Reel-View Ratings: The Bigger The Beard, The Better The Movie
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
There’s something of a genre overload in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, in that it manages to be a feminist Iranian film noir western vampire flick —all in just above an hour and a half. And all of those disparate genres work, kind of, sort of, more or less. A nameless lady vampire falls in love with a young man who has a druggie father and a host of other complications — a narrative that is whittled down to the bare minimum in the film, which focuses more on sumptuous imagery of moody shadows and black-hijab-wearing vampires cruising on skateboards through the night.
Plays at 1 p.m. March 25, 7:30 p.m. March 26 and 4 p.m. March 27 at Doris Duke Theatre
HOME
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: Lilo & Stitch remains the definitive little-girl-befriends-outcast-alien movie of our time. Here, aliens called the Boov have taken over Earth, leaving outcast Oh (an incredibly annoying Jim Parsons) out in the cold for accidentally revealing the Boov’s position to their galactic enemies. Unlikely circumstances bring Oh to Gratuity Tucci (Rihanna, in an unexpectedly strong performance), who is searching for her mother. Hearts aren’t warmed, exactly — more like lukewarmed in the face of this so-safe-it’s-boring film. Kids will like it, and forget it when Pixar’s equally colorful Inside Out comes out.
Opens March 27 in wide release
IT FOLLOWS
The premise of It Follows sounds distinctly unprom-ising and possibly preachy: Girl meets boy, girl has sex with boy, boy gives girl the world’s worst STD — you’ll always see someone following you in the distance, slow and relentless. If you don’t sleep with someone else in time, one day that follower will catch you … and you don’t want to be caught. So it’s like a safe-sex PSA, only reversed, right? Wrong — sometimes the scariest things are the subtlest, making those jump scares and standard creepy monsters seem like the work of amateurs. It’s a smartly written, smartly shot horror film that breaks the mold.
Opens March 27 at Kahala Theatre
