toward the end, when the filmmakers are starting to move toward a conclusion, you can see something closer to these movies' traditional forms, as these kind of honest (by their lights) scam artists contend with local officials trying to shake them down, flipping the script on who's respectable and who's dishonest but also displaying a mean streak. I don't know that I would have enjoyed the whole movie being like that, but it does at least feel like a specific story that might have inspired the film while much of the rest is a bit more vague.


Backrooms

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2026 in Somerville Theatre #4 (first-run, DCP)
Where to stream it (when available) , or pre-order the disc at Amazon

There's something kind of off about Backrooms in a way that may not necessarily be intended despite its whole vibe being "that's weird and unnerving", although I'm not quite sure. It seems to be a natural outgrowth of its origins as YouTube videos which could potentially stand alone (because who knows how the algorithm will serve them up) but which each expand their lore, driving those who discovered one to seek out the rest, and even build their own, a sort of collaborative and viral project that's perfect for that medium. It doesn't quite feel like it coalesces into a movie, and while I think the filmmakers are canny enough to realize that and let it be unsettling, that sort of intrigue doesn't quite fit the new medium as well as the old.

After the traditional "things go badly for characters we'll never see again" opening, the first person to encounter the strange liminal spaces in 1990 is Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), operating a furniture store which is losing money and sleeping there as well, his wife having thrown him out of the house. Investigating some electrical issues in the basement leads him to an oddly permeable spot on the wall, which leads him to empty rooms that get stranger as he goes deeper, never seeming to end. He recruits employees Bobby (Finn Bennett) & Kat (Lukita Maxwell) to help him explore, but eventually doesn't come out, and his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve), who has her own issues with loneliness and loss of a home, comes searching.

There's also an odd sort of tension between journeyman writer Will Soodik and 19-year-old director Kane Parsons. The script uses these blank, labyrinthine areas to symbolize alienation and disconnection, and the casting director has given Parsons a great core in Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve (and Mark Duplass on the periphery), but as much as teenagers can certainly feel alone, it sometimes doesn't feel like Parsons can entirely connect to the specific angst these characters are feeling; there's something very ham-handed if well-conceived about how it's expressed. Sometimes it's almost meta, a young film nerd's take on viewing drama as a movie, as one character demands more sincerity from another as if directing them, and another maybe talks about exploring the backrooms like trying to understand a pop culture's lore. Parsons is deft enough and has that cast to sell late scenes when they're kind of speculating but also telling the audience what's probably going on, but it doesn't feel like discovery.

That said, Parsons's raw talent is impressive and a lot of the creepy bits work; the setting itself is often a really effective combination of spaces that are not immediately threatening until they accumulate dread in their endlessness and increasingly surreal layout, and if the occasional shots of the repetitive, featureless Los Angeles exurbs are obvious metaphors, they kind of work. The staging is not fancy, but often deliberately muted, but that works, grinding the audience down without it being a slog. I especially love one scene which is not just dizzying on its own, but which gets a lot more tension out of someone seeming much more genuinely afraid of falling (and not entirely overcoming it to do a big jump) than an actor can usually conjure up around green screens and a stunt team dedicated to making it safe.

It's a pretty strong theatrical debut, and it'll be interesting to see what Parsons becomes with a little more filmmaking and life experience under his belt.


Tuner

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2026 in Alamo Seaport #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available), or pre-order the disc at Amazon

Tuner has stretches where one might be inclined to say it's a nice little movie and leave it at that, but it's got a few where it really sings, director and coo-writer Daniel Roher unabashedly deciding to set aside the quiet competence on the one hand and casual expertise on the other to put on a show, performing as flamboyantly as a character does because we don't make music or movies just to nod at technically impressive precision.

As it opens, Niki White (Leo Woodall) is tuning a piano with mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), who is mostly supervising; he wears hearing aids and his brain is starting to get fuzzy, but Niki makes up for it because on top of perfect pitch, he's got the kind of impossibly good hearing where loud noises cause physical pain. The job alternates between institutions whose instruments take a lot of wear and wealthy households annoyed that pianos fall out of tune even when they haven't been played in a year. He meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a focused composition student, at a conservatory, while staying late in a mansion brings him in contact with Uri (Lior Raz), an Eastern European security consultant who is surely not drilling into a client's safe for legitimate reasons. Niki just wants the noise over with, so he helps crack it by listening to the tumblers. Uri has more jobs like this if he'd like, and soon enough Harry has an avalanche of medical bills, so…

It's not exactly surprising that the film seems to revel in the details of music and crime; director Daniel Roher has a best documentary feature Oscar and you see some of the that make that possible here: There's a sense that he's immersed himself in a subject enough to give things the ring of truth whether the viewer knows about it or not, but also a kind of joy in deploying music and editing in a way that might be dismissed as manipulative in a documentary but which play like flourishes in fiction. He and co-writer Robert Ramsey are observant enough to talk about various issues in the real world when they'd naturally be touched on, whether it be how medical debt accumulates or how wealth and beauty can wind up in the hands of those who don't have any use for it. The film looks and sounds great, whether the camera is positioned to take in everything or getting right into a tight, specific situation.

