✹ WEEKLY FILM RUNDOWN: February 2-8
The latest releases and special screenings hitting Music City this week.
Argylle No, our copy editors didn’t make a mistake. That’s how this espionage comedy about a thriller writer (Bryce Dallas Howard) who realizes her work is a little too true to life when she’s brought into a web of spies is spelled. Kingsman helmer Matthew Vaughn directs a cavalcade of stars, including Henry Cavill, Dua Lipa, Sam Rockwell, John Cena, Bryan Cranston, and Samuel L. Jackson. Now playing in theaters.
Swoon: A Love Series: The Belcourt is the ultimate Valentine’s Day destination with a host of classic romances like Casablanca and City Lights as well as beloved contemporary entries, including weepfest The Notebook and Richard Linklater’s restored Before Trilogy. Those sick of love even have a chance to ruin the vibe with the slasher classic My Bloody Valentine. This weekend brings His Girl Friday–the ultimate studio era Hollywood comedy that finds Rosalind Russell as a hardscrabble reporter and Cary Grant as her dapper editor. Monday is reserved for Harold and Maude–Hal Ashby’s May/December stunner set to the sounds of Cat Stevens.
January Giallo with Footprints/Torso Record snow staved off the bloodletting for a few weeks, but no longer. In the former, a translator wakes up and tries to piece her life together Memento-style in a world with abstract perspective and a dour Klaus Kinski. The latter follows a group of college kids fleeing their university town for a remote cabin after a string of eviscerations on campus only to find the killer may have followed them there. Avoid concessions and see the films that influenced every slasher released since. Playing this weekend at the Belcourt.
The People Under the Stairs/Tales from the Hood: The Belcourt presents 90s horror shaped by L.A. race relations with this one-two midnight movie punch. In between unleashing Freddy Krueger and reinventing the horror genre with Scream, Wes Craven took a midcareer detour that remains not only one of his best films but also one of the most brutal satires of the 90s. When a slumlord couple living in a decaying mansion threatens to evict a young boy and his family from their apartment, he and a band of thieves attempt a Robin Hood scheme as revenge. But the routine break-in exposes a world of kidnapping, cannibalism, incest, and murder. Craven intends to take direct aim at Ronald and Nancy Reagan but ultimately explodes the world of Los Angeles’s insulated privilege.
Tales from the Hood brings the anthology form to the wrong side of the tracks as an inner-city funeral director takes a trio of drug dealers on a tour of his parlor and the stories of the corpses that fill it to the brim.
Sunday Supper Every Sunday until Valentine’s Day, The Belcourt offers up a bounty of films about culinary delights from all-time classics like My Dinner with Andre to cult films such as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. This weekend, get prepared for the gorgeous melodrama I Am Love in which the British Tilda Swinton plays a bilingual Russian wife living in Italy and shows the world she’s the best in the business.
Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino didn’t invent Post-Its, but they do star in the best Gen X angst movie of the 90s. Playing Wednesday at The Belcourt.
Oscars Film Fest In the wake of last week’s Oscar nominations, the ten contenders for best picture return to AMC and Regal. Experience pop-culture juggernauts Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Killers of the Flower Moon as they were meant to be seen. Take a chance on intimate dramas Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall, and The Holdovers that didn’t quite get their due earlier this year. Support holiday releases American Fiction, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest as they finally go nationwide. Sure, you can watch Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro on Netflix, but aren’t you tired of being home? This is the best crop of nominees since 1975, and a full-throated rallying cry that the movies still matter.
The Chosen (Season Four Special Event) Jesus is back in the latest big screen edit of Angel Studios’s flagship series that could go on for eternity. Now playing in theaters.
Scrambled A perpetual bridesmaid decides to freeze her eggs and be an independent woman in this light indie comedy that is really gonna piss off Matt Walsh. Now playing in theaters.
Fitting In This “traumedy” that follows a teenager whose life is upended when a reproductive disease leads her to discover she’s intersex is also really gonna piss off Matt Walsh. Now playing in theaters.
Jungle Bunch: Operation Meltdown Only a ragtag group of animals can stop a toxic foam and their archnemesis Henry the Beaver in this B-grade family film. Now playing in theaters.
The Latest in Bolly/Tolly/Kolly/Lollywood and Other Special Presentations of Asian and Middle Eastern Imports.
Kabuliwala (Bengali) The gentle tale of a middle-aged Afghan man who befriends a little girl in 60’s Calcutta. Now playing at Regal Hollywood 27.
Kismath (Telugu) A group of hapless engineers overcome unemployment by organizing a heist before honesty gets in the way. Now playing at Regal Hollywood 27.
Vadakkupatti Ramasamy: (Tamil) “A real-life incident that happened in a village in the 1960s-70s.” Now playing at Regal Hollywood 27.
Ambajipeta Marriage Band (Telugu) A twist of fate changes the lives of two twentysomething twins at the turn of the millennium. Now playing at AMC Thoroughbred 20 and Regal Hollywood 27.