Author: Amy Diaz

Amy Diaz is the executive editor and writes about movies and compiles the Kiddie Pool column. Reach her at adiaz@hippopress.com.

Malignant

Malignant (R)

After a brutal attack, a woman finds herself seeing through the eyes of a killer in Malignant, an unexpected bit of horror from director James Wan.

Wan’s filmography, according to IMDb, includes “story by” credits on some of the Saw movies, some of the Conjuring universe movies, Aquaman and this movie, and he directed the first Saw, some Insidious movies, two Conjuring movies, Aquaman and its upcoming sequel. This movie fits well in that mix — it’s very “1980s classic horror”-styled horror with some, I don’t know, humor, I guess. I’m not saying Malignant is funny but it does have some moments of real kookiness.

Madison (Annabelle Wallis) comes home from work suffering from some pregnancy achy-ness. She is also suffering from having a violent jerk as a husband — Derek (Jake Abel), who takes time out of his busy afternoon of lying around to first harangue Madison about working while pregnant and then slam her head against a wall. Madison uses his run to get her some ice for her bleeding head wound to lock him out of the bedroom. He eventually falls asleep on the downstairs sofa, only to wake to the sound of someone in the kitchen. When he goes to investigate, he first finds the blender on, then the refrigerator door pops open, etc., in the manner of Spooky Things Messing With You so familiar in these movies. This spooky thing, which appears to us as a kind of a shadow person, doesn’t waste time escalating the Messing With Derek and pretty quickly clobbers him (the visuals and foley work here — and in the rest of the movie — are extravagantly “ew”).

Madison wakes up, tentatively coming out of the room, sees Derek’s very lifeless body and is then attacked herself and left unconscious in the nursery. She comes to in the hospital and is devastated to learn that she has lost the baby and falls into a stupor, with younger sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson) having to do the talking for her to Detective Kekoa Shaw (George Young). Shaw isn’t sure what’s happening but his partner Detective Regina Moss (Michole Briana White) thinks that Madison probably has something to do with Derek’s death. Then other people start dying and Madison, recovered enough to go home but still quite shaken, goes to the detectives to report that she can see the murders — she’s doing her laundry in her house, for example, when she suddenly finds herself watching the crime as if she were there.

For a while I found myself wondering if this movie was just a study in spooky atmospherics. There’s a lot of “room bathed in red light” and “crime scene in the rain” and “barely lit hospital/police station” and a few stretches shot in the Seattle Underground (a real thing, according to Wikipedia, where streets and first-story storefronts from ye olden times, now below the ground level, can be visited as a tourist attraction). And all of this is scored to some pretty top-notch “you are watching a modern riff on classic horror” style music, all screaming strings and anxiety synth. It’s cool but, like, why, I thought. Why are we spending time in a bunch of very familiar “movie like this” setups with some very “sure, I believe these people as people” characters who are otherwise not terribly memorable, I thought.

Initially.

When you realize the “why” — well, the movie takes on a whole new vibe. I’m still not exactly clear on where we, as a culture, landed with the whole “what is camp” discussion. I feel like, OK, maybe Malignant isn’t camp, per se, but it’s not totally not camp. It’s a crazy little ride, this movie, one that had me checking my watch initially but ultimately left me more amused than not.

I think, if you at all like horror, if you at all enjoy a late night and a bowl of popcorn and a feeling that maybe there should be more lights on in the house, this movie is probably a fun Saturday night in. B-

Rated R for strong horror violence and gruesome images, and for language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by James Wan with a screenplay by Akela Cooper, Malignant is an hour and 51 minutes long and distributed by New Line Cinema. The movie is available on HBO Max through Oct. 10 and in theaters.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Drive, Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester
anselm.edu/dana-center-humanities

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• David Byrne’s American Utopia (NR) will screen at O’neil Cinemas in Epping on Wednesday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m.

• The Card Counter (R, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 17, through Sunday, Sept. 19, at 12:45 p.m., 3:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.

• The Alpinist (PG-13, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 17, through Sunday, Sept. 19, at 1:15 p.m., 4:15 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.

• Drifting (1923), starring Anna May Wong, Priscilla Dean and Wallace Beery, a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, will screen Sunday, Sept. 19, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. A $10 donation is suggested.

• Hedwig and the Angry Inch (R, 2001) at Rex Theatre on Tuesday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets $12.

