Things to do on a Sunday in New York

Does the eye-wateringly sweet taste of Frosted Flakes make you nostalgic for the cartoon-filled weekend mornings of your youth? If so, head to Spoons, Toons & Booze at Nitehawk Cinema, where Michael Austin, organizer of the ’80s Sing-Along, brings you a free all-you-can-eat sugary cereal buffet and a selection of 80-plus cartoons from the ’40s through the ’90s (DuckTales, Jem, ThunderCats, Captain Planet—you name it). You can spike your Cinnamon Toast Crunch with a shot of Baileys or Kahlúa for $5; there are some benefits to adulthood, after all.

In a Faustian bargain struck way back in 1917, the lawmen of Bisbee, Arizona, a small town on the Mexican border, rounded up approximately 1,300 copper miners—most of them immigrants on strike—to load them on cattle cars and deport them. Decades later, in 1975, the mining company shut down, turning that original sin on its head and leaving behind an economic hole into which the deporters’ grandchildren stumbled. No one thrives in Bisbee anymore, not even the tour guides. It would be enough for any documentary to tell this piece of hushed-up history, but Bisbee ’17 is onto something more radical; watching it is like witnessing the defusing of a time bomb from a foot away. For some reason (maybe it’s the presence of the camera crew itself), the guilt-stricken residents of today’s Bisbee have decided to re-create the incident on the day of its 100th anniversary. Descendants of the original evictors, including a pair of brothers whose elders were on opposite sides, cosplay with rifles and scowls, while local actors take to the streets chanting labor slogans (among them, Fernando Serrano, a gay Mexican-American who comes to symbolize much more than century-old socialism). How filmmaker Robert Greene got an entire town to ham it up remains a mystery, but his gift for inviting self-interrogation (also on display in his equally fascinating Kate Plays Christine, a 2016 hybrid about an actor’s plunge into the life of a suicidal newscaster) marks him as an innovator who may become a f

“We’re comfortable” says Nick Young (Henry Golding, mega-confident in his feature debut), a handsome Oxford-educated NYU professor, when he’s asked about his background by Rachel (Fresh Off the Boat’s Constance Wu), who knows nothing about how loaded he is after a year of their dating. Like Rachel, we’re a touch taken aback about nonchalant he is, especially when “comfortable” turns out to be a fortune, but Nick isn’t snobby about it—it’s just family money. Meet the family. Crazy Rich Asians, the 2013 literary sensation by Kevin Kwan, is finally a Hollywood movie, the first with an all-Asian cast and director since Wayne Wang’s The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago. Seeing this kind of onscreen representation is incredibly satisfying, especially via Kwan’s rich page-turner (loosely based on the author's real life), loaded with cattiness but also plenty of Asian diversity, from wholesome friends and wise confidantes to jealous mean girls and scheming parents. Fittingly, the movie follows suit: It’s a reinvented romantic comedy, sassy and fun, that doesn’t necessarily rely on obvious tropes and is worth the wait. In a deeper way, Crazy Rich Asians is truly groundbreaking (especially now, in our xenophobic moment), paying attention to cultural nuances that rarely make the multiplex. To hear your mother’s regional Chinese dialect spoken in a major Hollywood film is an occasion for no small amount of pride. Nick plans a trip back home to luxurious Singapore for his best friend’s weddin

What to call this fiercely original movie? A Facebook thriller? A Google noir? Uniquely, the missing-girl mystery at its heart plays out almost entirely on computer screens, using social media apps and chatrooms in the same way Raymond Chandler used dive bars and dark alleys. The footprints being followed here are the digital kind, and they’re all the scarier for that. You’ll walk away with a new awareness of just how exposed we are to malign forces online. If you’re a parent, it may feel like a horror movie. The missing girl is L.A. high-schooler Margot Kim (Michelle La), a 15-year-old budding musician who seems like any other well-adjusted, plugged-in teen. But in a touching, Up–like opening montage of family photos and videos, we toggle through her childhood years and discover a sorrow that lingers like a shadow over her life and the film. When Margot vanishes without trace, her dad, David (John Cho, terrific), turns to her search history for clues as to her whereabouts. He quickly finds out that things are not what they’ve seemed. Not even close. From here, debut director Aneesh Chaganty shifts through the gears, dropping in the odd tension-breaker (look out for a killer Justin Bieber gag) and enough visual trickery to keep his extremely limited conceit cinematic. Strip away Searching’s tech trappings, though, and you’ll find the same propulsive joys that fueled classic ’90s thrillers like The Fugitive and The Game: red herrings, a tireless detective (played here by Deb