The central folks in the cast of relative unknowns impress - Leo Woodall has the look of a generically handsome actor of a certain sort but carries his damage well, and I really like the way Havana Rose Liu gets to play Ruthie as kind of spiky and driven and that's evident even before she appears on screen - and they seem to fit together in ways beyond the obvious. They look right together, and even when they fight, it's in the manner of people who maybe know where the other is coming from a bit too well. The movie stars are deployed well too, at opposite ends: Dustin Hoffman embodies an abrasive but decent sort of uncle-figure immediately, the sort who is full of great stories but is also kind of a pain in the ass, and while there's maybe not a lot of acting in how an 89-year-old actor highlights the physical and mental decay of an 89-year-old character, but the moments are chosen well so that you can see how everyone talks and works around it. Toward the end, Jean Reno is who you need for a character that shows up with maybe fifteen minutes to go to be this important; he's amusingly fussy but also someone that everyone else bends over backwards to please, and he clearly has practice in using that.

As mentioned, a nifty little movie for most of the time, with Woodall playing well off both Hoffman and Liu while danger intrudes in the form of Uri, pleasant melodies (to use the obvious musical metaphor) until Roher decides it is time for a crescendo, and the entire orchestra delivers.


Yong zheng ming zhang Shao Lin men (The Shaolin Invincibles)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 May 2026 in Alamo Seaport #3 (AGFADrome Mystery Voyage, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link)

The last couple AGFA mystery movies have been oddly frustrating events, not because the movies were bad, but because Johnnie To's Exiled and Stephen Chow in The God of Cookery deserved to be sold on their merits to hopefully glean more than the meager crowds they did. That's not exactly the problem with The Shaolin Invincibles, something less than a classic from Taiwan which nevertheless delivers the grindhouse goods promised.

As a long opening title explains before it is played out on screen, a cruel and capricious Emperor (Chen Hung-Lieh) sought to have families of those who opposed him annihilated 12 years ago, only for Shaolin monks to escape with their youngest daughters, raising them and training them to fight in the temple. Now, Lu Szu Liang (Chia Ling) and Lu Yu Liang (Doris Lung Chun-Erh) have come of age and are leaving the temple, special swords in hand, to avenge their parents' murders, splitting up with the intent of rejoining to attack the palace. Other swordsmen (Carter Huang Chia-Ta & Dorian Tan Tao-Liang) will shadow and assist them, but the Governor (Yi Yuan) who gained his position by supervising the purges intends to erase any evidence of his failure, and they will need to enter the castle as maids to scout out the lay of the land and some of the unusual guardians.

I found myself idly wondering at times if a whole bunch of this movie's footage was unusable, or if the filmmakers were just trying to cut this movie as close to 90 minutes as possible to get that extra showtime in. For all that it is often goofy Saturday-serial fun, it is messy even beyond what you expect from low budget kung fu flicks. Like, the filmmakers occasionally seem to forget that Lung Chun-Erh is in the movie as Yu Liang, right down to the final fight which completely loses track of her for a long stretch as Szu Liang battles the emperor. It almost seems like they missed a major flaw in the script until they started shooting, at which point they realized things were getting bogged down doing everything twice (once with Szu Liang and then again with Yu Liang), but there was too much footage already shot with both of them to rejigger the film as a solo showcase.

Which is a bummer, because when they let Lung's Yu Liang talk some shit while Chia is closer to stoic, it's kind of a fun dynamic. Not that there's necessarily that much need to spice up dull moments, because not much time passes without folks fighting or the various levels of scheming servants to the evil king plotting to keep him from finding out that they missed a couple little girls when slaughtering their families 12 years ago. This mission of vengeance is not complicated by romance or doubts, and keeps up a nice pace as the ladies follow through.

