August 29 - September 4, 2025

Hello, friends! 

One of the truly wonderful things we've been seeing since the opening of the Grand is our vastly increased capacity to show a wide variety of films, with something for every audience and for every individual's cinematic tastes. This week offers a beautiful example of just that diversity: 

--we've got a rip-roaring new film from a modern-day auteur (Darren Aronofsky's Caught Stealing); 

--a playful adaptation of a beloved 1980's film starring two of our best British actors (The Roses with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch); 

--a warm-hearted and very funny PG-rated family film with a brilliant cast (Freakier Friday starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan); 

--a deliciously unsettling arthouse film (The Sparrow in the Chimney from Swiss director Roman Zurcher); 

--a 50th anniversary re-release of one of the best films ever made (Steven Spielberg's Jaws); 

--one of the most inventive horror films of the decade (Weapons);

--a jaw-dropping animated film that's been wowing worldwide audiences (Ne Zha 2); 

--an intensely politically relevant but hopeful documentary (The Last Class); 

--a G-rated celebration of our hilarious whiskered friends (CatVideoFest); 

--a unique and gently comic but surreal animated film (Boys Go to Jupiter); 

plus a whole slew of individual special events. 

It's just such a joy to be celebrating cinema of all kinds!  Check our calendar page (here) for what's playing every day at both the Grand and on Bay St, but here's an additional rundown of our newest films and our special events

Also new to our screens, playing at the Grand, is Freakier Friday, a sequel to 2003's Freaky Friday ( a remake of 1975's Freaky Friday, which was, in turn, based on the 1972 novel). 

Honestly, I loved this movie. It's not an arthouse movie; produced by Disney, it's definitely not an indie; it'll never be on any prestigious awards lists; but it's a film that knows exactly what it is, and everyone involved understood the assignment. Jamie Lee Curtis is a delight (her physical comedy is simply unparalleled), as is Lindsay Lohan (who is a much better actress than many give her credit for), and newcomers to the Freaky Friday body-swapping universe -- Julia Butters (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Sophia Hammons -- are also terrific. One of my SNL faves, Vanessa Bayer, also makes an appearance in a key role. 

The film does a lovely job, too, paying homage to the 2003 film (while correcting some of the more uncomfortable elements, e.g. relative to the fortune teller) and giving the story a fresh update.  And maybe it's partly because I have three daughters myself, but the poignance of the mother-daughter relationships left me in happy tears  at the end. It's ultimately a sweet and funny little film, and, I must say, it's just so nice to have a movie on our screens that is, solidly, a good PG-rated family movie, something that is hard to come-by these days, unless it's in the animation universe. 

Be sure to stick around through the credits for the delightful outtakes. It's clear that everyone had as much fun making the movie as it is fun to watch.

Next up, playing at the Grand, is The Sparrow in the Chimney, written and directed by Roman Zürcher. The Swiss director is one of those international arthouse filmmakers who makes you feel lots of things although you cannot always trace why. His 2021 film The Girl and the Spider was deeply unsettling (and also quite funny at certain points!), but its story is deceptively simple: two women roommates live together and one of them moves out. Nothing happens, exactly, but you're riveted to the screen by the unexpected dialogue, interactions, and forms of expression, where nothing is truly out of the ordinary, but everything is just . . . a little off. It's a film that explores relationships and identity and emotions unlike any other. 

The Sparrow in the Chimney, Zürcher's newest psychodrama, is similar: on the surface, nothing particularly extraordinary happens: an extended family gathers together in their childhood home to celebrate one of the adult sibling's birthday . . . and small things happen--little interchanges, silences, domestic actions, odd reactions-- that are so strange and unsettling (but also, again, funny sometimes) that you can't tear your eyes from the screen.  (I will note, fair warning: there is one definitionally bad thing that happens -- spoiler incoming -- and the cat doesn't make it. Some chickens don't either.)  

It's a film about family and unspoken resentments and traumas and the crippling emotional legacies parents leave their children, and it all happens in a lovely country house, in a beautiful countryside, with delicious food, and outdoor fairy lights. Everything is awful and everything is wonderful  and everybody's having all kinds of emotions -- all at the same time. 

It's a film that'll provoke discussion. It's a film I suspect some viewers will hate. And some other viewers will love -- and maybe want to see it again.  I know I do.  Even if it just might be the antithesis of the lovely and sweet Freakier Friday.