We have new movie announcements, reviews, and screenings this week. Be sure to check out everything that happened and was released for the shows we’re looking forward to and others that were just announced!
Be sure to stay up to date with the latest series and movie releases!
Metro Detroit Local Events
- Chicago – (March 28 – April 2, 2023)
- Annie – (April 25-30)
- Kansas – 50th Anniversary Tour – June 17th
- Funny Girl (September 2023)
Metro Detroit Screenings
Movie and Series Reviews
Movie and Entertainment Updates:
Hulu’s “RapCaviar Presents” – Premieres March 30th
RapCaviar Presents” is a compelling new documentary series that tackles some of today’s most provocative issues through the stories of hip-hop visionaries and emerging stars currently ruling the charts and influencing our culture, from City Girls to Tyler, The Creator, Polo G, Roddy Ricch, Coi Leray and more. Based on the influential Spotify playlist, launched in 2015, this six-part series is a deep dive into current events that untangles important subjects and offers a view of the world from an artist’s perspective.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves | New “Team Vs. Evil” Featurette – In Theaters March 31st
A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure.
New Final Trailer:
Searchlight Pictures presents RYE LANE | Trailer Debut – Streaming on Hulu March 31st
Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson), two twenty-somethings both reeling from bad break-ups, connect over the course of an eventful day in South London – helping each other deal with their nightmare exes, and potentially restoring their faith in romance.
Hannah Waddingham Stars in All-New Adaptation of Henry Fielding’s Classic Novel “Tom Jones” – Available to Stream on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel This April
This April, MASTERPIECE’S newest program, a new adaptation of Henry Fielding’s classic novel, “Tom Jones” starring Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), headlines the upcoming releases on the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel. A timeless romantic comedy, this is a new and exciting four-part series of the bestseller, whose 1963 movie adaptation won an Academy Award®. In “Before We Die” Season 2, Lesley Sharp returns as Detective Hannah Laing, who goes head-to-head with the matriarch of the Mimica crime family. And in the Italian dramedy, “Walter Presents: Mafia Only Kills in Summer” Season 2, a new life for all of the Giammarresi family begins. They are still trying to avoid entanglements with the local Mafiosi, and are front and center as the bloodiest war in Mafia history is brewing.
The PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel consists of binge-worthy British and international drama series and movies from MASTERPIECE, Walter Presents and other critically acclaimed producers. The subscription rate for the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel is $5.99/month with an Amazon Prime or Prime Video subscription. Every purchase helps support public television for all.
Information about each program is below:
MASTERPIECE: Tom Jones
Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon) stars as the handsome, resourceful title character, with Sophie Wilde (You Don’t Know Me) as the beautiful and bright, seemingly unattainable love of his life, Sophia Western. He is a foundling of uncertain parentage, while she is an heiress. In 18th-century England, their class differences make their journey to find each other complicated and treacherous.
Emmy®-winning actress Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) plays the seductive and vengeful Lady Bellaston, who comes between Tom and Sophia.
RENFIELD | New Trailer Now Available – In theaters April 14th
Evil doesn’t span eternity without a little help.
In this modern monster tale of Dracula’s loyal servant, Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men franchise) stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to history’s most narcissistic boss, Dracula (Oscar® winner Nicolas Cage). Renfield is forced to procure his master’s prey and do his every bidding, no matter how debased. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is ready to see if there’s a life outside the shadow of The Prince of Darkness. If only he can figure out how to end his codependency.
Renfield is directed by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War, The LEGO Batman Movie) from a screenplay by Ryan Ridley (Ghosted series, Rick & Morty series), based on an original idea by The Walking Dead and Invincible creator Robert Kirkman.
The film co-stars Awkwafina (The Farewell, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings), Ben Schwartz (Sonic, The Afterparty) and Adrian Martinez (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Focus) and Emmy winner and Oscar® nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Saddam, House of Sand and Fog).
Renfield is produced by Skybound Entertainment partners Robert Kirkman and David Alpert (The Walking Dead, Invincible), co-presidents Bryan Furst (Daybreakers) and Sean Furst (Daybreakers) and by Chris McKay. McKay’s producing partner Samantha Nisenboim (co-producer, The Tomorrow War) will executive produce.
SUZUME – Experience It In IMAX on April 14th
“Suzume” is a coming-of-age story for the 17-year-old protagonist, Suzume, set in various disaster stricken
locations across Japan, where she must close the doors causing devastation.
