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

By Original-Cin Staff

Our top-rated film of the week is Maiden (Rating: A-), an inspirational women’s sports story, set 30 years before purple-haired Megan Rapinoe and her World Cup–winning women’s soccer squad became media stars. In 1989, the improbable Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old former teen delinquent, captained the first all-woman crew to compete in the round-the-world Whitbread sailing race, defying both terrifying seas and an outrageously condescending male media. Jim Slotek reviews this exciting Rocky-for-women story that “wouldn’t be believed as fiction.”

A scene from the excellent doc, Maiden.

It’s time we began to laugh, and cry, and laugh, and cry and… when you’ve got that out of your system, check out Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love (Rating: B+), a new film from pioneering first-person documentarian Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney, Biggie and Tupac) in which Broomfield looks back at the turning point where Leonard Cohen went from humble poet to acclaimed pop star, all filtered through the filmmaker’s own connection to Cohen’s muse, the late Marianne Ihlen, the Norwegian woman behind the quintessential break-up song.

Music buffs may also be drawn to Melody Makers: Should’ve Been There (Rating: C). Reviewed by Kim Hughes, the film is a rambling look back at the venerable English weekly music magazine Melody Maker, through the eyes of photographer Barrie Wentzell, with interview contributions from Eric Burdon (Animals), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), and many others.

This week’s commercial release is Stuber (Rating: C), from cult fave Canadian director Michael Dowse (Fubar, Goon, The F Word), starring Kumail Nanjiani as a beta male, motor-mouthed Uber drive named Stu, who is button-holed by a violent L.A. police detective (Dave Bautista) to for a wild night on the town. Reviewer Liam Lacey says this mocking throwback to buddy-action comedies suffers from crude action sequences but perks up every time Nanjiani freestyles a running commentary on the absurdity of the plot.

On this week’s podcast, we weigh in on the protests around the anti-abortion drama Unplanned, get Karen Gordon’s first-look at the live-action version of The Lion King, talk first-person encounters with Leonard Cohen and more.

Have a great weekend.