The fighting is mostly good - Chia Ling and Carter Huang especially move nicely as they deal with waves of opponents - though the filmmakers kind of shrug and say "good enough" at the effects quite a bit, and the editing is often not great (aside from how awkwardly unbalanced to two protagonists are, action scenes will occasionally have one stop and think that a combatant doesn't seem to be where they were in the previous shot): There are plenty of silly gorilla suits, mediocre prosthetic makeup jobs, and swords that don't really look like they're going all the way through a body which the filmmakers probably hope you overlook because the ideas of Kung fu gorillas and Count of Monte Cristo homages are fun. And you can, more or less, since the choreography is decent and folks leap around well.

This is the sort of thing that works well as a mystery movie - not nearly good enough to seek out specifically, but just screwy enough to be fun when it's sprung on you.


Gojira tai Hedora (Godzilla vs. Hedorah)

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2026 in Alamo Seaport #3 (Tohoscope, laser DCP)
Where to stream it, or buy the Criterion box set at Amazon

This movie does not respect Godzilla, and it doesn't matter whether you mean a film, franchise, character, or implacable force of nature when you say "Godzilla".
I am tempted to leave it at that, but it also must be said that it looks cheap, even compared to the other kaiju movies of its era, and is boring, finding constant ways to feel inert. Director Yoshimitsu Banno must frame many scenes around scientist Toru Yano (Akira Yamauchi) confined to in his sickbed without playing up a sense of how powerless he must feel, and truly gives a sense of its giant monsters' scale. It also feels like the producers also wanted to cash in on the era's psychedelia and youth culture, but were also conservative old men who hated such things, and as a result drained any way that the off-center choices could be cool and also any tension from scenes that would normally have it. The pandering to children and sneering at older youth both threaten the one thing it sort of does do well, going surprisingly hard at how horrific and apocalyptic pollution threatens to make the earth.

One thing I wonder is where this movie rests in the psyches of the filmmakers who made Taroman; Godzilla's odd swaying motions (how much weed does it take for a 50-foot monster to get high??) and the ethereal final monster designs for Hedorah are reflected there, so maybe some good has come of this movie, implant weird images in the heads of kids who would later know what to do with them.


Pressure

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2026 in AMC Boston Common #7 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available), or pre-order the disc at Amazon

It's not just that I'm a middle-aged man and this is a 99-minute movie about World War II with a cast I really like, but that it's ultimately about what means of analyzing different sorts of data will ultimately lead to better results? That is just built for me! Still, I do feel like it's a film that can have broad appeal, in large part because it is nicely focused and not stretched to match the topic's import.

It follows Scottish meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott), who has been assigned to the staff of General Dwight Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) to provide a forecast for the upcoming Normandy invasion. Eisenhower expects Stagg to reach the same conclusions as American Irving Krick (Chris Messina), who has been an advisor throughout the war, but they have very different methodologies leading to different predictions: Krick, looking to previous years as reference, foresees clear skies; Stagg demands all the current atmospheric data he can get and sees three smaller storms forming a monster.

That may all sound dry, but the filmmakers do a good job in making it not so. The difference between the two prediction systems is made clear in ways that even those not schooled in either meteorology or data analysis can understand, and it intertwines with what might be the more expected story about non-technical people tending to believe what they want to be true. Director Anthony Maras (who wrote the screenplay with original playwright David Haig) gets their methodologies across without a lot of explanation, and without making Krick's less-current techniques look ridiculous.

To parallel that, Andrew Scott and Chris Messina give nifty contrasting performances that don't quite represent archetypes, though you can see an attempt to understand how things work despite recognition of uncertainty in Scott's pushy but tense performance compared to the somewhat hollow charm and confidence Messina projects. Brendan Fraser and Kerry Condon do nice work surrounding them, displaying somewhat masculine and feminine forms of responsibility as Fraser gives the impression of a strong back but a tendency to shout while Condon's Kay is all meaningful pauses leading to common-sense wisdom. Damien Lewis hams it up a bit as a darkly comic take on the sort of motivated reasoning you often found in the aristocratic office corps.

The filmmakers take a screenplay that originated on the stage and which covers what may be familiar territory and make it work as a movie; it looks and sounds dynamic and gets across how busy all this was early so it can be somewhat pared down later, really only bogging down a bit when it hits the sort of subplot that can feel rote in this genre despite likely tracking historical fact. It maybe goes on a bit too long at the end, kind of stuck between how the story its telling is kind of over when the storms come and/or pass but needing to show some of what it was enabling even if it's a bit out of scale.

I'm admittedly partial to stories that get into how stuff works, and I especially like how Pressure gets into how forecasting the weather had to be done before the satellite imagery and computer models we now take for granted without moaning about how primitive it was. Maras and company do that well, and elevates the personal to a good level of melodrama without diminishing the giant stakes.


(clicks timer) Okay, just about 4 hours, HTML map not included. I can do that 18 times in July/August, right?