What to watch in cinemas this week: Oct 3-9
Not all weekends are created equal: A Different Man, The Outrun, Joker 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Mean Girls, Monster Summer, Architecton, and The Wild Robot.
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 cinema. Also, you can still check out previous weeks’ selections because those films might still be in theaters.
Enjoy and see you at the movies!
Go watch now
A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
was my fourth favorite film at Berlinale and a definitive go out of your way, if possible, viewing. A film about physical disability insecurity and what that really means.
Plot bio: Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.
Adam Pearson is the star and charismatic breakthrough performance, even though Stan won the best actor award at Berlinale for this.
The Outrun (Nora Fingscheidt)
is Saoirse Ronan’s comeback? Along with Steve McQueen’s upcoming Blitz, Ronan is back on the critical stage after disappointing stints (sans The French Dispatch) since the pandemic began.
Plot bio: Rona (Ronan), a young woman recently out of rehab for alcoholism, returns home to the Orkney Islands, Scotland.
Special mentions
Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips)
is something I do not recommend. As a fan of the first one, I was very disappointed in this one for many, many reasons. Please read my Venice film festival review. (It’s the only real big release of the week, so it’s sadly sucking the air out of the cinema rooms this week.)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper)
is having its big 50-year-anniversary! Check out the special engagement re-release.
Mean Girls (Mark Waters)
is having its 20-year-anniversary special engagement re-release. Go watch to get the taste of this year’s remake out of your mouth.
Monster Summer (David Henrie)
is a horror mystery starring Mel Gibson, Lorraine Bracco (Karen Hill in Goodfellas), Kevin James, and others. Don’t know anything about it, but the cast is bonkers and something the freaks will be into.
German-exclusive
Architecton (Viktor Kossakovsky)
is “rock porn about concrete, Ancient Rome/Turkey, and a wizard creating a magic circle in his yard by the horses.” This was my short Letterboxd review out of Berlinale, so I’m looking forward to revisiting this.
Reviews lean negative, including my own rating, but I still enjoyed it for its (admittedly generalized) thesis on modern architecture: concrete > glass.
The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders)
premiered number one at the US/Canada domestic box office last week and is now opening in Germany and other countries. Plot bio: Shipwrecked on a deserted island, a robot named Roz must learn to adapt to its new surroundings. Building relationships with the native animals, Roz soon develops a parental bond with an orphaned gosling.
The beauty of the animation is in particular getting a lot of praise. Heading straight to an Oscar nom.
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