What to watch in cinemas this week: Oct 10-16
La Chimera, The Apprentice, Saturday Night, Daytime Revolution, The Beast, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Each week I provide a somewhat-curated list of films to see in cinemas. Meant as more of a resource than weekly essay, you can refer to this series whenever you feel like going to the movies. Also, you can check out previous weeks’ selections because those films might still be in theaters.
Enjoy and see you at the movies!
Recommendation of the week
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
came out in theaters months ago but this is a slow week in theatrical releases and I’d like to highlight this gem, which was just released on Mubi (in Germany, UK, etc.) and Hulu in the USA. Josh O’Connor stars as a sad archaeologist along with a circus troupe of Italians. Go watch it!
Plot bio: Just out of jail, crumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of tombaroli accomplices – a happy-go-lucky collective of itinerant grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they dig up.
Wide release
The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi)
is the awkwardly-awaited release of the Trump-Cohn origin story starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, and Maria Bakalova. The producers wanted its release to coincide with the election, which none of the bigger distributors wanted to touch. It’s coming out in some countries (USA) this week and some others (Germany) next week.
Plot bio: A young Donald Trump, eager to make his name as a hungry scion of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn, the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today. Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé—someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.
Still haven’t seen this, but I trust the principle actors won’t be phoning it in.
American-only
Saturday Night (Jason Reitman)
is about the preparation and presentation of the first night that SNL aired. Reviews are mostly positive and Rachel Sennott provides the stand-out performance.
Stacked cast of some of the best younger actors: Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans), Sennott, Ella Hunt (Horizon), Nicholas Braun (Succession), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza).
No German release date yet.
Daytime Revolution (Erik Nelson)
is something I reviewed for Loud and Clear Reviews, shameless plug! It’s a documentary about a week in 1972 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono took over a daytime television show, which allowed them to invite all their radical guests to speak directly to middle-America. But unfortunately, the documentary, though well-made technically, lacks the juice.
Touring fifty American cities starting this week. No planned release afterwards anywhere else.
German releases
The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
is finally in German cinemas, after having first been shown at the Venice film festival in September last year. It stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay in the near future where emotions are eliminated via machines that immerse you in past lives and rid you of any strong feelings. It takes a big tonal and temporal shift from a conservative, Henry James-in-France past to literally an Elliot Rodger 2014 adaptation.
It’s quite long and I wasn’t a fan, but you sci-fi drama freaks might enjoy it.
In the USA it’s streaming on the Criterion Channel, or if you have Mubi and a VPN, it’s “playing” in the UK.
Special mentions
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Tim Burton)
is getting it’s yearly October re-release. Check it out on the big screen if you haven’t, the stop-motion animation holds up!
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