BOY ERASED (Focus/Universal – November 2):  Joel Edgerton’s film is the second of the year concerning gay conversion therapy, and its tone is far more conventional than The Miseducation of Cameron Post.  Lucas Hedges plays Jared Eamons (this is a fictionalized version of a true story), son of southern pastor Marshall (Russell Crowe) and […]

  SAVE YOURSELVES! (no distrib):  A moderately amusing sketch that doesn’t quite have the heft for feature length.  Writer/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson satirize Brooklyn hipsters and sci-fi in their story of a couple, Jack (John Reynolds) and Su (Sunita Mani), who’ve decided to ditch their devices and spend a week in a […]

  MY OLD SCHOOL (no distrib):  Although the story is apparently well-known in the UK, here the twisty tale that Jono McLeod unfurls in his documentary would constitute a spoiler, so we’ll leave things vague here.  This much is fair:  in the early 1990s, a 16-year old student named Brandon Lee arrived at a Glasgow […]

  THE ZONE OF INTEREST (A24 – TBD):  Jonathan Glazer has only directed 4 feature films in his 23-year career (the most recent was Under the Skin a decade ago).  His latest, The Zone of Interest, is a work of formal brilliance, although unlikely to be to the taste of mainstream audiences.  So rigorous and painstaking in its […]

  HERETIC (A24 – Nov. 15):  A nifty piece of philosophical horror from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the writers of the original A Quiet Place.  The set-up is almost fairy tale in its simplicity.  A pair of young women who are Mormon missionaries, Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Baxter (Chloe East), are at the […]

> Gus Van Sant has been making movies for 25 years, but Restless–apart from its technical polish–feels like the work of a Sundance newcomer. And one who’s been reading too much Salinger, while meanwhile wearing out his DVD of Harold and Maude. Restless is way beyond twee; its mega-tweeness is like a Transformers movie compared […]

>Two Australian couples vacation together on the beaches of Cambodia, but only 3 people return. That’s the set-up for Kieran Darcy-Smith’s skilled debut WISH YOU WERE HERE, which premiered as part of Sundance’s World Cinema competition.The focal point of the story is the more settled, middle-class couple on the trip: Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice […]

At this point, with 3 first-rate films to his name, it’s time to stop remarking on how surprising it is that Ben Affleck is a major American filmmaker and just accept that he is one.  His latest, ARGO, is his best yet, one that has a broader palette of tones and a larger sense of scale […]