| Hello! I'm not Mark Olsen, on vacation this week. That won't stop us from flagging for you the week's most fun films coming to town. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. |
| It's an unusually strong week for new releases, as would be most that bring us a new title by Yorgos Lanthimos, the dependably strange Greek director of "The Favourite" and "Poor Things." His latest, "Bugonia," is both a conspiracy comedy and a tense kidnapping thriller starring Emma Stone as an abducted CEO. |
| Reviewing the movie, Amy Nicholson praises Stone, who, even with her range, finds something new: "Stone can play shrewd, silly, gorgeous, repellent, frail and frightening simultaneously, in a register at once intimate and grand-scale. If she didn't exist, some of her movies couldn't exist… Now with the paranoid comedy 'Bugonia,' Lanthimos has stripped away all the ornamentation. Stone controls focus with nothing more than a shaved head, a filthy coat and a tight smile." |
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| From left, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in the movie "Bugonia." (Atsushi Nishijima / Focus Features) |
| You may leave "Bugonia," though, with one question on your mind: Who was that kid? We mean Aidan Delbis, a new discovery, who plays one of the kidnappers, Don, who becomes the heart of the movie for his sensitivity and reticence. (Like the character, the actor is himself autistic.) As it happens, Delbis went to high school in La Crescenta with the daughter of our columnist Mary McNamara, who was thrilled to profile him for the paper. |
| Impressed by the 19-year-old's poise, McNamara writes, "Delbis is a tall, good-natured young man who speaks with a distinctive cadence and in an unwaveringly calm tone. Aside from a habit of repeating himself as he searches for what he wants to say next, he seems more comfortable discussing his experience with filmmaking than many of the dozens of more experienced actors I have interviewed in this very hotel over the years." |
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| Tessa Thompson, left, and director Nia DaCosta from the film "Hedda," photographed at the Los Angeles Times Studio at RBC House during the Toronto International Film Festival in September. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) |
| Also this week comes "Hedda," Nia DaCosta's irreverent, juicy update of Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," starring an especially inspired Tessa Thompson. Of the movie, Amy Nicholson writes, "Their rollicking redo, set from dusk to hangover at a drunken bacchanal, is vibrant and viciously alive. With apologies to Ibsen's ghost, DaCosta's tweaks have sharpened its rage… I think it's divine." |
| Mark Olsen spoke to DaCosta and Thompson out of the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where, the day after the movie's world premiere, the paper sat down with them to discuss their long, mutually fulfilling friendship, both as creative partners and confidants — one that goes back a decade. |
| Today also sees the release of "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere," featuring an inspired performance by Jeremy Allen White as a brooding Boss, holed up in a rented home in New Jersey writing the folk songs that would become 1982's "Nebraska." Our Glenn Whipp sat down with White at the Telluride Film Festival for his first solo interview, discussing how he transformed for the role. |
Let the spooky season commence |
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| Chucky flames out in a scene from 1988's "Child's Play," at the New Beverly on Saturday. (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images) |
| If you're like us, Halloween is hardly a one-day affair. We usually take the week to get into the mood with classic horror movies and, of course, Los Angeles is happy to oblige. Need a guide to the 13 scariest movies playing in town over the next week? Click through, but here's a taste of what's coming this weekend. |
| One of the most subversive movies ever made by Hollywood, "Poltergeist" (at Vidiots in 35mm on Saturday) all but screams: Turn off your TV. Your cozy suburban block, your toys, your swimming pool, your bedroom closet — all these things will destroy you. The film is especially provocative for arriving in 1982, with Ronald Reagan and the summer blockbuster in ascent. |
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| Tobe Hooper, the genius behind "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," gets the director's credit onscreen, but hands-on producer Steven Spielberg deserves the praise. It's the mirror image of his happier fantasies and, in this 35mm presentation, you'll be able to feel that connection, even though he rarely talks about it. |
| An armchair psychologist's theory: You can either roll with evil doll movies — a lasting genre that extends all the way to "M3GAN 2.0" — or you were too attached to your own dolls. (In which case, you're probably living in an evil doll movie of your own.) |
| Triggered or not, we recommend starting with the best, and that's Chucky in the 1988 slasher "Child's Play" (at the New Beverly on Saturday and Sunday). After you sit through the New Bev's 35mm print, you can (and should) stay for "Dolls," directed by Stuart Gordon. This was actually the movie he made right after his immortal "Re-Animator," even though it was held for a year to accommodate "From Beyond." |
Two interviews, two legends |
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| John Carpenter, photographed at his Hollywood offices in October. His two-weekend residency at the Belasco begins tonight. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times) |
| John Carpenter doesn't have a new movie — how we wish he did — but he will be coming to the Belasco starting tonight for two weekends of a concert residency at which he will play his classic synth scores and debut some new music as well. Worth putting on your radar in advance: Carpenter will be discussing his 1996 sequel "Escape from L.A." at the Egyptian Theatre on Dec. 4 as part of a yearlong series programmed by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. celebrating that group's 50th anniversary. Get your tickets here. |
| For The Times, Tim Greiving sat down with Carpenter in Hollywood, catching the 77-year-old filmmaker in an unusually contemplative mood, musing on death (not the slasher kind), the real-world nature of evil, his infinite love of Bach and the loss of creative control that drove him away from making studio movies. "I had to stop," he recalls of the time around 2001's "Ghosts of Mars," when he caught himself looking haggard. "I can't do this to myself anymore. I can't take this kind of stress — it'll kill you, as it has so many other directors." |
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| Meanwhile, our Josh Rottenberg spoke with revered journalist Seymour Hersh — the man who broke My Lai and Abu Ghraib — on the occasion of this week's AFI Fest screening of "Cover-Up," a new documentary profile on Hersh by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus. The film will have a limited release beginning Dec. 5 and then launch on Netflix Dec. 26. Hersh told us, "I love journalists. We're comrades in arms against the bureaucracy. I always thought journalists were the most interesting people in the world." |
| Now in progress, AFI Fest still has a weekend of notable new titles in store, including a screening tonight of Bradley Cooper's new comedy set in the world of stand-up, "Is This Thing On?"; a Saturday screening of the boxing drama "Christy," starring Sydney Sweeney; and a Sunday closing night gala for the Neil Diamond-centric rom-com "Song Sung Blue," featuring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, the world premiere. |
