No matter its other pluses and minuses, and they're mostly minuses, director Jaume Collet-Sera's Black Adam is certainly one of the oddest comic-book blockbusters I've yet seen, in that it somehow feels like both a superhero/villain origin story, which it is, and the final installment in a three-part series, which it isn't. Then again, maybe I was just hoping it was a trilogy-ender, because after only two hours in the film's company, I think I've already had enough.

Directed and co-written, as the series' previous two installments were, by David Gordon Green, Halloween Ends is something I never expected this slasher flick to be: not bad. Also something else I didn't predict: a helluva lot of fun.

If the far reaches of your clothes closets happen to house bell bottoms, peasant blouses, beaded chokers, and feathered necklaces, you may think there's nowhere you can safely go in an outfit composed of such apparel – at least not without terrifying people. Consider, then, wearing them to Davenport's Outing Club on October 20 or 21, where your blend of the 1970s and the scary will be ideal for Ballet Quad Cities' second-annual fundraising production Halloween Disco at the Club.

It isn't a great film; during its protracted midsection, it's closer to a lousy one. Yet there's more going on in Amsterdam than there has been in about 95 percent of the year's other releases, and the contributions of its impressively overstuffed cast make David O. Russell's latest worth a look. Maybe more than one if you take a nap in the middle.

Nicholas Stoller's and Billy Eichner's achievement gave me everything I want and so rarely get from Hollywood rom-coms: interest, involvement, investment, sexual heat, huge laughs, legitimately threatening obstacles.

Presented on October 7 in collaboration with the area collective “My Arts Voice,” Voices Behind the Art will fuse visual and musical art in a showcase of more than a half-dozen Midwestern talents. The event stands as the latest cultural offering by Common Chord, the Davenport venue previously known as River Music Experience. And as Executive Director Tyson Danner explains, the institution's new moniker isn't the signal for a new direction for the former RME: “The name change has been the end of the process, really."

With their latest production staged in conjunction with the Quad Cities' area-wide Holocaust-remembrance project “Out of Darkness” (OutOfDarknessQC.com.), the professional dancers of Ballet Quad Cities present a remembrance of their own in Our Will to Live, an original program of dance vignettes boasting music by composers affected by the Holocaust. Taking place at Davenport's Adler Theatre on October 8, the repertoire for this two-act ballet runs the emotional gamut from exhilarating to painful – though the company's artistic director and co-choreographer Courtney Lyon realizes that potential patrons might incorrectly expect a night solely devoted to the latter.

Some movies are love-them-or-hate-them. The polished, mediocre Don't Worry Darling doesn't do much to inspire either reaction.

Before proceeding, allow me to share my amazement in a weekend happenstance I hadn't previously experienced over nearly three decades of reviewing: I saw five new movies and enjoyed them all – a lot. Even the horror prequel whose predecessor debuted fewer than six months ago. Even the reboot of a planned Chevy Chase franchise that died in 1989.

Beloved for offering an expansive site for respite and reflection, Wheatland, Iowa's Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat is revered for its beautiful grounds that include gardens, fields, timber, trails, a labyrinth, a nature pond, and a soothing Retreat Center. It's a lovely oasis of quiet where a monthly get-together is actually called "Come to the Quiet." Yet on September 24, visitors will actually be treated to five hours' worth of sounds. Beguiling, diverse, supremely musical sounds.

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