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It looks like producer J. J. Abrams (the man behind Lost and Alias) took a few cues from legendary horror-meister Val Lewton. In Cloverfield, Abrams’s Godzilla-like monster wreaks havoc on New York City—except he does so at night, and we can’t see a damn thing except shadows and fleeting images of the beast as things blow apart, casting flickers of light on the carnage. Abrams understands, as did Lewton when he made The Curse of the Cat People some sixty-five years earlier, that imagination is the best special effect—and it’s cheap. The web is already alive with anticipation for this one. If the trailer is any indication of Cloverfield’s thrill-a-minute qualities, this should be one helluva popcorn flick.

This is arguably the greatest lucha libre horror film in history. Yes, friends, we know that’s like saying Evan Almighty is the greatest congressional ark-building comedy ever, but this entertaining schlock—starring those masked Mexican wrasslers—cost a hundredth as much, and looks to be ten times more amusing. In Las Momias de Guanajuato (1972), the wrestler/sorcerer Satan has been mummified for over a century and returns to wreak havoc on the peaceful city of Guanajuato. What’s to stop him? Why, those kindly masked wrestlers Santo, Blue Demon, and Mil Mascaras, that’s who! Marvel as this trio fights off a horde of rotting mummies in tights and those crazy masks. We challenge you to find a more memorable film to inaugurate your new year.

Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-3030.

The latest from director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) is rumored to be a frontrunner for the best-picture Oscar, but that’s highly unlikely. There Will Be Blood is magnificent, epic, and utterly bizarre; films this weird never win the big one. Based loosely on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood features Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano as an oil man and a preacher, respectively, at odds over money, faith, and oil rights. These actors perform like serpents fighting to swallow the film whole and there is vast pleasure in watching them coil around one another in mortal combat. With an equally audacious score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood (he summoned Stravinsky’s screeching violins), an impressive cast, and startling direction, Blood is the boldest Western since Sam Peckinpah walked the earth.

Uptown Theatre, 612-825-6006.

Part of the Walker’s Out There festival of experimental theater, this show, by a youthful New York City ensemble called the TEAM (Theater of the Emerging American Moment) defies rampant cynicism by presenting a work of resounding optimism. Set in Kansas, the action unfolds within an evangelical household. The parents have just been killed by an awful Kansan storm, but the children believe the rapture has taken them. What’s surprising about this work, especially in this age marked by Colbert Report satire, is how the TEAM avoids irony in painting its portrait of the earnest, often anti-intellectual culture of Evangelicalism. Instead, their feel-good show teems with rigorous dance and movement, sincere character study, and even wholesome Stephen Foster songs.

Walker Art Center, 612-375-7600.

The History Theatre has hit its share of fouls lately—last fall’s production based on the life of Kirby Puckett was uniformly blasted, and the recent Hormel Girls had a lackadaisical score and a script wholly reliant on stereotype. But this institution also boasts a singular and noble characteristic: It commissions more original works by living, local playwrights than any other Twin Cities theater. Its annual Raw Stages series bundles four samplings of works-in-progress, each with a certain destiny for the History Theatre mainstage. This year’s lineup includes the chronicle of a haunted Summit Avenue mansion, by the edgy Minneapolitan Deborah Stein (see “Heavy Rotation”); and the story of Tyrone Guthrie and Ralph Rapson’s collaboration building the landmark Guthrie Theater at Vineland Place—by the prolific, Minnesota-based playwright and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher.

History Theatre, 30 E. Tenth St., St. Paul; 651-292-4323.

Black Label Movement received a hearty welcome with its debut 2006–07 season, garnering praise both for its evocative choreography and athletic, hyperkinetic dancers. The company repays that kindness by opening its sophomore season with the ambitious Wreck, artistic director Carl Flink’s first evening-length piece. Claustrophobics beware: Wreck depicts ten sailors trapped inside the last watertight compartment of an ore boat at the bottom of Lake Superior. Confined to a small space defined by several benches, the dancers artfully flail, careen, and collide as they run out of air and time. Vintage 8-millimeter footage of an ore boat, along with a score by acclaimed Twin Cities-based composer Mary Ellen Childs, provide a backdrop.

Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-340-1725.

Who better than Robert Bly to revive this cautionary tale of misdirected masculinity? Peer Gynt is the most deplorable of characters, a swashbuckler who, during the course of a single play, manages to desert his mother, cajole a bride into the mountains on her wedding night, get crunk with some hillbillies, and go on a globe-trotting black-market bender. Contemporary audiences will notice that nineteenth-century playwright Henrik Ibsen makes an apt statement about a familiar, modern archetype: the fatherless adolescent whose thuggish ambitions eclipse all kindness within. What’s more, Ibsen wrote the entire thing in Norwegian verse; as with most English translations, Bly’s new adaptation duplicates that effort.

Guthrie Theater, 612-377-2224.

Ever since Wynton Marsalis seized the reins of the JLCO in the early ’90s, both the orchestra and the organization have been hallmarks of supreme scholarship and top-notch quality control in the effort to enshrine jazz as America’s classical music. The only danger was that Marsalis would smother his project with love, favoring hermetically sealed technique over goosebumps. But the theme chosen for JLCO’s twelfth tour—Duke Ellington’s love songs—banishes those worries. From “Sophisticated Lady” to “Satin Doll,” to “In a Sentimental Mood” and “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good,” the repertoire should set the stodgiest stick-in-the-mud all atwitter. And with a stellar fifteen-piece band—the trumpet section alone includes Ryan Kisor, Marcus Printup, Sean Jones, and Marsalis—channeling some of Duke’s most heartfelt compositions, the gig shapes up as an ideal Valentine’s date, albeit three weeks and three days early.

Orchestra Hall, 612-371-5656.