Talking Screens, A Week In Chicago Film, September 2-8, 2022

“Labor Day weekend is traditionally one of the slowest weekends in theaters,” reports Associated Press. Taking advantage of those empty screens, the National Association of Theatre Owners has notched September 3 as “National Cinema Day,” with $3 tickets at most hippodromes. (How many repeat viewings of “Top Gun: Maverick” in IMAX is that?) “The Cinema Foundation, a non-profit arm of NATO announced that September 3 will be a nationwide discount day in more than 3,000 theaters and on more than 30,000 screens,” reports AP (via NPR). “Major chains, including AMC and Regal Cinemas, are participating, as are all major film studios. In participating theaters, tickets will be no more than $3 for each showing, in every format.” (Showplace ICON offers a 3-D version of “Jaws” to the discount day.) Labor Day weekend also features “The Creepshow: A Stephen King Film Festival” at the Music Box. (You could double up “The Shining” with its parallel picture from the parallel novel “Doctor Sleep.”)

Among new pictures, Francois Ozon remounts RWF to middling result in “Peter Von Kant.” Javier Bardem simmers jovially in Fernando León de Aranoa’s “The Good Boss.”

“Gigi & Nate”

Also opening: “Gigi & Nate” (from Roadside Attractions, the consistently canny twenty-two-year-old studio) presents the story of Nate Gibson, whose life is transformed after a near-fatal illness and is left a quadriplegic. “Moving forward seems near impossible until he meets his unlikely service animal, Gigi—a curious and intelligent capuchin monkey,” reports the studio. “Gigi helps Nate find what he needs most of all: hope.” Nick Hamm’s film features Marcia Gay Harden, Charlie Rowe, Josephine Langford, Jim Belushi and Diane Ladd. Opens Friday, September 2 at River East, City North and outlying theaters.

Writer-director Adamma Ebo’s “Honk For Jesus, Save Your Soul,” hails from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, a satirical comedy with Regina Hall as “the proud first lady of a Southern Baptist megachurch, who together with her husband (Sterling K. Brown), once served a congregation in the tens of thousands, but after a scandal forces their church to temporarily close, they must reopen their church and rebuild their congregation to make the biggest comeback that commodified religion has ever seen.” The trailer is here. In theaters and…