Cinema Fairfield has packed the next week with exciting new movie releases, all shown at the Sondheim Theater in Fairfield. Tickets are just $7, with popcorn and snacks available before each show.
Tonight, see the road-trip dramedy A Real Pain about two mismatched cousins (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) finding their Jewish roots in Poland. The film seamlessly moves from mirth to melancholy and back again. The Houston Chronicle called it “One of the year’s best films.” (7 p.m., 1 hour & 30 minutes).
Next up is Moana 2, January 17–20, which reunites Moana and Maui for an expansive new voyage alongside a crew of unlikely seafarers. Critics are calling it one of the best sequels in the Disney franchise. (7 p.m. nightly, with 4 p.m. matinees on Saturday & Sunday; 1 hour & 40 minutes).
Director Werner Herzog’s 2022 documentary Theater of Thought screens on Thursday, January 21. Herzog teams with scientist Rafael Yuste to interview an eclectic array of brain specialists undertaking research that has the potential to make the world both better and worse. He probes into technology, human rights law, philosophy, and more. For a filmmaker who’s traveled to the furthest corners of the earth, this journey inside our skulls makes for a mind-bending trip. (7 p.m., 1 hour & 47 minutes).
The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown will screen for six nights, January 23-28. Against the backdrop of the vibrant New York music scene in 1961, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. He forges intimate relationships with music icons of Greenwich Village on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking and controversial performance that reverberates worldwide.
Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, the electric true story behind the rise of one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history. Writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, “[A Complete Unknown] doesn’t try to make Bob palatable, nice or, finally, comprehensible in the usual dreary biopic fashion. For the most part, his genius remains unknowable as does his back story, which is hinted at only in a nod to the surname Zimmerman. . . .” (7 p.m. nightly, with 3:30 p.m. matinee on Sunday, 2 hours & 20 minutes).