Previews: "Who Can Kill a Child?" "Cuckoo" & "Joker: Folie à Deux"
What's upcoming this week and soon after
For anyone who may have missed our announcement last week: I will be appearing at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, Long Island, on Wednesday, July 31, to host a screening and post-show Q&A for Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Hope to see the New York horror contingent there. We’ll have a signed copy of my book Movie Lust to give away and a handful to sell. And of course, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on Suspiria and all things Argento.
This Thursday’s review is another “Maitland Favorite,” since you gave our piece in May about Wake in Fright (Australia, 1971) such a great response. Who Can Kill a Child? is not a rhetorical question in the 1976 Spanish thriller that makes Village of the Damned look like child’s play (and not Child’s Play). It is riveting, it is disturbing and it is highly suspenseful. I’ve been enthralled revisiting it, and if thrillers are your thing, you’ll want to read this essay and see this film.
Upcoming for review:
Cuckoo
Originally scheduled for theatrical release May 3 but now due out Aug. 9, writer-director Tilman Singer’s much-anticipated follow-up to his low-budget Luz finds 17-year-old Gretchen reluctantly going to live with her father and his family in a German Alps resort. There she meets her mute half-sister, Alma. Plagued by strange noises and bloody visions, Gretchen knows there’s something very wrong in this tranquil vacation paradise. The ubiquitous Dan Stevens (Godzilla x Kong, Abigail) also stars.
Joker: Folie à Deux
Filmmaker Todd Phillips’ follow-up to 2019’s Joker, which earned star Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award, finds the actor reprising his dual roles as Arthur Fleck / Joker, opposite fellow Oscar-winner Lady Gaga. And yes, she’s Harley Quinn. Institutionalized at Arkham Asylum while awaiting trial, Arthur struggles with his identity crisis. But it looks like he doesn’t have to struggle much to find true love. Here is the newly released second trailer for the film, which also stars Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and the returning Zazie Beetz. Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters Oct. 4.
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