• Serial Mom (R, 1994) at Rex Theatre on Wednesday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• National Theatre Live Follies,a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Oct. 3, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• National Theatre Live Cyrano de Bergerac, a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Oct. 17, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• Frankenweenie (PG, 2012) at the Rex Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 17, 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (PG, 1993) at the Rex Theatre on Monday, Oct. 18, 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• The Phantom of the Opera (1925), a silent film starring Lon Chaney, with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Oct. 21, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• Nosferatu (1922), a silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester, featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission costs $10.

• The Big Parade (1925), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Nov. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• National Theatre Live No Man’s Land a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Nov. 21, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• National Theatre Live The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• An evening with Chevy ChaseA screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989, PG-13) plus Q&A with audience on Saturday, Dec. 11, 7 p.m. at the Cap Center. Tickets start at $59.50.

• Elf screening at Christmas Break on a Budget on Saturday, Dec. 18, at noon at The Strand in Dover. The afternoon will include storytime, family activities and the movie. The cost is $20 for a family of four or $8 each.

Featured photo: Malignant. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 21/09/16

Family fun for the weekend

GraniteCon!

• As you may have read on page 24 of last week’s Hippo (find the e-edition at hippopress.com) or on page 9 of this week’s issue, this weekend is the Granite State Comicon 2021. The Con will run Saturday, Sept. 18, and Sunday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown (at 700 Elm St.). Kids under 8 get in free with adult admission (which costs $25 on Saturday, $20 on Sunday and $40 for a weekend pass). Organizers for Kids Con New England (which is returning to in-person cons with a Kids Con in Portland, Maine, in November and in May 2022 in Concord) will have a setup in the Fan Zone during the convention. See the full program for GraniteCon at granitecon.com.

Meeting of the makers

• See the hobbies and inventions of the makers at the NH Maker & Food Fest at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St. in Dover; childrens-museum.org, 742-2002) on Saturday, Sept. 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. People with a variety of experiments, creations and hobbies will show off their work at this event, which will also feature food trucks and food vendors. Admission is pay-what-you-can (suggested donation of $5), according to the website.

Town celebrations

• Derryfest will run Saturday, Sept. 18, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MacGregor Park on East Broadway. The day will feature kids activities, live animals, demonstrations and performances by local groups throughout the day, food and more. See derryfest.org.

• Head to Pelham’s Old Home Day for a parade, food trucks and chicken poop bingo on Saturday, Sept. 18, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The day kicks off with a pancake breakfast from 7 to 10 a.m., craft fair vendors open at 9 a.m., a cornhole tournament starts at noon and the parade steps off at 2:30 p.m., according to pelhamoldhomeday.org, which also explains chicken poop bingo — it features a chicken pooping every hour throughout the day, and if the poo lands on the square corresponding to the number you’ve picked, you win prize money. Kid-specific amusements include face painting, touch a truck, inflatable ax throwing and more, the website said.

• The annual Fall Equinox Festival hosted by TEAM Exeter will run 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 18, at Swasey Parkway. The day will feature food vendors and live music as well as kids activities and artist vendors, according to teamexeter.com, which suggests a $10 donation per person or $20 per family.

Movie time

• See Indiana Jones in his first (and best) adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark (PG, 1981), on Friday Sept. 17, in Wasserman Park (116 Naticook Road in Merrimack) as part of the town’s summer movies in the park. The screening starts at dusk and the films are free and open to residents and nonresidents, according to the town’s Parks and Recreation website.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (PG-13)

A complicated father-son relationship, a fantastical otherworldly realm and Awkwafina come together in the lively Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a martial arts-heavy adventure-filled entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Having people (rather than big robots or something) fighting each other brings an energy to the choreography of many of this movie’s fight scenes that makes them enjoyable to watch apart from just the “who beats who” element.

Shang-Chi, called Shaun when we first meet him (Simu Liu), lives in San Francisco, making a living valet parking cars with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) and dodging questions from friends about why they don’t buckle down and find jobs that reflect their talents. But then Shaun gets in a fight on a bus — not just any fight, but a prolonged martial arts fight against multiple skilled fighters, including a guy whose arm is a large knife and who IMDb tells me is called Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu). In the process, the men steal an amulet given to Shaun by his late mother (Fala Chen) and Katy learns that her longtime friend has some very supercharged fighting skills. Shaun tells her about his past, which includes the story of his father, Wenwu (Tony Leung), a basically immortal warrior who owes his long life and his extraordinary fighting powers to the 10 rings he wears on his arms. Shaun ran away from home (home being a sort of mountain fortress where Wenwu trains his fighting forces) and his father as a teenager and realizes that the bus fight is a sign his father is coming after him. He is also afraid that his father will send his men after his younger sister, Xialing (Meng’er Zhang). Though they haven’t spoken in years, Shaun is determined to protect Xialing and heads to Macau, where he thinks she lives, with Katy, determined to protect Shaun, in tow.

