Psycho II
Monday 31, Hyperreal Film Club
This 1983 sequel to the Alfred Hitchcock slasher came 23 years after the original, which is kind of like if they made a Signs sequel today. Ol’ Norman Bates, once again played chillingly by Anthony Perkins, is back on the street after his sentence at a psychiatric hospital is completed. Well, not the street exactly … he’s back at the Bates Motel! Seems unwise. Poor guy just tries to “make the most of his second chance despite everyone else making damn sure he ends up holding the knife again,” as put by the Chron’s own Qmmunity & Calendar Editor James Scott, who programmed this one for Hyperreal. Be there to find out if history repeats itself. – Kat McNevins
Mobile Court Services
Monday 31, Terrazas Branch Library
Got a case or warrant with the Downtown Austin Community Court or Austin Municipal Court? For a few hours on a first-come, first-served basis, you can check the status of that case and maybe even resolve it on the spot. There will also be homeless services including storage options and case management. It’s also a safe harbor court, which means you won’t be arrested for outstanding cases or warrants. Don’t wait for the law to come to you; get it settled on your own terms. – James Renovitch
Open Mic Night
Tuesday 1, Cap City Comedy
Austin’s preeminent home for humor may be able to pull in the big comedy talents, with Leah Rudick, Christopher Titus, Nicole Byer, and Tim Meadows all making the room shake with laughter this month. But there’s nothing like the act of discovery when you catch a genuinely fresh talent that blows the room away with the tightest five you ever saw in your life. Think you’ve got what it takes to wow the crowd? Sign up now for any of this month’s open mic nights, happening the first, second, fourth, and fifth Tuesday, and show ’em you’re not just office-joker funny. – Richard Whittaker
Barking Book Buddies: Read to Hank
Tuesday 1, John Gillum Branch Library
Reading aloud is a great way to develop literacy and communication skills, but a lot of early readers find it challenging or even anxiety-inducing. Some of that can be alleviated by finding the right audience: an adoring, attentive dog, perhaps. Certified volunteers from Divine Canines will bring trained therapy dogs to the library, ready to hear “tails” from kids at all reading levels. It’s a paws-itive experience for all involved! – Kat McNevins
Spicewood Springs Mystery Book Club: Holmes, Marple & Poe
Tuesday 1, Spicewood Springs Branch Library
I admit, Chronicle reader, that I’ve added this event to our Calendar section because I actually read this book. So, I’ll answer what I expect are your first few questions: Is the novel by “James Patterson” and former television writer Brian Sitts any good? No. For the most part, the prose reads exactly like someone giving you a play-by-play of a network procedural about the level of a mid-tier Bones or The Mentalist episode. Your next question is probably why anyone should read the book then? Two reasons: 1) Because the writing has the fluid mediocrity of a crime procedural, it is an insanely easy read and 2) the book is fun. It is fun that a book about three detectives who all live together – not in a polycule way, disappointingly – also has them using names of famous fictional detectives, except for the guy who claims he’s the descendant of famous mystery-crime victim Edgar Allan Poe. He is also, for some reason, obsessed with classic cars – which I don’t remember being a Poe family trait. Whatever. Have fun! – James Scott
The Elephant Man
Tuesday 1 – Wednesday 2, All Alamo Drafthouses
Was David Lynch’s best and most complete film actually his second and most overlooked feature? Before his deliberate obscurantism became his defining trait, between the fever dream of Eraserhead and the corporate misfire of Dune, he was hand-picked by Mel Brooks to direct this black-and-white memoir of Joseph Merrick, a tender soul and talented artist who was subjected to a life of cruelty as an exhibit in a Victorian sideshow. His medical condition, still undiagnosed to this day, led to malformations and deformities so extreme that he was nicknamed the Elephant Man. The film, which was nominated for eight Oscars, drew on Lynch’s knack for the peculiar but showed a deep compassion for people that he submerged until The Straight Story 19 years later. When John Hurt as Merrick wails, “I am not an animal! I am a human being!” it may be Lynch’s most enduring statement on the human condition. – Richard Whittaker
The Brood
Tuesday 1, Saturday 5 – Sunday 6, AFS Cinema
David Cronenberg’s unflinching portrayals of the anxieties of the human body take a parental turn in The Brood – a portrait of a custody battle waged in the bodies of the family undergoing it. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar) undergoes a radical form of psychotherapy that produces mysterious and menacing pseudochildren who enact myriad horrors on her estranged husband Frank (Art Hindle) and daughter Candice (a wee Cindy Hinds). Often considered one of Cronenberg’s scariest films, made creepier by its release year (1979, same as Kramer vs. Kramer), and a proto-example of the now-common trope of horror as an allegory for trauma, The Brood screens at AFS the first weekend of April, ushering in the Easter season of rebirth. – Lina Fisher
Colum McCann
Wednesday 2, Hogg Memorial Auditorium
From the great heights of Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, memorably retold in his National Book Award winning 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin, Irish-born author Colum McCann heads to the furthestmost depths of the ocean in new novel Twist, about a journalist profiling a deep sea diver tasked with dangerous underwater repairwork. McCann will give an author reading at this campus event hosted by Harry Ransom Center with the Michener Center for Writers and the Irish Consulate General of Austin; attendance is free but RSVP is required. – Kimberley Jones
The Family Naturalist: Where Does Our Water Go?
