Minions & Monsters
Aledo Opera House, Aledo IL
Blue Grass Drive-in, Blue Grass IA
Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, Davenport IA
FilmScene, Iowa City IA
The Last Picture House, Davenport IA
Marcus Sycamore Cinema, Iowa City IA
Putnam Museum & Science Center, Davenport IA
VIP Cinemas, Moline IL
Voy 61 Drive In Theatre, Delmar IA
(Hyperlinked titles take you to Reader reviews; IMDb hyperlinks take you to the films’ Internet Movie Database pages or other sites with film information.)
***
Ace in the Hole: Presented with the Filmographer Podcast (not rated; The Last Picture House: Wednesday, July 8, 7 p.m.) - IMDb listing.
Alpha (not rated; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX) - IMDb listing.
Arctic: Our Frozen Planet (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Backrooms:Everything Must Go Edition w/ Bonus Footage (R; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, FilmScene at the Chauncey, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - Twenty-year-old director Kane Parson's visual sense is so stunning, and his compositions so foreboding, that you could easily mistake images here for those of much-older masters, past and present. IMDb listing.
BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Calamity (not rated; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX) - IMDb listing.
The Breadwinner (PG; VIP Cinemas) - It's like a pile-of-poo emoji with a smiley face attached -- not remotely human, but dammit, you get it, and it occasionally makes you giggle. IMDb listing.
Bugs! (not rated;; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - The 3D effects make the film's creepy-crawly world pop in enjoyable fashion, and the bugs' life-and-death struggle makes for endlessly intriguing viewing IMDb listing.
Citizen Kane: 85th Anniversary (not rated; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, Marcus Sycamore Cinema: Sunday, July 5, and Wednesday, July 8; Aledo Opera House: Sunday, July 5, 3 p.m.) - Widely regarded as the finest movie ever made. Becase it is. IMDb listing.
Contact in 35mm (PG; The Last Picture House: Thursday, July 9, 6:45 p.m.) - IMDb listing.
Disclosure Day (PG-13; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, Voy 61 Drive In Theatre, Blue Grass Drive-in, FilmScene on the Ped Mall, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - I found myself raising a cocked eyebrow at Steven Spielberg's sci-fi thriller in the first five minutes, and the last five minutes, and during many of the 130 minutes in between. IMDb listing.
Dream Big: Engineering Our World (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Elephants: Giants of the Desert (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Extreme Weather (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Fail Safe (not rated; FilmScene at the Chauncey: Monday, July 6, 7 p.m.) - IMDb listing.
Flight of the Butterflies (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - A bit pokey, but the slow, unspeakably beautiful explosion that is the butterflies' mass exodus is enough to make you believe in God - or, at the very least, in the gods of nature docs. IMDb listing.
Gangland (not rated; VIP Cinemas) - IMDb listing.
Hidden Universe (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Into America's Wild (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Jackass: Best & Last (R; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, FilmScene at the Chauncey, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - An ecstatic, collective middle finger to aging and chronic pain and death - not a world I want to live in, but one I'm always delighted to visit. IMDb listing.
Jaws (PG; VIP Cinemas: Sunday, July 5, 1 & 7 p.m., and Wednesday, July 8, 1 & 6:30 p.m.; The Last Picture House Rooftop: Friday, July 3, and Saturday, July 4, 8:45 p.m.) - With the possible exception of the title below, Steven Spielberg never more-deftly interwove the hilarious with the horrifying the way he did here, and with so little fuss, to boot. IMDb listing.
Jerusalem (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - This visually spectacular, 45-minute edu-tainment on Israel's "cradle of civilization" is really quite a glorious piece of work. IMDb listing.
Kung Fu Panda 4 (PG; VIP Cinemas: Tuesday, July 7, through Thursday, July 9) - Hardly a debacle, but definitely a series low point, and all but indistinguishable from a 90-minute yawn. IMDb listing.
Lucky Strike (R; Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - IMDb listing.
Masters of the Universe (PG-13; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - This sword/slorcery/sci-fi is quick-witted, fast-paced, blessedly inconsequential, and awfully damned funny – so funny, in truth, that the eventual, traditionally dreaded sentimentality and schmaltz proves legitimately affecting. IMDb listing.
