Nicholas Stoller's and Billy Eichner's achievement gave me everything I want and so rarely get from Hollywood rom-coms: interest, involvement, investment, sexual heat, huge laughs, legitimately threatening obstacles.

Presented on October 7 in collaboration with the area collective “My Arts Voice,” Voices Behind the Art will fuse visual and musical art in a showcase of more than a half-dozen Midwestern talents. The event stands as the latest cultural offering by Common Chord, the Davenport venue previously known as River Music Experience. And as Executive Director Tyson Danner explains, the institution's new moniker isn't the signal for a new direction for the former RME: “The name change has been the end of the process, really."

With their latest production staged in conjunction with the Quad Cities' area-wide Holocaust-remembrance project “Out of Darkness” (OutOfDarknessQC.com.), the professional dancers of Ballet Quad Cities present a remembrance of their own in Our Will to Live, an original program of dance vignettes boasting music by composers affected by the Holocaust. Taking place at Davenport's Adler Theatre on October 8, the repertoire for this two-act ballet runs the emotional gamut from exhilarating to painful – though the company's artistic director and co-choreographer Courtney Lyon realizes that potential patrons might incorrectly expect a night solely devoted to the latter.

Some movies are love-them-or-hate-them. The polished, mediocre Don't Worry Darling doesn't do much to inspire either reaction.

Before proceeding, allow me to share my amazement in a weekend happenstance I hadn't previously experienced over nearly three decades of reviewing: I saw five new movies and enjoyed them all – a lot. Even the horror prequel whose predecessor debuted fewer than six months ago. Even the reboot of a planned Chevy Chase franchise that died in 1989.

Beloved for offering an expansive site for respite and reflection, Wheatland, Iowa's Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat is revered for its beautiful grounds that include gardens, fields, timber, trails, a labyrinth, a nature pond, and a soothing Retreat Center. It's a lovely oasis of quiet where a monthly get-together is actually called "Come to the Quiet." Yet on September 24, visitors will actually be treated to five hours' worth of sounds. Beguiling, diverse, supremely musical sounds.

From September 23 through October 1, Davenport venue the Mockingbird on Main will house writer/director Alexander Richardson's re-imagining of Thornton Wilder's stage classic Our Town, fittingly titled Their Town. If the title sounds familiar, that might be because the show was recently staged at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre in Moline. If you weren't able to see it, Richardson absolutely understands a potential reason why: It was staged in March of 2020.

A couple weeks ago, in my review of The Invitation, I opened by saying that the fright flick felt like a bunch of different fright flicks – none of them good – rolled into one. Writer/director Zach Cregger's Barbarian feels a bit like that, too, except in this instance, the quality is significantly higher, and not all of the complimentary/competing movies are horror movies.

As hilarious as Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown, and their Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. co-stars frequently are, you're left as likely to well up from pity as from laughter. This is a truly rare bird: a mockumentary drama. With loads of cringey giggles.

No one wants to get mugged, but I was delighted to have Three Thousand Years of Longing sneak up on me and knock me out.

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