Kaili Blues, vintage John Waters and more classic horror on the cheap
Wednesday
Kaili Blues (7:00p — MMoCA Auditorium)
Described by IndieWire as “dreamy and daring,” this search by one man to find his nephew in the mountainous Ghuizou province bends finds 26 year-old director Gan Bi striding across time and place. The sleepy end result features fleeting surreal moments like a clock appearing on the side of train car. Keep your eyes peeled for a long take that lasts over a half hour through rural China. ($7 or FREE for MMoCA members.)
The Blob (7:00p — Bos Meadery)
(FREE admission.)
Thursday
Best of Enemies (6:30p — Central Library, Rm 302)
Featuring a moderated panel discussion with Mitch Henck, Stuart Levitan, and UW Extension’s Bill Rizzo. (FREE admission.)
Evil Dead 2 (9:30p — Union South Marquee)
The original broke new ground in indie cinema, and Army of Darkness brings out the best in Bruce Campbell’s killer chin, but flat out, the second entry in the Evil Dead trilogy is the strongest. A potent one-two punch of slapstick humor and gross-out demonology, Evil Dead 2 doesn’t make much sense and it’s all the better for it, letting Sam Raimi get the “creepy cabin in the woods” hook out of the way early on for batshit insanity: disembodied hands, possessed mothers, and chainsaw prosthetics. The grooviest. (FREE admission.)
Friday
Sing Street (6:30p — Alicia Ashman Library)
Don’t show up to this 2016 Wisconsin Film Festival selection expecting a groundbreaking masterpiece; John Carney here is a far cry from his breezy direction in Once. Not that Sing Street is bad. And it does share one thing with its 2007 predecessor in a knockout original soundtrack. Gary Clark (from Scottish pop trio Danny Wilson) and a host of collaborators assemble an irresistible assortment of 80s-inspired tunes. While the genres invoked are all over the place, Sing Street’s strongest asset feels like a sloppy reflection of the teen angst at the center of its two leads, Lucy Boynton’s aspiring model and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, the unsure musician with a crush on her. Festival programmer Mike King will introduce the film beforehand. (FREE admission.)
Saturday
Friday the 13th (10:00p, 12:10a — Marcus Point)
In its execution, Friday the 13th doesn’t look so hot by 2016 standards. Even the original in the long and very convoluted slasher franchise is little more than an excuse to kill sex-crazed teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake, lining up sub-par performances (and Kevin Bacon) for lean slaughter-filled whodunit. On paper though, original series writer Victor Miller works wonders. The notion of a crazed mother (Betsy Palmer) exacting bloody revenge after the loss of her son is both profoundly sad and deeply unnerving. Despite an initial reluctance to accept her notoriety as Pamela Voorhees, Palmer is all the more terrifying in a role so disjointed from the stuffy daytime television roles she was (once) famous for. ($5.)
Sunday
Lights Out (6:00p — Union South Marquee)
Who would have thought an apparition bound by darkness could be at the center of a heartwarming story? Such is the case with David F. Sandberg, who rose to viral prominence in 2013 with that exact premise. Well, sort of. His short film Lights Out (2013) relies on unnerving sound design, while the specifics of the antagonist or what it looks like are ultimately beside the point. That’s less the case in the James Wan-produced expansion of the idea, where Teresa Palmer and her younger brother (Gabriel Bateman) are drawn back to their depressed mother (Maria Bello), whose claims of an imaginary friend are somehow connected to a light-averse demon. Maybe they’ll show this one with the lights up in the Marquee? (FREE admission.)
Monday
Multiple Maniacs (7:00p — Union South Marquee)
John Waters regular Divine (as Lady Divine) heads up a gang of provocative vagabonds, the “Cavalcade of Perversion.” Janus Films and the Criterion Collection finished a restoration of Waters’ second feature film earlier this year and UW Cinematheque and WUD are making it this month’s “Marquee Monday” selection. Right from the get-go, John Waters had his artistic vision in the bag, but all anyone’s bound to talk about is the indulgent finale, where Lady Divine is raped by a giant Lobster before running through the streets of Baltimore primed for murder. You were expecting someone else? (FREE admission.)