Opening this week: This is the weekend The Hunt was supposed to open, but boy, doesn't that seem like a distant memory now? Seven weeks after the movie industry collectively agreed it should become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Oval Office, we're left with whatever releases Cheeto Hitler allows (or, more likely, whichever ones Sean Hannity doesn't know to warn him about). This Friday, that means:
Abominable It's been almost a year since Zendaya met Smallfoot, but DreamWorks apparently thinks there can never be enough movies that star a Yeti. (I mean, it's how Nick Nolte keeps getting work.) In Abominable, one of the fabled snowmen shows up on the roof of an apartment complex in China, and it's up to a bunch of scrappy teenagers to get him back home. Along the way, they have to outsmart enemies that include a predatory British collector and his zoologist assistant – but not, apparently, local cops who are willing to beat them bloody on the subway, because that would hit too close to home. And this thing has to sell internationally before the Tariff Wars really heat up. (PG)
The Day Shall Come Is America ready for comedies built on the idea that our law-enforcement institutions deliberately inflate domestic threats just to give themselves something to do? Maybe not, because the British had to make this one. Director Chris Morris (Four Lions) also co-wrote the story, in which an ambitious FBI agent surreptitiously supports a hapless Miami revolutionary in the hopes he'll become dangerous enough to prosecute. If that isn't enough to warm your subversive little heart, the FBI agent is played by Anna Kendrick. (Look for her next project, Pitch Perfect 4: Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams.) And check out this other credit line: "Jim Gaffigan, as Lemmy, a Neo-Nazi." Everybody involved with this thing, just take your base. (NR)
Judy One of the saddest moments I've ever known was when I had to explain to a 20-something gay friend who Paul Rudnick is. That's not the sort of experience a 54-year-old straight man who has spent an embarrassing amount of time watching and re-watching Addams Family Values ever expects to weather. But I guess it's reassuring in an egalitarian kind of way that LGBT kids can be just as ignorant of their own cultural history as straight kids are of ours. So there's a distinct possibility an entire generation is going to forever associate Judy Garland with Renee Zellweger, who's getting good notices and Oscar buzz for her portrayal of the doomed diva in Judy. Based on the West End and Broadway hit End of the Rainbow, the film finds Garland arriving in London in early 1969 for a series of performances she hopes will buoy her floundering career. And we all know what happened after that, don't we? Come to think of it, I guess we don't all know. My friend Bobby probably thinks she made Bridget Jones's Diary.
– This story is from the Sept. 25, 2019, print issue of Orlando Weekly. Stay on top of Central Florida news and views with our weekly Headlines newsletter.
