> TIFF’s Midnight Madness program is exactly what you think it is:  10 flat-out, unapologetic genre movies that premiere each night at midnight in front of a raucous crowd at the 1200-seat Ryerson Theatre.  In any given year, the Madness may include unexpected gems like last year’s Insidious and 2006’s Borat, interestingly weird pictures such […]

  SERGIO (Netflix – April 17):  Greg Barker’s film has an unusual pedigree.  Barker, up to this point a documentarian, directed a nonfiction version of the same story (and with the same title) in 2009, but decided that he wanted to explore the life of UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello further in a way […]

  JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (Warners/HBO Max – February 12):  The title refers to the FBI informant Bill O’Neal (played here by LaKeith Stanfield) and the Illinois Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya).  Although Hampton was only 21 years old, he was so charismatic and successful–he had put together a local coalition that […]

  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” […]

  REBEL IN THE RYE (no distrib):  Danny Strong’s first film as a director is a biography of J. D. Salinger (Nicholas Hoult), and it hits all the Salinger bullet points:  his early struggles to get published, his spectacularly doomed romance with legendary playwright’s daughter Oona O’Neill (he lost her to Charlie Chaplin), his difficult […]

> Sundance changed the way it kicks things off this year. Instead of a single high-profile Opening Night Film (which has almost always turned out to be a disappointment), the festival screened several smaller films. For those of us who arrived before the madness begins in earnest tomorrow, there was the chance to get Wait […]

Michael Shannon is brilliant in ICEMAN, but it has to be said that he’s brilliant in just about the same way that he was in Take Shelter, in Revolutionary Road, on Boardwalk Empire, and even in The Runaways (although at least there he got to be funny).  For an actor who only became known to a wide audience 3 years ago […]

  In recent years, the… let’s call it mature audience has been a profitable one, making moderate hits of films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet.  This holiday season, the title of choice for this niche is likely to be PHILOMENA, a literate tearjerker that Harvey Weinstein unveiled at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Based on a true […]