Self Reliance
March 11 – 6:30 pm at Paramount Theatre | March 13 – 2 pm at Alamo Lamar B | March 17 – 9:15 pm at ZACH Theatre
Actor Jake Johnson, known around these parts from his work in movies like Jurassic World and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (in which he voiced Peter Parker), makes his feature directing and screenwriting debut with this black comedy about a man who participates for one million dollars in a game in which hunters try to kill him. Now he just has to convince his family and friends the game is real—a tough sell since the assassins only attack when he’s alone. The cast includes Johnson himself, as well as Wayne Brady, Anna Kendrick, Andy Samberg, Natalie Morales, and the great Christopher Lloyd.
Tetris
March 15 – 6 pm at Paramount Theatre | March 16 – 5:15 pm at Alamo Lamar E
We live in a possible golden age for video game-based movie and TV properties. The Witcher, The Last of Us, Detective Pikachu, Mortal Kombat, and Uncharted have all done well on either the small or big screen, while the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Movie, Ghosts of Tsushima, Gran Turismo, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and more indicate that the genre has finally caught on. And then there’s Tetris, a movie based around the puzzle game in which one moves descending blocks into place until one cannot find spaces for them anymore. Thankfully, the movie isn’t two hours of this, although some fans might prefer that.
Instead the film, directed by Jon S. Baird (Filth, Stan and Ollie), follows the story of Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton), a video game salesman who discovered the existence of Tetris in 1988, four years after it was created by a Russian software engineer named Alexey Pajitnov. As Rogers attempts to snag the rights to the game on behalf of gaming giant Nintendo, he comes up against a maze of legal and contractual obstacles involving other companies and Cold War politics, even reaching as far up as Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev.
We’re not sure whether Baird can make all this shady corporate wrangling more exciting than the game itself, but since it’s billed as a “thriller,” perhaps the real story will be enhanced a bit. Plus, Egerton (Rocketman, The Kingsman films, Black Bird) is an engaging presence, and the film also features the always-watchable Toby Jones. At the very least, a movie about the creation of one of the most popular video games of the last 40 years is an intriguing enough idea, although whether Baird can make that cinematic enough remains a question. Apple TV+ has already picked up the film, although it has yet to announce a release date.