The movie eventually leads to an Asgard-like other realm — reached not by Bifrost but through a constantly moving maze in a bamboo-like forest — called Ta Lo, which is a green countryside with a bucolic-seeming village and animals like a white fox-ish creature with multiple tails and giant lions. Here, the group meets Nan (Michelle Yeoh), the siblings’ mother’s sister, who, like everybody in this movie, is also a bad-ass (but elegant) fighter.

Ta Lo is very pretty and, much like with the Thor movies and Asgard, the movie is maybe at its best when it’s set in these non-modern-day locations (I would include in that Wenwu’s compound, which has more of an out-of-time castle feel). Especially during the climactic battle (is it a spoiler to say an MCU movie has a climactic battle? I don’t feel like it is), it’s so much easier to forget about trying to make the physics of the battle make sense in our world and just sort of go with this alternate realm situation. These sections help to give the movie a more adventure-y, fantasy feel than some of the more grounded-in-our-world comic book movies.

The clunkier parts of the movie, for me at least, were when it tried to fit this movie into the wider MCU but then it’s been a while since we’ve started a new story with characters not previously teased in a familiar property before they get their own movie (like Tom Hollander’s Spider-Man or Black Panther, both appearing in Captain America: Civil War before their characters’ own movies). So, while it’s clunky, it’s not, to me, fatal or even damaging to Shang-Chi overall.

The performances here are solid. Awkwafina might have been brought in for comic relief but she also offers the viewer entry into this world and she brings a little meatiness to the parts of the story that are about Shaun (and Katy) trying to figure out what their place in the world is. Yeoh is great and brings those Anthony Hopkins-like Serious Actor chops to the movie. Simu Liu is a likeable leading man and, in the grand Marvel tradition of having antagonists who are more charismatic than the movie’s lead, Tony Leung turns in an even more compelling performance that gives Wenwu some layers and human motivation (you can go down a whole internet rabbit hole with that character, though I won’t get into it too much because here be spoilers).

Is it true that even a “yeah sure it’s fine” Marvel movie would feel like a good time at the movies given, you know, all the everything? Sure, yes, that’s fair. (It was delightful to see and hear the Marvel Studios title card in a theater.) But Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings truly is a good time at the theater, with characters that are enjoyable to be around, and, though I also enjoyed this summer’s Black Widow, Shang-Chi brings a nice burst of freshness in the MCU. B+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton with a screenplay by Dave Callaham & Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is two hours and 12 minutes long (with two post-credits scenes, which, like, might as well stay) and is distributed by Walt Disney Motion Pictures. It is currently only in theaters though it is reported (Wikipedia and elsewhere) that it will go to Disney+ after the 45-day theatrical window, meaning mid-October-ish.

Cinderella (PG)

The wish Camila Cabello’s heart makes is to be a great dress designer in Cinderella, a live-action jukebox musical version of the classic fairy tale.

I stress the live-action part because in some ways this movie feels like a cartoon — a solid, above average cartoon whose central mission is being bright and fun. The movie also has those classic “TV special” vibes, with a certain family-musical stageyness and some fun stunt casting. I think the “PG” rating is also a significant aspect of this movie. It’s clearly aimed at kids, maybe in the 7 or 8 to teen age range, and that was the level on which I found myself judging the movie as I watched.

Ella (Cabello) ticks the standard Cinderella boxes: lives in the basement of her family home in a once-upon-a-time-ish land, is friends with mice (voiced by James Corden, Romesh Ranganathan and James Acaster) and is forced to serve her stepmother Vivian (Idina Menzel) and stepsisters, Malvolia (Maddie Baillio, who gives the character a fun evil-but-weird energy) and Narissa (Charlotte Spencer), whom the narrator describes as “cray.” That narrator, and in the pivotal scene the Fabulous Godmother, is Billy Porter, who is great, and beautifully costumed as a haute couture take on a monarch-y butterfly.

