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Love at First Sight, A Haunting in Venice, Cassandro, Sundance Shorts 2023
Cassandro **
Director Roger Ross Williams has had a long, successful career as a documentary filmmaker, and it’s hard not to feel that this biopic based on the life of lucha libre wrestler Saúl “Cassandro” Armendáriz (Gael García Bernal) would have been much more compelling in non-fiction form. The story begins with the openly-gay Saúl working small-time wrestling gigs across the border from his El Paso home, struggling to gain a foothold.
New music from Spirit Machine and Bone Throwers; City Weekly ticket offers
Spirit Machines: "Terminal 51" out now
If you follow Spirit Machines on Instagram (and if you don't, why aren't you?), you've probably seen their otherworldly space-inspired posts about their new single "Terminal 51," which is out today.
As we’re entering the home stretch of the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s summer repertory, it's now time to get thee hence to Cedar City before three of the seven plays end their runs. If you, like me, have not made the trek to USF in a few years (since before COVID, in my case), you owe it to yourself to feel all the feels of this summer’s four Shakespearean plays (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens), as well as three contemporary productions: A Raisin in the Sun, Jane Austen’s Emma the Musical and The Play That Goes Wrong.
The Equalizer 3, Bottoms, Between Two Worlds, The Good Mother and more
Between Two Worlds **1/2
Marianne Winckler (Juliette Binoche) is a woman now on the fringes of society, left without resources after a divorce and forced to relocate from Paris to the seaside city of Caen and seek employment in janitorial services. Except not really: Marianne is actually a writer, going deep undercover to experience and chronicle life among those living precariously on shift work, like her new friends Christèle (Hélène Lambert) and Marilou (Léa Carne).
Gran Turismo, Retribution, The Hill, Vacation Friends 2, Golda and more
Golda ***
I’m trying to imagine the reaction to Golda of people who weren’t having any of Oppenheimer’s “my God, what have I done” character study, because that’s virtually the entirety of director Guy Nattiv’s feature. It covers the month of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren) wrestles with the responsibility for her choices—delaying preemptive action when intelligence suggests an attack from Egypt and Syria is imminent; approving specific military operations; attempting to wrangle assistance from U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber)—even as she endures treatment for cancer.
Get Freaky Festival: Lineup announced + tickets on sale now
The 2023 Get Freaky lineup has been carefully crafted to ensure an unforgettable experience, featuring a sensational array of top-tier artists and breakthrough performers in the electronic music scene.
Blue Beetle, Passages, Strays, Landscape With Invisible Hand, The Monkey King and more
birth/rebirth **1/2
There’s a potent piece of psychological horror swirling around somewhere in the story concocted by director/co-writer Laura Moss and co-writer Brendan J. O’Brien, but a fundamental chilliness in the filmmaking turns into an obstacle to that potential. In a Bronx hospital, nurse Celie (Judy Reyes) faces the ultimate tragedy when her 6-year-old daughter Lila (A.J. Lister) dies from an acute case of meningitis.
Last Voyage of the Demeter, Heart of Stone, Lakota Nation vs. United States, Jules and more
Afire ***
For most of the past decade, Christian Petzold has created movies designed to make us feel uneasy; so what does it look like when he decides to make a fairly straightforward character study build around that time-honored trope, The Portrait of the Artist as a Complete Asshole? The fellow in question is Leon (Thomas Schubert), a writer who has come to the Baltic Sea beach house of his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) to finish his latest novel.
The Meg 2: The Trench; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem; Shortcomings and more
Dreamin’ Wild ***
As he showed in 2014’s Love & Mercy, writer/director Bill Pohlad isn’t interested in the infinitely mockable rhythms of the conventional music biopic, and this fact-based story finds a satisfying drama in the idea of family members who really and truly love one another. It opens in 2011, with Donnie Emerson (Casey Affleck) living a simple life running a floundering music studio and playing wedding gigs with his wife Nancy (Zooey Deschanel), 30 years removed from making a DIY record with his brother Joe (Walton Goggins) as teenagers.
