The majors are still giving Batman V Superman: Death of Joy plenty of space at the box-office, though I’m expecting a pretty sharp drop-off in its second weekend. Fortunately, Zack Snyder can’t hold a candle to Richard Linklater and Jeff Nichols.
Absolutely Anything: Terry Jones’ fantasy comedy strands Simon Pegg in the dull-witted tale of a teacher granted the power to reshape reality. Nobody wins in this one.
City of Gold: It seems like we get another foodie doc every week, and not all of them are strictly necessary. But Susan finds some good bits in Laura Gabbert’s profile of Los Angeles Times food writer Jonathan Gold.
Darling: Riffing directly on Repulsion and The Shining, Mickey Keating’s no-budget psychodrama fixes a young woman (Lauren Ashley Carter) in a creepy old brownstone and watches her come apart.
Everybody Wants Some!!: Think of Linklater’s latest as an anthropological study of young men in 1980; it’s his Planet Earth, if you imagine college baseball players as a herd rather than a team. Also, it’s really sweet.
God’s Not Dead 2: Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.
Kill Your Friends: Nicholas Hoult is a wannabe music-industry player struggling with the eponymous ethical challenge in Owen Harris’ arch thriller, which floundered after its TIFF premiere. Rad has an idea why.
Midnight Special: After the more realistic of Mud, writer-director Nichols rediscovers the sense of the unnatural that made Take Shelter so unsettling, and doubles down on the power of Michael Shannon to infuse extraordinary events with ordinary humanity. This is a great picture.
Fun fact: Michael Shannon also appears in Batman V Superman, and probably made more from than than he did for Midnight Special. And honestly, anything that gives him the freedom to keep working with Nichols is fine by me.
Out of curiosity, is the new re-release/wider release (now in 666 theatres, wink wink) trailer for The Witch some sort of April Fool’s joke or a serious marketing attempt by the studio? I thought the original trailer was great and made me want to see the movie in the theatre from the first time I saw it (and I see very few movies in the theatre). If this new trailer works, people will probably be disappointed at the deliberate slow-burn pace of the movie. They pretty much scrunched bits of all the horror scenes into the trailer. I guess they don’t care after people have paid for a ticket?