Instead of dreaming of True Love, Ella dreams of overcoming the prejudice against female business owners and starting her own dress line. Entertainingly, her song of longing is sung to her future self, with a storefront and a customer base.

Meanwhile, King Rowan (Pierce Brosnan) is trying to convince Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine) to marry, perhaps Princess Laura (Mary Higgins) from the neighboring kingdom, who will help the united royal families rule all the lands from here to the sea monster, as she points out on a map. But Robert is having none of this; he wants to be in True Love when he marries. Queen Beatrice (Minnie Driver), bored with her life of standing next to the king and waving, isn’t in any hurry to push her son into a loveless marriage and meanwhile Robert’s sister Princess Gwen (Tallulah Greive) is just trying to get someone to listen to her ideas about wind energy, anti-poverty programs and the catapult-industrial complex. When Robert sees plucky Ella at a royal ceremony — she climbs a statue of the king to get a better look at the goings on and then suggests King Rowan consider some bleachers when he yells at her for being on his statue — he is smitten and slums it to mix amongst the common folk and find the girl who won his heart with sass-talk.

When peasantly attired Robert finds her, he tries to convince Ella to go to the upcoming ball for his princely self, meant to give him a chance to meet Miss Right. Ella is uninterested until he says that he knows some fancy people and can help her find potential clients for her dressmaking enterprise. Thus does she start designing the dress, which is ruined by the disapproving stepmother and so on, hitting the standard Cinderella beats with a plucky modern twist.

Watching modern, say the last 25 years or so, filmmakers deal with Cinderella as a character is always entertaining. The 1950 Disney character is kinda drippy by modern standards (at least, as I remember her; though I liked the movie in my youth it isn’t one I’m eager to revisit with my kids), and in their more recent uses of her, such as in the live-action 2015 Cinderella, they’ve seemed to look for ways to highlight her non-waiting-for-a-prince character traits. In that movie, they made her intelligently kind. In 1998’s Ever After: A Cinderella Story (which is rated PG-13), Drew Barrymore’s take on the character is also a more can-do girl, who can wield a sword and does her best to look after her friends. (Both of those movies, along with the TV movie Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella from 1997 with Brandy as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother, are on Disney+, should you want to make it a multi-feature Cinderella movie night.)

Here, Cinderella (and many of the movie’s supporting female characters) has ambitions in a world that doesn’t usually allow women to have non-marriage-related ambitions, and the movie gives its prince longings that are more emotion-driven. Which, yay! — good for letting everybody live their truth, even if it is unsubtly conveyed. I feel like if you view this as a bit of family entertainment geared to kids, it makes sense and feels appropriate for the movie’s messaging to be fairly blunt. As a parent, I’ll take blunt messaging that leans in the direction of kindness, being who you are and standing up for yourself over a more nuanced telling where a girl appears to be finding her happiness because she found her prince.

The show itself is also rather bluntly staged, with its townsfolk singing “Rhythm Nation” in the square and the stepmother explaining the facts of life with “Material Girl.” It’s loud and colorful and fun — almost cartoony but in a way that works for gather-round-the-TV family entertainment.

The movie’s performances are all somewhere on the scale of completely acceptable to “this actor is having a good time.” Galitzine is perfectly suitable and the movie has fun with Brosnan but it is, of course, the women’s show: Cabello is charming and can sell the comedy as well as the singing. Menzel is exactly what you’d expect from “Idina Menzel as the stepmother” and the movie has to work at times to make her not the star of this show. Minnie Driver also seems to be having a fun time, and throughout there are some solid supporting characters and cast who all have the right “welcome to our theatrical production; hey ma, look at me!” vibe. B

Rated PG for suggestive material and language. Written and directed by Kay Cannon, Cinderella is an hour and 53 all-singing, all-dancing minutes long and distributed by Columbia Pictures, who sold this to Amazon and thus it is on Amazon Prime.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Drive, Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester
anselm.edu/dana-center-humanities

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• The Shakedown (1929), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Sept. 9, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• Time Is Up (NR, 2021) starring Bella Thorne and Benjamin Mascolo, will screen Thursday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. at Cinemark in Salem and Regal Fox Run in Newington.

• The Card Counter (R, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord on Friday, Sept. 10, through Sunday, Sept. 12, at 12:45 p.m., 3:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.

• The Alpinist (PG-13, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord on Friday, Sept. 10, through Sunday, Sept. 12, at 1:15 p.m., 4:15 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.

