Screening Report 4/2/2025

The Wisconsin Film Festival is here! (Here's what else is playing this week.)

Apr 02, 2025

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Horizon Line screening report! As many of you know, the Wisconsin Film Festival begins tomorrow and will conclude next Thursday, 4/10. While I know most of this readership is probably emphasizing attendance of the festival’s many great films, I’ll be cataloguing what’s happening in our commercial theaters and traditional rep programming.

This week’s largest new releases, A Minecraft Movie and Hell of a Summer, are almost perfectly counterprogrammed by the presence of the festival this week - if the independent and international cinema of the Wisconsin Film Festival isn’t your bag, these are two of the broadest commercial releases aimed at this month. A friend saw Freaky Tales last night at the Film Festival/WUD Film preview screening last night and said it was great - I hope to catch up with it myself soon. There’s a surprise informal Indian film marathon at Marcus Point on 4/9 - to see all three, you’d need to see Jack at 2pm, Good Bad Ugly at 5:30p, and Jaat at 9p. None of the three films are currently programmed with another date in Wisconsin. One of the surprise box office successes of the year is the 4K IMAX presentation of Princess Mononoke, taking home twice the film’s 1999 domestic gross in a single weekend and adding more screenings this week - having seen the restoration, I can say that it holds all the magic it’s always offered.

Next week, with the end of the film festival, we have a surprising number of the recurring trailer circuit releasing at once. There’s the Rami Malek thriller The Amateur, an intelligence officer turned vigilante - the review embargo on that film will apparently lift next Tuesday. There’s Blumhouse thriller Drop, which combines elements of home invasion and the Milgram experiment. And there’s A24 war film Warfare, co-directed by veteran Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, based on Mendoza’s experiences in Iraq. All three of those films also have preview events for those who want to catch them early, and reviews for Drop and Warfare are fairly warm thus far, sometimes surprising for films advertised so aggressively.

In repertory, the end of the Wisconsin Film Festival will bring back UW programming at Cinematheque and WUD Film, and with it two all-time classic films. Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, playing at UW Cinematheque, is a French sung-through musical about two lovers separated by war. Its melancholy outlook is a refreshing and valuable perspective on love, and it’s married to beautiful, vibrant, colorful aesthetics. WUD Film, the next night, is playing Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, one of Kubrick’s most gorgeous and funniest films, about perpetual fuck-up Barry Lyndon failing upward at everything but shooting guns and cheating at cards - this lands him as the biggest loser in the gentry. Looking further ahead, the weekend of 4/18, we’ll see Ryan Coogler vampire blockbuster Sinners and the commercial release of The Wedding Banquet remake, alongside Sneaks, The Ugly Stepsister, and Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing.

PLUG ZONE

-For those of us buying our last handful of film festival tickets, James Kreul and Rob Thomas both have write-ups of their planned schedules.

-Zach Zahos has a thoughtful review of Albert Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude, reckoning with the film’s depiction of bullfighting as artistry, even if repugnant to the viewer.

-Tone Madison offers four more WFF previews. David Boffa reviews hospital comedy Relationship to Patient, Maxwell Courtright reviews disability advocacy doc Choose the Pond, Ian Adcock reviews Tsui Hark retro romcom Shanghai Blues, and Jason Furhman reviews Palestinian dramedy Thank You For Banking With Us.

-Rob Thomas reviewed the Andy Kaufman documentary Thank You Very Much, available online but with no current screenings aimed for Wisconsin.

Want to see your film writing or short film here in The Horizon Line? Send a link to your work to horizonlinemadison@gmail.com.

THIS WEEK (4/3/25-4/9/25)
THE WISCONSIN FILM FESTIVAL!!!!!

New Releases
-A Minecraft Movie - AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, Flix Brewhouse
-Hell of a Summer - AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, Flix Brewhouse
-Bob Trevino Likes It - AMC
-Freaky Tales - AMC, Marcus Point
-The Friend - AMC, Marcus Palace
-The Luckiest Man in America - AMC
-The Amateur (Early Access Screening) - 6p 4/5 at AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace
-Drop (Early Access Screening) - 7p 4/9 at Marcus Point, 6:45p 4/9 at Marcus Palace
-Good Bad Ugly - 5:30p, 9p 4/9 at Marcus Point
-Jaat - 9p 4/9 at Marcus Point
-Jack - 4/9 at Marcus Point
-Warfare (Early IMAX Screening) - 7p 4/9 at AMC

Repertory

-Crazy Stupid Love - 11a 4/6 at Flix Brewhouse
-Bicycle Thieves - 7p 4/8 at La Cineteca Italiana
-Enter the Dragon - 6:30p 4/8 at Flix Brewhouse
-Vampire Hunter D - 4/9 at AMC, Marcus Point , Flix Brewhouse
-Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Marcus Point, Marcus Palace
-Princess Mononoke - AMC, Marcus Point

NEXT WEEK (4/10/25-4/16/25)

New Releases

-The Amateur - AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, Flix Brewhouse
-Drop - AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, Flix Brewhouse
-The King of Kings - AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace
-Sacramento - AMC, Marcus Point
-Warfare - AMC, Marcus Point, Marcus Palace
-The Ballad of Wallis Island - Marcus Point
-Milk Punch + Florence - 7p 4/11 at Bartell Theater
-One to One: John & Yoko - 1:30p 4/12-4/13 at AMC
-Kaiju No. 8 Mission Recon - Marcus Point

-A Minecraft Movie - AMC, Flix Brewhouse
-Anora - 6:30p 4/11 at The Marquee Union South, 9p 4/12 at The Marquee Union South

Repertory

-Monkey Man - 9:30p 4/11 at The Marquee Union South
-The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - 7p 4/11 at UW Cinematheque
-Act of Violence - 7p 4/12 at UW Cinematheque
-Barry Lyndon - 5:30p 4/12 at The Marquee Union South
-Selena - 6:30p 4/12 & 4/16 at Flix Brewhouse
-Beetlejuice - 4/13-4/14 Marcus Point, Marcus Palace
-Creed - 6:45p 4/14 at Flix Brewhouse
-lo la Conoscevo Bene - 7p 4/15 at La Cineteca Italiana
-Vampire Hunter D - AMC, Flix Brewhouse, The Marquee Union South

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The Horizon Line Madison

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