> The first substantial buy of the Toronto Film Festival (Shame had sold first, but for art film prices) turned out to be Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, a modestly engaging romantic comedy from Lasse Hallstrom.  Hallstrom has made a career out of “modestly engaging,” following his early distinction with My Life As a Dog […]

As an actor, James Franco often delivers performances that are packed in quotation marks, as though he’s an actor playing the role of an actor playing his role.  In I AM MICHAEL, however, he does serious, substantive work as Michael Glatze, a real-life one-time gay activist who became not just a fundamentalist Christian pastor, but a […]

  HONK FOR JESUS.  SAVE YOUR SOUL (no distrib):  Scandal-ridden mega-churches aren’t exactly fresh territory for screens big (The Tears of Tammy Faye) or small (The Righteous Gemstones), with tones that range from wildly comic to solemn.  Adamma Edo’s feature debut doesn’t have much to add to the subject, but it does have Sterling K. […]

> Sundance announced the second group of its 2012 titles today (Competition entries were announced yesterday; Premieres will be unveiled on Monday), mostly in what are traditionally the most untraditional categories of the Festival:  Park City At Midnight, Next, and New Frontier. Also announced were the Spotlight films, which is where Sundance puts films that […]

  THE FAREWELL (A24):  Lulu Wang’s The Farewell is what could be called Sundance Classic, a small, very personal film nurtured by the festival into wide enough attention that A24 paid $6M to release it.  It’s based on Wang’s own life, so much so that it would be a spoiler to reveal the caption to […]

  I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (no distrib):  Pop culture seems to have an endless fascination with the post-apocalypse, and I Think We’re Alone Now has plenty of pedigree, hailing from Handmaid’s Tale pilot director Reed Morano, and with Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning as seemingly the last people on Earth.  Nevertheless, it’s a misfire, […]

  Like his Oscar-winning A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s THE PAST is concerned with the abyss of uncertainty and mystery that lies under seemingly straightforward actions, the ever-increasing complications that become evident whenever one scrutinizes the events and motives of everyday life. Although the setting this time is Paris, and the characters aren’t the same, in many ways, The […]

  NEBRASKA:  Buy A Ticket – A Lovely, Tart Slice of Americana An unusually strong season for American movies continues with the arrival of the simple and profound NEBRASKA, directed by Alexander Payne from a marvelous script by first-time feature writer Bob Nelson.  Among its other virtues, it manages to feature within its 114 minutes […]