What to watch in cinemas this week (Sep 26—Oct 2)
Megalopolis arrived, The Substance opens wide, and The Wild Robot: a surprise DreamWorks animated hit out of TIFF, and more...
Many of you have and will continue to ask me this question in the future: what should I watch, anything good playing right now? The answer is always yes, but my answers are always unsatisfactory from my end (maybe yours as well) because I have no idea what to say; I panic and check my phone to check; notice something I watched a while ago that rocks, then provide a half-assed summary sales pitch.
Well no more, I would like to enforce some due diligence on my end as your cinema comrade.
With theatrical attendance declining by the quarter, you and most others are prioritizing viewings down to a handful per year, which is highly dependent either on IP, who’s in it, who made it, or who recommends it. Therefore, it’s dereliction on my part for not properly getting people in seats.
Quick notes: I will be recommending only films, no TV shows; I don’t need to tell you what to play in the background while you browse IG. Because half of you reside in the USA and the other half in Germany, I’ll provide recommendations for both, which isn’t that different but varies. Everything will be broken down into sections.
I will try this series out and see how it goes. These will be way more scrolly than the in-depth essays and meant for a general readership. Enjoy and go to your local cinema!
🎞️ Go watch now
The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
is the perfect audience film, in which the last twenty minutes will have everyone flailing around in equal parts disbelief, disgust, and disarray. I’m not a body horror fan, but this feels like something else entirely, specifically meant for the social media era of how women relate to their own appearance.
Stars Demi Moore as a media personality one too many years old to be a celebrated fitness star. She takes the substance, which creates a second version of her, biologically and graphically, for a weeks time. If that younger self stays past her welcome, dire consequences await. Needless to say, it unravels in wild wild ways.
I watched this at the Munich Film Festival. It was an absolute game-changer after three or four boring dramas.
Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
is Coppola’s self-funded big-budget artistic coup that was received by critics as meh. No matter what, it’s looking to be very strange, or at least that’s how Coppola executed it.
Adam Driver stars in this project Coppola’s been cooking since 1977, which apparently “came from Coppola's desire to make a film drawing parallels between the fall of Rome and the future of the United States by setting the events of the Catilinarian conspiracy in modern New York.” Enough said.
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty sure it will provoke interesting takes.
🥨 German-exclusive releases
Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)
is the debut film of singer-songwriter-actor Margherita Vicario about a group of Venetian girls who play for the local boozy maestro in an all-female orphan institution. One day, the mute girl who does chores rather than plays finds a grand piano, something new to their circa-1800 equipment, who self-learns poppy tunes. The pope is coming to visit but the maestro can’t create a score, so it’s up to the girls to compose their own.
What makes the film so great for me is how music is woven into the fabric of the film to make it both modern and old school. It’s got rhythm and style thanks to Vicario’s main gig as a pop star and was my favorite viewing at Berlinale this year.
The plot is fairly predictable and overly dramatic in bits, but it has an ending and several scenes that reach absolute cinematic peaks. Highly recommend to go out of your way in Germany (and USA still has no release date).
Favoriten (Ruth Beckermann)
is a documentary about a group of elementary school kids in the Favoriten district of Vienna, which is known for their non-Austrian demographics. It follows the same class and teacher for three years as they prepare for the absolutely crazy decision to make at such a young age: Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium.
It’s an amazingly heartfelt documentary that will certainly make you cry and very reminiscent of the monumentally epic Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse, but the Austrian version and much shorter.
Worth it 100% for those of you into documentaries.
Ellbogen (Asli Özarslan)
is a Berlin coming-of-age film adapted from a novel of the same name. It’s about a seventeen-year-old girl about to turn eighteen, who just wants to have a Berlin-night-out with her friends for her birthday. But something terrible happens and she has to grow up quick.
This follows in the great tradition of German-Turkish cinema with the plot weaving between the two countries (although mainly Berlin and Istanbul) and cultures. But it’s different in that it’s from a female perspective and dimension oftentimes excluded in these danger-on-the-streets stories. The young actors are naturalistic and give the film a youthful edge.
⭐ Special releases
Interstellar (Christopher Nolan) is playing in select cinemas for its 10th anniversary. An absolute must-watch on a gigantic screen. Go see in IMAX if you can.
Coraline (Henry Selick) is also playing in select theaters, but for its 15th anniversary.
🎭 Honorable mentions
Dìdi (Sean Wang) is a coming-of-age period-piece that takes place in Summer 2008 about a boy about to enter high school. Maybe because I was the exact same age and in the same state (takes place in the Bay Area), but this film felt insanely authentic to a painfully identifiable degree. It’s really good and the debut film of a promising filmmaker.
Lee (Ellen Kuras) stars Kate Winslet as WW2 photo-journalist Lee Miller. It’s competently made and Winslet of course knocks it out of the park and the cast is incredibly stacked (Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O'Connor, and Alexander Skarsgård), but it wasn’t for me. (Cool to see her in person promoting this film at the Munich Film Festival though!)
The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders) is a DreamWorks animated film that surprised everybody at the Toronto International Film Festival a couple weeks ago. It’s about a robot that crash lands on Earth and has to learn how to survive in nature. I haven’t seen it, but critics are calling it an Oscars contender, for what that’s worth.
Wolfs (Jon Watts) stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a film that basically is just about that, a film starring Pitt and Clooney knowing they are in a film starring Brad and George. They both play a wolf, the clean-up guy in sticky situations, but get into hijinks and slippery situations. It’s perfectly watchable, but more for those who really really like this iconic duo.
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