If you’ve been pining for the return of the fiery, political Spike Lee of Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, good news: BlacKkKlansman is the director working at his electrifying best. Maybe the optimism of the Obama era robbed him of some of that righteous fury (which would be one explanation for his limp Oldboy remake), or maybe middle age mellowed him; either way, Trump’s America—Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter and everything else—has brought the old mojo flooding back. Veering from a blaxploitation spoof to an undercover thriller and ending with a no-punches-pulled real-life coda, BlacKkKlansman is riotously fun one minute, savagely biting the next. The story, as the opening credits declare, is based on some “fo’ real, fo’ real sh*t”—the kind that’s hard to believe actually happened in early ’70s Colorado, yet it’s all true. Black police officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, son of Denzel) joins the local force, where he’s warned that he’ll have to “take a lot of guff.” Sure enough, the guff comes thick and fast as he’s exiled to the storage room and harassed by a racist colleague. Spotting an ad for the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and taking the initiative, Ron phones the “Organization” (as they vaguely describe themselves), clears his throat and claims to be a vitriolic white supremacist, thus setting in motion the most unlikely undercover operation in law-enforcement history. His first thrill of contact with the enemy is only slightly diminished by

Glenn Close is the power behind the throne in this absorbing study of a complex marriage. She’s Joan, the wife of a feted novelist, Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), who’s soon to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Together with their sulky son David (Max Irons), the American couple fly to Stockholm for a whirlwind of press, functions and rehearsals—but the most telling moments happen when they're alone together in their hotel room. While Meg Wolitzer’s source novel is written in Joan’s voice, The Wife resists narration and allows Joan to internalize her feelings, ranging from affection, concern and duty to bitterness and rage. It’s a smart move: Close’s piercing eyes dart around with telling expressions while Joe blusters on obliviously, enjoying the attention of sycophants. Not much, though, gets past Nathaniel (Christian Slater), a writer planning a biography on Joe. He shadows the couple and waits for his moment to pounce. Slater gives what could have been a stereotypical role plenty of spark, and his scenes with Close are riveting. The Wife is also very funny, not least when the Castlemans are woken by a group of traditional singers belting out "Santa Lucia" around their bed. Less successful are the flashbacks to the couple’s past in the late 50s. The younger Joe (Harry Lloyd) doesn’t seem nearly charismatic enough to sweep Joan (Annie Starke) off her feet. That said, these scenes play an important part in a story with a satisfying sting in its tail, one that mak

Kayla is exactly the wrong girl to be posting YouTube videos about "confidence" or "being yourself," but you'll absolutely love her for trying. As played in the sweetly sympathetic Eighth Grade by then-13-year-old Elsie Fisher (hatching a guileless, emotionally exposed performance that could be underrated due to the film's documentary-like rawness), Kayla is a heartbreaking flow of awkward ums, likes and circular brain farts. She turns the act of speech into an alien process. As the lens widens out, Kayla's shyness comes into sharper view: the post-it notes dotting her mirror reminding her to practice small talk and jokes, and Fisher's own inchoate physicality—a pimply, round face that contains hints of the pre-flame-out Lindsay Lohan. Writer-director Bo Burnham's debut feature tracks Kayla during her final week of middle school, a transitional moment fraught with anxiety. If his episodic building blocks are a touch familiar, Burnham can't be beat for mouth-breathing naturalism, steering Eighth Grade into the squirmy company of Kids, Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl and Welcome to the Dollhouse (all of them tougher movies, but about real teens, as is this). A birthday pool party becomes Kayla's slow-motion nightmare, as she's surrounded by soda-swigging peers who are nonetheless further down the road of maturity. Caught in the act of practicing blow jobs on a banana by her single dad (Josh Hamilton, who nails a tricky climactic monologue), she flings the fruit at his chest, whi

