***CRITIC’S PICK***
Monday, Oct. 6 through Thursday, Oct. 9: The Milwaukee Film Festival continues and concludes
Check mkefilm.org for showtimes and ticket availability
It’s been an incredible festival so far, filled with rock solid programming and a tremendous spate of guests, and that doesn’t abate over the festival’s final four days. Our coverage doesn’t abate either, with reviews coming over the next few days and a festival wrap-up to follow on Friday. Pick up some tickets if you haven’t yet gone and avail yourself of a film festival that only continues to grow with each passing year!
Wednesday, Oct. 8 and Saturday, Oct. 11: The Purge: Anarchy
4:15 p.m. 10/8 & 9 p.m. 10/11 @ UWM Union Theatre (FREE!)
While not an amazing movie, The Purge: Anarchy is the kind of B-movie fare that would’ve garnered something of a cult following in the ‘80s. Generally considered an improvement on the home invasion movie that it’s a sequel to, this chapter goes far deeper into the idea of all crime being legalized over one 24-hour period per year and flirts with the idea of having deeper resonance in a society where the have’s are ever-increasingly having it all over the have-not’s. Frank Grillo is an awesome grizzled leading man, and this is the closest we’ll probably get to him as Marvel’s The Punisher (a perennial fan-casting favorite), so if this seems like it may appeal to you check it out and if you’re anything like me, you’ll be pleasantly surprised (but not bowled over).
Wednesday, Oct. 8: Rasputin and the Princess
7:30 p.m. @ Charles Allis Art Museum ($7/Adults, $5/Seniors & Students, Free/museum members)
The Fall/Winter programming for Charles Allis kicks into full gear this week, with the new program’s theme being ‘Remembering World War I’ and the inaugural film of that program being the Barrymore family jam Rasputin and the Princess. This was the only film to feature all three Barrymores together (Ethel, John and Lionel) and its tale of the doomed Russian Imperial family falling under the sway of the ‘mad monk’ netted the film a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination!
Thursday, Oct. 9: Manakamana
7 p.m. @ UWM Union Theatre (FREE!)
A truly experiential documentary, Manakamana is comprised of 11 shots following pilgrims and tourists as they venture to and from a temple atop a mountain in Nepal, creating an effect the New York Film Festival describes as “a cross between ethnography and science fiction.” The trailer certainly looks intriguing, so adventurous film fans take note!
Friday, Oct. 10 through Sunday, Oct. 12: We Are the Best and The Empty Hours
WAtB: 7 p.m., 5 p.m, and 7 p.m. Respectively and tEH: 9 p.m., 7 p.m. and 5 p.m. respectively @ UWM Union Theatre (FREE!)
If you didn’t get a chance to catch We Are the Best during it’s one and only screening during the MFF this week, UWM’s Union Theatre is bringing it back this weekend for you to check out for free! Lukas Moodyson’s rousing adaptation of his wife’s graphic novel about early teen girls forming a punk rock band. It looks honest, charming, and full of energy. The Empty Hours is a mood piece surrounding a young man entrusted with the care of his uncle’s motel for amorous experiences. Both are well worth your time for a low, low price of free!
Friday, Oct. 10: A murder of major releases (that’s the scientific term for lots of movies opening) all open – Addicted, The Judge, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Dracula Untold, Kill the Messenger, My Old Lady and Men, Women and Children – all in either wide or limited release
Check local listings for showtimes/pricing
It’s a massive weekend for releases, made all the more unique by the majority of these films looking reasonably poor in quality! Let’s start with the films that I see as possibly having a chance – Dracula Untold could be cheesy fun, beginning Universal’s attempt at creating an interacting movie monsters universe comparable to what Marvel is doing with superheroes, and despite having seen Charles Dance delight in the pronunciation of DRAH-KOO-LAH and Luke Evans unleash his BATPUNCH what feels like 100 times in previews, neither of those things have gotten old for me yet, so perhaps that bodes well. The simple fact that Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall are going to have an act-off for the entirety of The Judge means I’m going to see it, despite the fact that it looks like it could’ve been one of the fake Oscar-bait movies from Downey Jr.’s own Tropic Thunder. Great performances carry mediocre scripts all the time (look at This is Where I Leave You from but a couple weeks ago), so it certainly could happen here.
Kill the Messenger I can feel confident about with no caveats – a solid story (the real-life exportation of cocaine into the U.S. by the CIA to help fund Nicaraguan contras) and a great cast (Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Barry Pepper, Andy Garcia, Michael K. Williams, the list goes on and on) go a long way toward getting me interested. My Old Lady is a similar case, as while the story about Kevin Kline’s down-and-out character learning life lessons from the Parisian family (Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas) that lives in the apartment he inherited from his estranged father seems standard fare, those are three immensely talented performers who can elevate the most banal of premises. I’m not super psyched for the extension of a slim children’s tome into a feature length movie when it comes to this adaptation of Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the So On and so Forth, but it has a strong cast of performers (Steve Carell, Jennifer Garner, Donald Glover) who will try to make the most of what looks like fairly generic family entertainment.
As for the less likely to succeed, we have Addicted, an adaptation of the erotic thriller from Zane and a movie generally regarded as a disaster in Jason Reitman’s Men, Women and Children – an internet-era polemic about the ways we don’t connect personally in this pervasive age of technology. Reviews out of the Toronto Film Festival were…less than charitable, and the trailer looks like the overly serious, leaden mess that it’s been described as.
Friday, Oct. 10: Tremors screens as the final movie of this year’s Milwaukee Bike-In series
8 p.m. @ The Swing Park underneath the Holton St. Viaduct (FREE!)
An unheralded gem of ‘90s horror-comedy cinema, Tremors finds Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Reba McEntire and Michael Gross (aka the dad from Family Ties) being menaced by the underground worm-like, alien burrowers known as Graboids (not ‘tremors’, so disown anyone who refers to them as such at will). This is a great blend of frights and delights and a perfect way to end the outdoor screening season. You’ll probably need a coat, but you’ll be certain to warm yourself up with laughter and excitement while watching it!
Friday, Oct. 10: Friday the 13th
Midnight @ Times Cinema (Check timescinema.com closer to date for pricing)
The Times kicks off its Halloween-themed midnight horror programming with Friday the 13th, a film that is very likely not what you remember at all. Jason Voorhees is yet to become the iconic goalie-mask wielding unstoppable killing machine (in fact, he doesn’t even become that until the third picture), and what you get here is the urtext for all of the ‘campground horror’ that came afterwards as a cavalcade of young meat (all the more appropriate it features a baby-faced Kevin Bacon in that case) is mowed down in advance of Camp Crystal Lake’s grand re-opening. Next week will see my I STREAMED A STREAM column offering you up a solid spate of horror offerings, but let’s start digging into the spooky-ooky in earnest with The Times this weekend!
Saturday, Oct. 11: The Falcon Takes Over
7 p.m. @ The Church in the City, 2648 N. Hackett Ave. ($3)
The Focus Film Society brings us the very first adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell my Lovely,” here adapted to fit into RKO’s Falcon mystery series. George Sanders plays the titular detective, in what many consider to be the finest of this series of films, even if it doesn’t stack up quite so impressively next to the later Chandler adaptation Murder, My Sweet. A great chance to take in a little seen picture!