Wednesday 2, Windsor Park Branch Library
You’re never too young to learn about natural resources, and water is our hot-as-heck state’s most precious one. Led by your local library, kiddos ages 3 and up can learn all about H2O and its journey through our natural landscapes. From water’s travels over land and in the atmosphere to how protecting your neighborhood creek can help native plant growth, these lessons will help encourage environmental curiosity in your kiddos that’ll assist them in understanding how our big blue marble works. – James Scott
Sudden Death
Wednesday 2, Alamo South Lamar
What made Die Hard so great? Because, at the time, there was something so weird about seeing funny guy Bruce Willis – best known for flirty detective show Moonlighting – kicking terrorist ass as John McClane. Did he look like a beat cop? Absolutely. Like a guy that could take down an entire gang of extraordinary thieves? Don’t be absurd. What makes Die Hard knockoff Sudden Death so perfectly absurd is that of course you can buy Jean-Claude Van Damme as a bare-handed death machine. It’s like director Peter Hyams completely missed the emotional point and so made up for it by stringing together some of the most bonkers action sequences of the Nineties for maximum Van Dammage, with added ice hockey. Yes, this is where that famous GIF of the man falling into the scoreboard over the rink comes from, and it’s just as dopey in the real movie. – Richard Whittaker
Decision to Leave
Wednesday 2, John Gillum Branch Library
Austin Public Library’s Steck Avenue branch continues its Weeknight Cinema series with the latest of its International Investigations: Park Chan-wook’s 2022 romantic detective drama Decision to Leave. South Korean detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il, Memories of Murder) finds himself falling for recently widowed Chinese migrant Seo-rae (Tang Wei, Lust, Caution). The more he gets to know her, the more he also comes to suspect that she may have murdered her late husband. But is that enough to get in the way of true love? Achingly tender and tragically heartwarming, director Park has perfectly described his wistful noir as “a love story that does not say the words ‘I love you.’” – Richard Whittaker
City of Austin Career Expo
Wednesday 2, Palmer Events Center
Our area unemployment rate hovers around 3.5%, meaning there’s about 45K Austinites actively on the job hunt. Luckily the city of Austin is filling Palmer with employers to meet at its 14th annual career expo. This year, the city launched a new policy allowing hiring managers to make contingent offers at recruitment events, and there are 90 different job titles needing filled, ranging from accounting to health care. Over 100 employers will be on-site, meaning something for everyone: city and county offices, Samsung, H-E-B, CapMetro, FedEx, PPD, and lots more will be ready and waiting to meet you! – Kat McNevins
ASF at AFS: Fernando A. Flores
Wednesday 2, Alienated Majesty Books
Beloved local author Fernando A. Flores (Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Tears of the Trufflepig, and, most recently, Brother Brontë) inaugurates a new joint program between American Short Fiction and AFS Cinema that celebrates the interplay between film and the written word. Hosted at Flores’ home bookstore Alienated Majesty, the author will screen Luis M. Meza’s 1996 Chicano road film The Staccato Purr of the Exhaust and help the literary organization launch a new issue of its triquarterly print magazine. This one highlights contemporary Latinx voices including Carribean Fragoza, Ruben Reyes Jr., and more, guest edited by Flores himself. – Carys Anderson
Steel Magnolias
Through April 13, Hill Country Community Theatre
Do you need to drive all the way to Cottonwood Shores for a good cry? If you’re a fan of Steel Magnolias – either Robert Harling’s original stage play or Herbert Ross’ 1989 film with Sally Field and Julia Roberts – then the answer is heck yeah. The crying part doesn’t really come on till the end; first you get to laugh, a lot, at this big-personality buncha Southern ladies supporting one of their own with a debilitating illness. (My fave of the bunch is definitely Ouiser, and Shirley MacLaine’s version is my icon, in style – gardening overalls – and comportment – sour-faced – both.) But I’m not gonna sugarcoat it: There will be weeping, so best bring Kleenex. Opening night is Friday, March 28. – Kimberley Jones
Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what’s happening now or in the coming week.
This article appears in March 28 • 2025.
