Kids Eat Free
Mondays – Fridays all month, Kerbey Lane
Kids already got a gift when school let out for summer. Now Austin’s favorite all-day cafe Kerbey Lane says it’s parents’ turn for a prezzie. All month, Monday-Friday, kids eat free after 4pm with the purchase of one adult meal. Pancakes, grilled cheese, crispy chicken tenders, all for the glorious cost of zero extra dollars. With those savings, you could spring for a bowl of Kerbey queso and go home a hero. – Kimberley Jones
24 Hour Party People
Monday 10, Hotel Vegas
Forget New York, Los Angeles, London, or even Liverpool – 24 Hour Party People celebrates Manchester, where all of your other favorite bands originated. Directed by Michael Winterbottom and based on Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s sort-of-true script, the film tells the story of groundbreaking label Factory Records – which launched the careers of Joy Division, New Order, and Happy Mondays – by way of founder Tony Wilson’s (played here by Steve Coogan) wall-breaking narration. From the post-punk Seventies to the Madchester Eighties and Nineties, the film’s got a killer soundtrack, and skewers movie-making conventions the same way its subjects ignored the rules of music. – Carys Anderson
Cooking Club: School Lunches & Meal Prep
Tuesday 11, Central Library
For you, is a school lunch more of a hastily assembled grab bag that contains complementary components if you’re lucky? Does meal prep consist of sorting through takeout menus more than you’d like? APL’s Cooking Club is here to help. Beginners to experts ages 18 and up are welcome to meet and learn new skills, share advice, and support each other on cooking adventures. If you’re the type to make those pleasing and inspiring prep videos, bring your best tips! – Kat McNevins
Fugitive Dreams
Tuesday 11, AFS Cinema
Join writer/director Jason Neulander for a special screening and Q&A about his festival-favorite feature debut. Based on Fugitive Pieces, the play by Caridad Svich that Neulander originally staged in Austin in 2002, it’s a fantastical trip along the rusty rails of a magical and mournful American heartland: Dorothy’s rainbow reflected in old puddles. – Richard Whittaker
Terror Tuesday: Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
Tuesday 11, Alamo South Lamar
Demons! Pipe bombs! Iggy Pop! Unexpected 3D sequences! When the producers of A Nightmare on Elm Street hired franchise veteran Rachel Talalay to direct its sixth film, they got a filmmaker who gave them the weirdest in the series – no shocker, considering she was also working with John Waters at the time. Catch a rare original 35mm screening. – Richard Whittaker
Weird Wednesday: Mute Witness
Wednesday 12, Alamo South Lamar
The Eighties was the era of the great panic about snuff flicks, and Marina Zudina embodied all those fears in this terrifying thriller about an American makeup artist hunted by a Russian murder gang led by a sinister yet unnervingly cool Alec Guinness. Freshly restored by the American Genre Film Archive, the cinematic preservation nonprofit established by the Alamo Drafthouse, it’s a cold and terrifying trip to post-Glasnost Russia, and the first ever international co-production filmed in Moscow. – Richard Whittaker
All About My Mother
Wednesday 12, AFS Cinema
Dialing down the bold delirium that defined his early work, Pedro Almodóvar delivered a personal best in 1999 with this gorgeous film about unplanned mothers (including Penélope Cruz, in a breakthrough role, playing a pregnant nun), absent fathers, and the scrapping and scraping it takes to inch closer to your authentic self. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and, less celebrated, the Award for a Shot Transition From a Train Tunnel to Soaring Over Barcelona That Makes Me Cry Every Single Damn Time I See It. Austin Film Society screens the film in 35mm as part of its World Cinema Classics program. – Kimberley Jones
Emily Habeck: Shark Heart
Wednesday 12, BookPeople
Many have said love is a transformative experience, but author Emily Habeck takes this idea one step further. In her newly paperback’d novel, newlyweds Wren and Lewis face a strange debacle: Lewis is slowly becoming a great white shark. While his spirit and intellect remain tragically human, his impulses take on that of the aquatic beast, and Wren struggles to adjust to her husband’s fate as much as the man himself. As goodreads user jay puts it, “the author looked at ‘would you still love me if i was a worm’ and went ‘what if instead of silly, this was actually a sad question.’” Catch Habeck in person and perhaps get your copy signed at BookPeople – quick, before you, too, turn into a cartilage-covered creature. – James Scott
DAC Nights: Behind the Zines
Wednesday 12, Dougherty Arts Center
DAC is getting in on the Pride festivities with a night devoted to the humble zine, which they point out is an art form rooted in queer history and self expression. They’ll have supplies on hand to craft your own, but you’re welcome to bring your own materials as well. Sherwood Forest Zine Library will bring some LGBTQ+ zines to offer some inspiration, and teaching artists will be available to help craft the perfect project to exchange with other creators. – Kat McNevins
Movies in the Park: Jaws
Thursday 13, Deep Eddy Pool
Maybe you’ve been to a screening of Jaws on the lake, where divers swim under the water ready to give floaters a “bite”? This screening put on by the Austin Parks Foundation and the Museum of Ice Cream is bound to be just as cool but a little less scary, held at Austin’s oldest public pool instead of a murky lake. Cornucopia will bring 100 bags of free popcorn, and the film will begin at dusk. – Kat McNevins
This article appears in June 7 • 2024.