• David Byrne’s American Utopia (NR) will screen at O’neil Cinemas in Epping on Wednesday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m.

• Hedwig and the Angry Inch (R, 2001) at Rex Theatre on Tuesday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• National Theatre Live Follies,a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Oct. 3, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• National Theatre Live Cyrano de Bergerac, a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Oct. 17, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• Frankenweenie (PG, 2012) at the Rex Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 17, 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (PG, 1993) at the Rex Theatre on Monday, Oct. 18, 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• The Phantom of the Opera (1925) a silent film starring Lon Chaney with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis on Thursday, Oct. 21, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• Nosferatu (1922), a silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester, featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission costs $10.

• The Big Parade (1925), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Nov. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• National Theatre Live No Man’s Land a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Nov. 21, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• National Theatre Live The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

Featured photo: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 21/09/09

Family fun for the weekend

Movie night

Nashua’s SummerFun program wraps up for the year with an outdoor screening of this year’s excellent animated featureRaya and the Last Dragon (PG, 2021), a Disney movie featuring the voices of Awkwafina (as a dragon), Kelly Marie Tran (Raya), Sandra Oh, Gemma Chan and Daniel Dae Kim. The movie screens on Friday, Sept. 10, at dusk at the Greeley Park Bandshell (100 Concord St.).

Outside the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (2 Institute Dr. in Concord; starhop.com, 271-7827) on Friday, Sept. 10, you can sit under the stars and watch a robot come from the stars in WALL-E(G, 2008), that Pixar classic featuring the voices of Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Garlin and an interstellar opening segment scored to (as Wikipedia reminded me) “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” from Hello, Dolly!. The movie starts at 7 p.m.

Catch Honey I Shrunk the Kids (PG, 1989) on Tuesday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St. in Manchester; palacetheatre.org) as part of the ongoing Movies For a Cause. Tickets cost $12. This week’s movies (1989’s PG movie Field of Dreams screens Wednesday, Sept. 15) benefit CASA.

Playtime can recommence

The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St. in Dover; childrens-museum.org, 742-2002) reopens Tuesday, Sept. 14, after its regular end-of-summer refresh. The museum will also feature its annual Toddlerfest, with drop-in activities for younger visitors (now that older kids are back in school) such as wacky art projects, bubble dance parties, science experiments and bug investigation in the museum’s Learning Garden, according to a press release.

And make plans now for the NH Maker Fest, scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., which will be held inside and outside the museum with no tickets required, the press release said. The museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays with timed tickets for 9 a.m. to noon or 1 to 4 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m. to noon. Buy tickets in advance online; masks are required for all visitors over 24 months. Admission costs $11 for everyone over a year of age ($9 for seniors).

Fireworks & a parade

Hollis will hold its Old Home Days on Friday, Sept. 10, and Saturday, Sept. 11. On Friday, events run from 5 to 10 p.m. and include a midway and rides, exhibitors and food vendors and DJ Carryl Roy, at Nichols Track and Field. On Saturday, Sept. 11, the midway and rides are open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The Old Home Day parade starts at 10:30 a.m. and runs from the middle school to Nichols Field. A firemen’s muster will be held from 1 to 2 p.m., also at Nichols. A pet pageant takes place at 3 p.m., live music is scheduled throughout the afternoon and into the evening and fireworks are scheduled for 8 p.m., all according to hollisoldhomedays.org.

CODA

CODA (PG-13)

High school senior Ruby discovers her talent for singing but she is conflicted about leaving her family to go to music school in CODA, a sweet and extremely charming coming of age story.

Unlike her mom Jackie (Marlee Matlin), dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant), Ruby (Emilia Jones) is hearing (the “child of deaf adults” of the movie’s title). Ruby works with her dad and brother on their fishing boat, often serving as the one to negotiate the price for the day’s catch, before heading to school.

On a whim — and as an excuse to hang out around Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a fellow senior she’s crushing on — Ruby joins the school’s choir. Though able to belt out Motown classics on the fishing boat, Ruby is shy singing in front of other students, particularly since she was bullied for the way she talked as a child and is still picked on for her family generally. But choir teacher Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) pulls her past this and helps her let loose her love of singing and her natural talent. He also picks Ruby and Miles to sing a duet at an upcoming recital — leading her to break out of her shell with him as well.