Michael (PG-13; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX) - Jaafar Jackson and the concert scenes are, for the most part, genuinely thrilling, but when this Jackson bio-book moves off the stage, it's oftentimes painfully terrible. IMDb listing.
A Minecraft Movie (PG; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX: Monday, July 6, through Thursday, July 9) - Even Jack Black's asides are huge, and when you add Black going full Tenacious D on a number of tunes, it's hard to imagine a more heedless, wildly overscaled performance. Given the context, it's absolute bliss. IMDb listing.
Minions & Monsters (PG; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, The Last Picture House, Voy 61 Drive In Theatre, Blue Grass Drive-in, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - IMDb listing.
Mysteries of the Unseen World (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - One of the fastest-moving, most visually resplendent edu-tainments the Putnam has ever housed. IMDb listing.
Naked Cannibal Campers (not rated; FilmScene at the Chauncey: Wednesday, July 8, 10 p.m.) - IMDb listing.
National Parks Adventure (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - This expectedly gorgeous endeavor is also unexpectedly, even thrillingly, varied in presentation: sensationally informative, joyfully inspiring, and even laugh-out-loud funny. IMDb listing.
Notting Hill (PG-13; The Last Picture House Rooftop: Thursday, July 9, 8:45 p.m.) - IMDb listing.
Obsession (R; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, Blue Grass Dtive-in, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - This is Curry Barker's chance to give Gen Z a Fatal Attraction of its very own, and if his movie doesn't wholly succeed … . Well, Adrian Lyne's 1987 smash had major problems, too. IMDb listing.
Oceans (G; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Paddington (PG; Marcus Sycamore Cinema: Sunday, July 5, through Thursday, July 9) - Hilarious and clever and touching, and easily the finest outing of its type since 2006's Charlotte's Web. IMDb listing.
Rao Bahadur (not rated; Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - IMDb listing.
Scary Movie (R; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas) - This comic spoof is frequently thisclose to being timely without ever really getting there. IMDb listing.
Star Spangled to Death (not rated; FilmScene on the Ped Mall: Saturday, July 4, 12:30 p.m.) - IMDb listing.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu (PG-13; VIP Cinemas, Blue Grass Drive-in) - At one point, employing the powers of the Force, Grogu levitates a Hutt the size of a Kia Sorento. It's neither his first nor last act of heavy lifting here. IMDb listing.
Supergirl (PG-13; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, Blue Grass Drive-in, FilmScene at the Chauncey, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - Given how bored I've been at so many cinematic superhero origin stories over the decades, I feel silly for wishing that Craig Gillespie's adventure had merely been a superhero origin story. IMDb listing.
Superpower Dogs (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - Daniel Ferguson provides enough globe-trotting action for a James Bond flick, treating us to first-rate training footage and re-created missions in locales ranging from the Canadian Rockies to the Italian coast to a debris-strewn site near New York's Ground Zero. IMDb listing.
T. Rex (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Tootsie (PG; FilmScene on the Ped Mall Rooftop: Sunday, July 5, 8:45 p.m.) - To this day, I have never heard or indulged in louder, longer laughs at a movie than I did at my 1982 screening of Sydney Pollack's comedy classic. IMDb listing.
Top Gun (PG; Blue Grass Drive-in) - This squarem silly Tom Cruise smash still features plenty of guilty pleasures, plus a few legitimate pleasures. IMDb listing.
Top Gun: Maverick (PG-13; Blue Grass Drive-in) - Had the film and its star actually embraced Tom Cruise's human fallibility, this corny, retrograde, occasionally quite-entertaining outing might've really been something. IMDb listing.
Toy Story 5 (PG; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, The Last Picture House, Blue Grass Drive-in, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - To not have fun at this movie, I think you'd have to actively try to have a bad time – which isn't to say that we didn't deserve a better one. IMDb listing.
Wild Africa (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Wild Rescue (not rated; Putnam Museum & Science Center) - IMDb listing.
Young Washington (PG-13; Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, VIP Cinemas, Aledo Opera House, Marcus Sycamore Cinema) - IMDb listing.
