Your Weekend Preview: What To See (And What To Skip) In The Theatres

By Original-Cin Staff

Knives Out (Rating: A-) is not, as you might imagine, a documentary about life inside the Trump White House although it does involve a mansion, horrible people, and some backstabbing. It’s a whodunnit with rules and decorum.

A scene from Knives Out.

Featuring an ace cast (Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon, Daniel Craig, Toni Colette), and directed by Rian Johnson (Looper), this Agatha Christie-inspired thriller is “wonderfully crafted” and more cozy than chilling, says Thom Ernst.

It seems paradoxical that Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles should make a film about the first Latin-American pontiff (Pope Francis) and cast venerable English actor Jonathan Pryce in the role, but hey, Catholic by definition is supposed to be universal. The movie, in fact, is about The Two Popes (Rating: B), and imagines the transition from the conservative Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) to more progressive Pope Francis. Reviewer Kim Hughes says this ruminative think piece might work better on the stage, though it’s elevated by the two great performances.

You expect director Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven) to surprise with style, and perhaps the biggest surprise of Dark Waters (Rating: B) — starring Mark Ruffalo as the modest real-life Cincinnati lawyer who exposed the sins of DuPont chemical company — is how relatively straightforward it is. It is almost as if, says reviewer Liam Lacey, Haynes wanted to get out of the way in actor-producer Mark Ruffalo’s passion project.

Queen & Slim (Rating: B-) takes the hot-button issue of police abuse of African-Americans for a ride in a movie you’d like to root for… if you could only get past the script’s illogical potholes, says reviewer Kim Hughes. Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith star as a young couple on their first uncomfortable date who, through an encounter with a white cop, are suddenly on the run.

Two docs this week: the late Agnes Varda’s wonderful swan song reviewing her 60-year-plus career, Varda by Agnes (Rating: A). And finally, for the age of Trump, we have John Walker’s NFB documentary Assholes: A Theory (Rating: B-) which attempts to document the ascent of homo anus in an amusing (John Cleese is interviewed) if casual fashion, in which every interview subject is required to employ the titular orifice at least once.

Have a thankful (we already had our Thanksgiving so our dishes are done, USA – ha!) weekend!