As she finds her footing in choir, the family’s fishing business grows more precarious. Their earnings for each catch are decreasing and government oversight is increasing. Leo wants to start a co-op with the other fishermen that will get them better prices but Frank is uncertain about getting involved with the hearing fishermen. Leo also struggles with the family’s reliance on Ruby to interpret, as does Ruby. She wants to pursue singing and the possibility of getting in to Berklee School of Music, which Bernardo says he will help her apply for. But she also feels obligated to help her parents.

Delightfully, the movie builds a relationship between Ruby and her family that features her fierce love of them as well as her thorough (and realistic) teenage “mom!” annoyance — when they play music too loud as they pick her up from school (her dad loves the loud bass of rap), when they have a wonderfully (purposefully) awkward conversation with Miles, when her mother gets on her about how she’s dressed. It’s so perfectly teenage-parent, so much meaning-well and love and delighting at her embarrassment and “gah, back off” all rolled up into the moment. Likewise, Ruby’s loving sibling relationship with Leo is highlighted by a series of excellent insults (not one of which I can repeat in print). Because of the movie’s well-drawn relationships and fully realized characters, CODA feels as much like a family coming of age as much as it is the story of Ruby’s coming of age. Not only is Ruby making decisions about her life and what she wants to do; each member of the family is taking steps in new directions in a way that also feels very real.

There are excellent performances all the way around in this movie — Jones but also Kostur, Durant and Matlin. And it was really a joy to watch Derbez in this kind of role. I mostly know him from big, broad comedies but here he hits the right note as a caring and talented teacher.

CODA is a joy throughout. A

Rated PG-13 for strong sexual content and language and drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Sian Heder (and based on a French film from 2014 called La Famille Bélier), CODA is an hour and 51 minutes long and is distributed by Apple on Apple TV+. CODA is screening in theaters (in Massachusetts as of Aug. 31) and on Apple TV+.

Candyman (R)

An artist living in a recently gentrified Chicago neighborhood finds himself and his work tied up in local lore in Candyman, a sequel to the 1992 horror movie.

Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), whose name comes with backstory for people who have seen the original movie (I haven’t), has recently moved with his girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), to an airy apartment in the gentrifying neighborhood of Cabrini-Green, the onetime home of housing projects (that were the setting of the first movie). He is blocked, artistically, presenting pieces to an art gallery operator that are just riffs on earlier work. After Brianna’s brother, Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), tells a story about a series of murders involving a woman named Helen Lyle, Anthony decides to dig into the history of the area, hoping he’ll find some inspiration.

He meets William (Colman Domingo), a longtime resident, who tells Anthony about the legend of Candyman, a presence who appears after saying his name in a mirror five times and who then kills those who summoned him. But the legend isn’t just a local boogeyman tale; the more Anthony digs in to the story the more he learns about the various men who are considered to be the figure’s origin, all the way back to Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd) in the 19th century — all killed by police or lynch mobs. This investigation of Candyman takes Anthony’s work in strange directions and seems to be messing with his head. He is also having an extremely bad reaction to a bee sting. Anthony’s deteriorating mental and physical states have Brianna concerned. And then acquaintances of the couple start dying.

I think I generally like where this movie starts out, the various issues it sets up: Anthony’s artistic block, Brianna’s career ambitions, Brianna’s current status as the breadwinner of the couple and how that clearly bugs Anthony, the gentrification of the neighborhood they now live in. And I like where the movie seems to be wanting to go with its overall message. But in the middle, the movie seems to wander a bit and lose the threads at times.

The movie is tightly focused on Anthony at first but somewhere around the two-thirds point it just sort of drops him as a person we’re in the mystery with, which makes his story feel unfinished. Not that a movie like this needs to make perfect sense but there are elements that felt like they needed more explanation — or maybe just a more organic explanation. Frequently it feels like plot points connect in that “puzzle pieces smashed together” sense, resulting in information having to be told to us rather than more naturally revealing itself.

I’m a sucker for this particular kind of horror, though, one that puts dread and spookiness ahead of gore (though this movie has gore). And this movie has a great visual style, particularly in the way it uses shadow puppets to illustrate exposition — they are both eerie and very pretty. Candyman may not perfectly click together for me with its plot but it delivers on atmospherics. B-

Rated R for bloody horror violence, and language including some sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Nia DaCosta with a screenplay by Jordan Peele & Win Rosenfeld and Nia DaCosta, Candyman (that’s six; do computer screens count as mirrors?) is an hour and 31 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Pictures in theaters.

