Last month, much ado was made of the fact that George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (which is excellent, by the way) “underperformed” at the box office. Though, as of this writing, the film has just recouped its $168 million budget, its surprisingly weak opening made for what box-office watchers deemed a “historically slow Memorial Day weekend for movie theaters.”
Well, if folks aren’t heading to the movies quite as much this summer, it certainly isn’t due to a lack of quality options. In addition to Janet Planet (review here), Yorgos Lanthimos’ black-comedy anthology Kinds of Kindness (starring Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, among others) will open at the Belcourt — as well as select Regal and AMC locations — this week. We weren’t able to screen Kindness ahead of our print deadline, but stay tuned for our review. (Update: See our review here.) For what it’s worth, writing about the film following its Cannes premiere in May, Vanity Fair’s David Canfield called Lanthimos’ latest a “brazenly bizarre” effort “coming off of two Oscar-winning commercial successes in The Favourite and Poor Things.”
Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s Sundance darling opens this week at the Belcourt
Still playing at the Belcourt this week is indie dramedy Ghostlight, which — according to our own Ken Arnold — “excels on many levels, from the way the story slowly peels back its many layers in a seamless fashion to its cast of fun and interesting supporting characters.” Coming July 3 to both the Belcourt and select Regal locations is Maxxxine, the third and final installment in Ti West’s Mia Goth-starring X horror trilogy. We’ll have a review of that one next week, but if it’s half as good as the 2022 installment Pearl, it’ll be among the best horror releases of the year so far. The Belcourt’s 1999 retrospective winds down this week as its Celebration of Nicole Kidman series ramps up, with Eyes Wide Shut (showing June 28 and 30) bridging the divide as an installment in both series. Also showing as part of the Kidman series are Birth, To Die For, The Others, Rabbit Hole, Cold Mountain, Dogville and Moulin Rouge! (Exclamation point the film’s, not ours.)
Maxxxine
Meanwhile this week, A Quiet Place: Day One opens in cineplexes everywhere. The third installment in the Quiet Place series, and the first installment not directed by John Krasinski, it features Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn and Alex Wolff, and takes place at the outset of the series’ alien invasion. (Review here.) Opening at Regal Hollywood this week is Kalki 2898 AD, a Telugu-language Indian dystopian sci-fi flick directed by Nag Ashwin. The Dakota Johnson/Sean Penn two-hander Daddio comes to select Regal and AMC locations this week, while Kevin Costner’s 181-minute Western Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 lands in theaters everywhere. (Chapter 2, which clocks in at a measly 164 minutes, is set to open Aug. 16.) Bring your dad!
Jeff Nichols’ biker-gang drama opens wide Friday
Still showing in the megaplexes are Furiosa, the Russell Crowe-starring The Exorcism, Thelma, Inside Out 2, Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, the last of which our own Logan Butts described in last week’s issue as “a familiar but immensely watchable adult drama that’s elevated by the presence of its likable stars.” Coming to theaters everywhere in early July are Despicable Me 4 (for those of us who don’t have kids, yes, there have been four of them), Hindi-language thriller Kill and the aforementioned Maxxxine. If you can’t manage to peel yourself off the couch, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F hits Netflix July 3. Or stand by until the late July sequel-splosion of Twisters (July 19) and Deadpool & Wolverine (July 26).
Better yet, head to Full Moon Cineplex in Hermitage for their June 28 repertory screening of American Psycho.