Suzume’s journey begins in a quiet town in Kyushu (located in southwestern Japan) when she encounters a young man who tells her, “I’m looking for a door.” What Suzume finds is a single weathered door standing upright in the midst of ruins as though it was shielded from whatever catastrophe struck. Seemingly drawn by its power, Suzume reaches for the knob… Doors begin to open one after another all across Japan, unleashing destruction upon any who are near. Suzume must close these portals to prevent further disaster.
DRY GROUND BURNING – Friday, April 14 at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, On Friday, April 21 at BAM in New York City, Followed by Other Cities
Grasshopper Film is proud to announce the North American theatrical release of Dry Ground Burning (Mato Seco em Chamas) from the powerful directorial duo of Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós. Winner of the Grand Prize at Cinéma du Réel and the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Latin American Film of the Year, as well as an official selection at numerous film festivals including Berlinale, New York, Toronto, Jeonju, and Vienna, the explosive Brazilian docufiction hybrid will have its North American theatrical release starting Friday, April 14 at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, on Friday, April 21 the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York City, to be followed by theaters across the country.
Dry Ground Burning follows a fearsome outlaw Chitara in Sol Nascente, Brazil, who leads an all-female gang that siphons and steals precious oil from the authoritarian, militarized government. Her sister, Léa, recently released from prison, is brought into the criminal enterprise. Acting as a collective, they become the gasolineiras—petrol pirates who tap into an underground crude oil pipeline, assemble the tools to refine it into gasoline, and then sell it to the motorcycle riders of the favela.
Owning the means of production, the gasolineras become gasoline kingpins, serving their community; in one scene, they blast trap music out of a truck, rapping song lyrics on the microphones, the motorcycle riders behind them, as they promote their newly-formed “Prison People Party,” an abolitionist political group running against the Bolsonaro-backed political candidate up for re-election.
But is it all fiction, a fantasy? Pimenta and Queirós playfully keep the lines blurred between what is real and what is dramatized in this documentary-fiction hybrid. What starts as a gangster epic, with elements of sci-fi—something like a Brazilian feminist rendition of Mad Max—turns into a documentary with dramatized elements, or vice versa.
Working together as directors for the first time, Queirós and Pimenta are no strangers to an unconventional approach to both documentary and narrative. Their first collaboration was on Queirós’s Once There Was Brasilia (2017)—a film that followed an intergalactic agent who is assigned on a mission to travel to Earth and assassinate the Brazilian president—on which Pimenta served as cinematographer.
Re-inventing the cinematic language as it oscillates between a hard-edged documentary realism and dramatized explosive fantasy, Dry Ground Burning is both from the present and the future; an oil-drenched dystopia and a post-apocalyptic afro-feminist matriarchal future.
Quasi – Streaming on Hulu April 20th
A hapless hunchback yearns for love, but finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the king of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other.
CHEVALIER New Trailer – In Theaters April 21st
Inspired by the incredible true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr. in a tour de force performance) rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) and her court.
JOY RIDE | NEW GREEN BAND TRAILER – In theaters July 7th
From the producers of Neighbors and the co-screenwriter of Crazy Rich Asians, JOY RIDE stars Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Oscar® nominee Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu. The hilarious and unapologetically explicit story of identity and self-discovery centers on four unlikely friends who embark on a once-in-a-lifetime international adventure. When Audrey’s (Ashley Park) business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo (Sherry Cola), her irreverent, childhood best friend who also happens to be a hot mess; Kat (Stephanie Hsu), her college friend turned Chinese soap star; and Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), Lolo’s eccentric cousin. Their no-holds-barred, epic experience becomes a journey of bonding, friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery that reveals the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are.
Also starring Ronny Chieng (Crazy Rich Asians), Lori Tan Chinn (Awkwafina is Nora From Queens), David Denman (Greenland), Annie Mumolo (Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar), Desmond Chiam (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Alexander Hodge (Insecure), and Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians).
Lionsgate presents, a Point Grey / Red Mysterious Hippo production.
MAGAZINE DREAMS | In Theaters December 8th
Aspiring bodybuilder Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) struggles to find human connection in this exploration of celebrity and violence. Nothing deters him from his fiercely protected dream of superstardom, not even the doctors who warn him of the permanent damage he causes to himself with his quest.
