Diamondbacks Battle Pirates; Streep and Daughter in ‘Ricki and the Flash’ (Mon., 8/17/15)

1) Tonight’s the first game of a three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks who will try to drive their fangs into the Pittsburgh Pirates. Let’s hope the Bucco’s run a sword through the snakes. 7:05 p.m. PNC Park, 115 Federal St., North Shore.

2) Ricki and the Flash – From the pen of Diablo Cody (the writer of Juno and United States of Tara) comes the latest Meryl Streep vehicle. The three-time Oscar winner plays a woman who, years ago, left her husband and children to pursue a career as a rock star. And now, several years on, her estranged daughter is facing a personal crisis and Ricki (Meryl) goes home to try to make things right. The film is directed by Jonathan Demme and features Kevin Kline (Streep’s co-star from Sophie’s Choice) as her ex-husband, 80’s heartthrob Rick Springfield as her bit-on-the-side and, playing her daughter, is her daughter-in-real-life Mamie Gummer. This isn’t the first time that mother and daughter have played mother and daughter – in the 1986 film Heartburn Mamie played Meryl’s 3 year old daughter. Check Fandango for screens and times. (TH)

3) The Fifth Element – It’s the 41^st century and Bruce Willis, a former highly decorated army general, is now a cab driver in a Brooklyn which looks like one of the unused sets from Blade Runner. Suddenly, out the sky and into his cab, drops “The Fifth Element” played by Milla Jovovich as a sort of intergalactic supermodel. Apparently some evil aliens have sent a giant ball of fire hurtling toward earth and the only thing that’ll stop it is having Jovovich perform a ritual with a bunch of magic rocks created by good aliens. The problem is that the rocks have been planted in the stomach of an alien diva who’s about nine feet tall (partly because she’s wearing what looks like a vacuum cleaner on her head.) So Willis and Jovovich hightail to the Diva’s galaxy to get the stones and then have to make it back to the Pyramids to perform the ritual to save the planet. Luc Bresson directed this 1997 sci-fi camp classic which poses the question: “If, 20 centuries from now, scientists have perfected interspace and intertime travel, how come they couldn’t fix Willis’ male pattern baldness?” 7:20 p.m. Continues through August 20. Row House Cinema, 4115 Butler St., Lawrenceville. (TH)

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