As movie bloodbaths go, NO ONE LIVES is almost–but not quite–clever enough to be worth seeing. We start with a backwoods family of petty outlaws, headed by father Hoag (Lee Tergesen) and including his wife, brother, two adult children and their significant others.  Their game is to rob tourists and brutally beat them until […]

  THE INSPECTION (A24 – November 14):  Back in 1983, Robert Altman directed the film version of David Rabe’s play Streamers, about a Vietnam-era boot camp that turned even more violent and vicious with the catalyst of one recruit’s closeted homosexuality.  Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection tells a similar story for the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” […]

  THE WONDER (Netflix – November 16):  In the time of Ireland’s Great Famine, 11-year-old Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) claims to have survived for 4 months without eating even one bite of food.  Is she a miracle, possibly a saint in the making, or a sham?  The elders of her small town have the girl […]

> Jim Field Smith’s comedy BUTTER, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, ambitiously makes a play for both the heartwarming indie Little Miss Sunshine audience and the satire-minded Election crowd.  That may be one play too many, but the movie is worth seeing anyway. Jason A Micallef’s first produced script is set in the […]

  BERGMAN ISLAND (IFC – Oct. 15):  Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island asks to be poked and scrutinized in several ways.  It takes place on the island of Faro, where Ingmar Bergman filmed some of his most celebrated masterpieces and lived the last decades of his life, and which now hosts a thriving business of tours […]

  DESTROYER (Annapurna – Dec. 25):  Another fractured-time thriller, this one trickier than most, because the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi features a sort of time-loop within a loop.  All that structural fanciness aside, Destroyer is mostly a vehicle for Nicole Kidman’s aggressively deglamorized performance as an end-of-the-line LAPD detective named Erin Bell.  […]

  CASUAL:  October 7 on Hulu Hulu has included some original programming in its inventory for a while now, but it’s signaled its intention to join Netflix and Amazon in that realm in a more serious way with its order of new Mindy Project episodes, and production of a Stephen King minseries, The Way from […]

  JULIET, NAKED (no distrib):  Every Sundance has a title or two that isn’t particularly “indie,” other than by the fact that its stars aren’t hugely bankable.  These aren’t the films that set critical hearts aflutter, but they can be worthwhile all the same.  That’s the case with the likable Juliet, Naked, which continues Nick […]