One film looks set to dominate the weekend, but there’s a lot more to choose from on the big screen.
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse is the sequel to the acclaimed 2018 animated superhero picture, and sees Miles Morales once again sucked into multiversal mayhem. Does this one include Peter Parker, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Spider-Woman, Vulture, Spider-Noir, or Yamashito the Japanese Spider-Man? The answer is yes to all of the above and more. That’s right, we’re going full Rick and Morty, and the advance word is good. Look for eye-popping visuals with an inclusive spirit.
Vicaria (Laya Deleon Hayes) has a nice, suburban life until her older brother (Denzel Whitaker) is killed, as so many other Black youths have been, by gun violence. She becomes obsessed with bringing him back to life, which, as all available literature on the subject suggests, is a terrible idea. But who knows? Maybe it will work out fine in The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster. Writer/director Bomani J. Story updates Frankenstein for our era of senseless shootings.
Before Stephen King was a literary superstar, he was a struggling writer of short stories for men’s magazines like Cavalier and Penthouse (and, to be fair, also Cosmopolitan). After his novel Carrie was an unexpected hit, the best of these stories were collected in Night Shift, which has since provided fodder for film and television that has been great, like Salem’s Lot, and Children of the Corn, and not-so-great, like Lawnmower Man and Maximum Overdrive. “The Boogeyman” has seen several short film adaptations, thanks to King’s standing policy of licensing his short stories for $1 to budding filmmakers, and now director Rob Savage and the writers of A Quiet Place are giving it the feature treatment. This looks really scary.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars in Nicole Holofcener’s latest comedy as an author whose reasonably successful marriage is thrown into chaos when her husband (Tobias Menzies) admits he doesn’t like her latest book. This rookie married-guy mistake haunts everyone in You Hurt My Feelings.
Ahead of Harrison Ford’s final fedora fitting in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the original returns to theaters for two special engagements on Sunday, June 4th and Wednesday, June 7th. With Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas created the ultimate summer blockbuster in 1981, and while there have been many films that tried to recapture that magic, none has ever achieved this level of perfection. Watch for future movie star Alfred Molina in his debut role as Indy’s “Throw me the idol!” betrayer.
At Crosstown Theater on June 8th, get a full frontal look at Brian De Palma’s gonzo rock opera from 1974, Phantom of the Paradise. I can’t really describe the “plot”, but Paul Williams’ music and De Palma’s visuals bring the glam rock weirdness that would later power The Rocky Horror Picture Show to cult immortality. “Life at Last!”