Alamo Drafthouse

Following last week’s final wave announcement, Fantastic Fest has a handful of late additions for this year’s genre film festival. Joining what is already a pretty exciting lineup for 2017 are seven more titles, including new features, shorts and two television series. The most notable of those titles is Bodied, the new rap battle flick from Joseph Kahn (Detention), which recently had a divisive world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival — where it instantly became a must-see.

The Alamo Drafthouse is a fun, chill venue full of burgers and boozy milkshakes that provides one of the most unique moviegoing experiences out there, but they’re very strict about two things: That talking and texting during the movie nonsense? Don’t do it. Just take it from Georgie, the ridiculously cherubic child from this fall’s horror sensation It.

The most fun genre film festival in the world is hitting the road this fall, with special weekends planned at three Alamo Drafthouses around the country.

The Alamo Drafthouse is holding a clown-only screening of the new Stephen King film. Tthat doesn’t sound scary, right? What’s the worst that could happen?

It was the Facebook post that launched a thousand (give or take) s— fits. When the Alamo Drafthouse announced a special women-only screening of Wonder Woman, the outrage from misogynist bros was swift, immediate and entirely insane, with many bizarrely labeling the event “sexist.” But those toxic reactions didn’t quite have the intended effect and only made the screening more popular among women, spurring the Drafthouse to turn it into a national event, much to the chagrin of all those whiny sexist internet trolls — including one particularly angry man who decided it might be more effective to bypass theater management entirely and take his complaints straight to the mayor of Austin, Texas.

Ladies: Imagine going to see Wonder Woman in a movie theater filled with nothing but other women. Sounds fun, right? The Alamo Drafthouse certainly thinks so, which is why the geniuses behind our favorite theater chain organized a special women-only screening of the highly-anticipated superhero film at their downtown Austin location. Unfortunately (but predictably, which is just as unfortunate), a whole bunch of dudes are acting like big whiny weenies about it — hilariously oblivious to how their sexist attitudes further prove the need for this event.

Rarely a week goes by these days without someone proclaiming movies dead or dying or zombified and feasting on the brains of their victims. (That’s what you get for turning your brain off at the theater!) Mainstream Hollywood has seen better days, but film as an art form is just fine; in a world where Moonlight, The Handmaiden, Arrival, and Loving are all competing for screen space, there’s still life left in movies yet. I’m more concerned about movie theaters, where the presentation of those films seems to get worse every single year.

For over a decade, Fantastic Fest has been home to some of the most interesting genre films from around the world. It’s where fans of subversive, unique, inventive and truly challenging cinema discover new and exciting filmmakers and share memorable movie experiences. Although the Alamo Drafthouse’s annual festival does include highly-anticipated studio films like Arrival and A Monster Calls, those films are deliberately programmed to coincide with the fest’s smaller genre offerings — these are the titles that remind us that original voices and stories are still out there, that get us excited about the future of cinema, and the ones we’ll be urging fans to seek out and see over the next several months.

We’ll never get to see that series of 2016 election ads starring Terry Crews, but there’s still good news for fans of President Camacho and Mike Judge’s Idiocracy: The 2006 cult classic comedy is celebrating its 10th anniversary by returning to theaters this October, just one month ahead of the presidential election — you know, just in case you need a little boost of humor (or a scarily prescient reminder) before you head into the voting booth.

The Alamo Drafthouse is built on a simple concept: great movies, good food, and most important of all — don’t talk or use your cell phone in the theater, or they will not hesitate to kick you out without a refund. Drafthouse CEO Tim League has devoted his brand to focusing on why we go to theaters in the first place, which is to watch movies, despite what some movie-goers and major corporate chains would have you believe. Following AMC’s briefly disastrous flirtation with allowing people to text in their theaters, League delivered a very thoughtful response, but if you’d rather watch a TL;DR version, you can see his predictably great reaction to this ill-conceived concept in the video above.