FILM

Venues

Cinemark Rockingham Park
15 Mall Road, Salem
cinemark.com/theatres/nh-salem

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Shows

• Stripes (R, 1981) 40th anniversary screening at Cinemark in Salem and Regal Fox Run in Newington on Thursday, Sept. 2, at 7 p.m.

• The Green Knight (R, 2021) screening at the Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 3, through Monday, Sept. 6, at 3:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

• Stillwater (R, 2021) screening at the Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 3, through Monday, Sept. 6, 12:30, 3:45 and 7 p.m.

• Together (R, 2021) screening at the Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 3, through Monday, Sept. 6, at 1 p.m.

• Backdraft (R, 1991) 30th anniversary screening on Sunday, Sept. 5, at Cinemark in Salem at 3 p.m. and Regal Fox Run in Newington at 3 and 7 p.m., and on Wednesday, Sept. 8, at both locations at 7 p.m.

• The Alpinist (PG-13, 2020) screens on Tuesday, Sept. 7, at 7 p.m. at AMC Londonderry and Cinemark in Salem.

Featured photo: CODA. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 21/09/02

Family fun for the weekend

Family fun ideas

Looking for some entertainment ideas for the whole gang this weekend? Check out some of our recent stories (see e-editions of issues at hippopress.com.). In our July 8 issue we looked at mini golf, with a rundown of some of the area courses. A note for people with littler kids: Mel’s Funway Park in Litchfield (melsfunwaypark.com.) has added a Mini Mel’s Kiddie Land set of attractions geared toward kids ages 2 to 9. For the more adventurous, we looked at water fun (paddleboarding, canoeing, kayaking and cruising on New Hampshire waterways) in the Aug. 5 issue and adventures aloft (ziplining, hot air ballooning and parasailing) in the July 15 issue.

Space!

AerospaceFest returns to McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (2 Institute Drive, Concord; starhop.com, 271-7827) on Saturday, Sept. 4, from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free for the outdoor event. The NH Astronomical Society will have a telescope set up, Millstone Wildlife Center will bring ambassador animals, robotics teams will do robot demos and local STEM organizations will attend, the website said. No pre-registration is required.

Fair weekend

If you’ve been missing the summer/fall fair experience, you’re in luck. The Hopkinton State Fair kicks off Thursday, Sept. 2, and runs through Monday, Sept. 6. (Free parking at 905 Park Ave., Contoocook.) The fair is open Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Friday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Monday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday is “Townie Night,” when Hopkinton residents get in for free between 5 and 8 p.m. Admission for non-residents is $8 for ages 3 and up. One-day passes Friday through Monday cost $14 for ages 13 to 59, $12 for ages 60+ and $8 for ages 3 to 12, according to the fair website, hsfair.org, where you can also buy a pass for all five days for ages 3 to 60+ for $39 per person. You can also find tickets for a one-day megapass (allows unlimited admission to mechanical rides) and grandstand shows including demolition derby, monster trucks and Northeast Six Shooters’ horseback shooting demonstration show. Military (active or retired) with a valid photo ID are admitted free.

Find rides and games on the midway, open 5 p.m. to close on Thursday, noon to close on Friday and 10 a.m. to close Saturday through Monday. Catch demonstrations from the NH Canine Troopers Association (4 and 6 p.m., Friday), Axe Women Loggers of Maine (noon and 3 and 5 p.m.,daily), Dock Dogs (daily), Ben Risney Wood Sculpture (10 a.m., and 1 and 4 p.m., daily) and John Deere Skid Steer Rodeo (Monday. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.). There’s also a lineup of live music and juggling. At the Ag Stage, catch Dan Morgan (11 a.m. to 3 p.m., daily) and Nicole Knox Murphy (3 to 7 p.m.). Get kids interested in 4-H (or maybe just some light gardening and chicken tending) with the agriculture displays and competitions (livestock shows, horse show, pulling competitions and the home arts hall).

The fair also has educational displays, such as the maple sugar house, the NH Fish and Game building and a Charmingfare Farm petting zoo (Friday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Monday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) with daily animal magic shows (noon, and 2 and 5 p.m.), the website said.

And, of course, the fair will help you get your fried dough fix. Other food options include sausages with peppers and onions, apple crisp with ice cream, turkey legs, bison burgers and giant doughnuts, according to the fair website.

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