Hollywood veteran Joe Dante got his start directing movies for low-budget legend Roger Corman (Piranha, The Howling), graduated to the big-time in the 80s (Gremlins), and has since created a number of provocative entertainments (Matinee, Small Soldiers). He comes to Chicago on Friday and Saturday to introduce screenings of three films. —J.R. Jones
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Gremlins 2: The New Batch Dante’s 1990 sequel relocates the hero and heroine of Gremlins (Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates) to New York, where they’re both working for a vain tycoon named Daniel Clamp (John Glover)—an obvious conflation of Donald Trump and Ted Turner—in a midtown skyscraper, where the gremlins manage to run loose and cause all sorts of mischief. Solid, agreeable entertainment, this basically consists of plentiful gags and lighthearted satire spiked with Dante’s compulsive taste for movie references, humorously scripted by Charlie Haas but without the darker thematic undertones and the more tableaulike construction of the original. You may want to see it more than once in order to catch all the peripheral details, but there aren’t any depths to explore, just a lot of bright, free-floating comic invention. With Robert Prosky, Robert Picardo, Christopher Lee, Kathleen Freeman, and many cameos (included are Daffy Duck and Leonard Maltin). —Jonathan Rosenbaum PG-13, 106 min. Fri 8/10, midnight, Music Box
Friday and Saturday at Music Box and Nightingale