Tom Cruise is 56 years old. Fifty. Six. And he’s been making Mission: Impossible movies for 22 of those 56 years. By all rights, Fallout, his sixth high-flying mission, should be to M:I what A View to a Kill was to Roger Moore’s James Bond run (Moore being only a year older than Cruise is when he made his final 007): tired, creaky and a bit embarrassing. Astonishingly, however, the opposite is true. This is easily the best, slickest and most daring Mission: Impossible installment. Not only that, it’s the finest action movie of the year so far. The plot pulls off twist after twist, with Cruise's Ethan Hunt still haunted by his now-incarcerated Rogue Nation nemesis Solomon Lane (a superbly creepy Sean Harris) and dealing with the global terrorist power vacuum left by Lane’s capture. But you won’t care about any of these details with all the sinew-straining spectacle on display. This is thanks largely to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. Being the first director to return for a second go at the franchise, he brings a sense of continuity hitherto lacking. Fallout is a direct sequel to Rogue Nation, bringing back most of the key players and upping the stakes from the most knowing of perspectives. McQuarrie also builds on the last film’s self-aware level of wit and, most importantly, its set-piece-crafting sophistication. No action sequence is allowed to peter out, or be chopped to ribbons in the editing, or lean on the crutch of CG augmentation. From a frantic Parisian cha

With its focus on Fred Rogers, the children’s television host who extolled the virtues of positivity, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is undeniably well timed. It doesn’t have to strain at all for immediate relevance. Early in Morgan Neville’s heartfelt, moving documentary, we see scenes from one of the first episodes of Misterogers’ Neighborhood (as it was spelled at the time) in which puppet character King Friday XIII builds a wall to keep out those he finds undesirable, before kindness brings it down again. This segment of low-budget ’60s TV carries a message we need now more than ever. If it seems egregious to approach Rogers and his show with a political reading, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? may surprise even those who grew up watching the series, with its revelation of the many world events and concerns it addressed. In his gentle, empathetic way, Rogers helped little ones deal with everything from Vietnam to 9/11. After Robert Kennedy was gunned down, one puppet’s plea for a definition of “assassination” was compassionately answered. Rogers was devoted to the innocence of childhood, but he also knew there was no way to shield kids from the ugliness of the adult world. He offered a calm, reassuring buffer to it. Neville shone a spotlight on under-celebrated talent in his Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom, and here he paints an equally compassionate portrait of one of American popular culture’s most familiar faces. Through interviews with those who knew Rogers (and vintage on-

Superheroes may save the world, but parenthood requires skills far more advanced than extendable limbs. Brad Bird’s 'Incredibles 2' – Pixar’s most spirited sequel since 'Toy Story 3' – lovingly expresses this certainty through a bighearted familial portrait wrapped in ’60s-inspired design. But the film’s disarming appeal lies in its simpler moments of domesticity, in which the members of the all-superhero Parr family lift each other up and fight for relevance in a world of indifference. Still underground with criminalised superpowers and a destroyed home, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), and their children, Violet, Dash and the explosive baby Jack-Jack, quietly live in a dingy motel. Their luck turns when a pair of wealthy siblings – the naive Winston and brainy inventor Evelyn (Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener) – offer them a chance to restore the Supers’ reputation. While the sensible Elastigirl serves as the fearless face of the mission, Mr. Incredible hilariously Mr. Moms his way through the kids’ homework, boy troubles and newly emerging superpowers. When the state-of-the-art villain Screenslaver disturbs the picture, the entire crew, including the previous film’s charismatic ice maker Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), joins the good fight. 'Incredibles 2' comes supercharged with timely, sophisticated themes around societal apathy and gender parity. While slightly overplotted in its finale, the sleek sequel still glows with grown-up wit, with cr

Two people – a man and his teen daughter – adopting a simpler life in the backwoods of America may sound like the beginnings of a Bon Iver concept album, but in the hands of co-writer/director Debra Granik (‘Winter’s Bone’), it forms the crux of a smart, heartfelt examination of outsiderdom in a society that doesn’t just prize conformity, but demands it. For a small story, it tackles some pretty big themes, gauging America’s reactionary social climate through the eyes of father Will (Ben Foster) and his daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), living outdoors in the misty Oregon rainforest. Like a Ray Mears family outing spun wildly out of control, the pair forage for food, nursing fuel supplies and essentials scrapped together with money Will makes selling painkilling meds to fellow veterans. As the title implies, the duo are ever-wary of betraying their presence to the authorities. It’s a hardscrabble rural existence that’ll be semi-familiar to anyone who’s seen Granik’s Ozarks-set drama ‘Winter’s Bone’, although here there’s an element of choice and, initially, an air of quiet satisfaction at sticking it to The Man. Of course, it doesn’t last: they’re soon sucked back into the system and processed by social workers whose uncomprehending kindnesses only rub salt in the wounds.  Unlike Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’, which also explores the quiet radicalism of disappearing off the grid, there’s no big emotional swells here. ‘Leave No Trace’ is a more hushed, contemplative movie. Gra