Movies This Week: Super Summer Midnight

This week, Austin gets a kids' movie, a Spielbergian movie about kids, and a nice Woody Allen movie for the grownups. Which do you think you'll see? Or are you planning to catch up on movies that opened in the past few weeks?

Maybe you'd prefer to see Austin-shot film The Happy Poet (Jenn's review), which Cinema East is showing this Sunday night on the French Legation Museum lawn. The Paramount has canceled its Charlie Chaplin movies tonight due to the Republic of Texas rally (boo, hiss) but you can still watch Modern Times and a collection of Chaplin shorts on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Plus, on Tuesday and Wednesday they are showing one of my favorite Westerns, Destry Rides Again, in an inspired double with Johnny Guitar.

Movies We've Seen:

Midnight in Paris -- Debbie was happily surprised by the latest Woody Allen movie, as you can see in her review, and she's not the only one enamored of this film where a contemporary writer finds himself in the world of 1920s Paris. You guys are trying to get me to watch another Woody Allen film again and you know what happened last time you convinced me. I admit I'm tempted. (wide)

Super 8 (pictured above) -- Look for my review of this movie tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll note that I found the J.J. Abrams film to be a pleasant reworking of the themes/characters seen in many Spielberg movies of the 1980s (which I grew up with). For me, this is a good summer theatergoing movie, slightly smarter than the other options currently out there. (wide)

Other Movies Opening in Austin:

Badrinath -- Unfortunately, I can't find any info on this Bollywood film. (Tinseltown South)

The Double Hour -- Italian thriller-romance. (Arbor)

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer -- This adaptation of a children's book is gathering intriguing comments from critics in other cities -- it didn't screen for us here. Local film critic William Goss braved it at midnight and posted to Twitter that it was "the kiddie equivalent of Greenberg -- an unflinching character study of a vile human being." And MSN critic James Rocchi said for adults, "the constant stimulus will be entirely overwhelming, as if you were trying to drink from a fire hose pumping out high-fructose corn syrup with the force of a typhoon,"  in his review. (wide)