No one can accuse LOW DOWN of attempting to glamorize the true story it tells.  Jeff Preiss’s first film as a director is a slow, grim dirge set in an underbelly of the jazz world in 1970s Los Angeles, and it’s been co-written (with Topper Lilien) and -produced (and based on the memoir by) Amy-Jo Albany, […]

  WINNER (no distrib):  Yes, this sounds familiar.  Last year, HBO aired Tina Satter’s Reality, which told the story of the young jailed NSA leaker Reality Winner, and now filmmaker Susanna Fogel has taken the other half of that memorable name for her version of the tale.  (The Reality title was more evocative.)  Their approaches […]

  Toy’s House wasn’t the only movie at this year’s Sundance about boys fending for themselves.  THE INEVITABLE DEFEAT OF MISTER AND PETE depicts a less voluntary version of the effort to keep going without adults, set in a much more hostile environment.  George Tillman Jr’s film, written by Michael Starrbury, is set in a […]

  THE FABELMANS (Universal – November 11):  Like all superheroes, Steven Spielberg has an origin story, and he tells it in The Fabelmans, whose world premiere was far and away the signature event of this year’s Toronto Film Festival.  Bits and pieces of this lore have been scattered throughout Spielberg’s filmmaking career, with all its […]

  THE SHROUDS (no distrib):  At age 81, David Cronenberg’s fascination with the malignant possibilities of the human body, and with the fiendish manipulation of same, still knows no bounds.  The Shrouds begins with the premise of a cemetery in which the bodies of the decomposing dead are wrapped in electronic swaddling that enables mourners to watch […]

  JOKER (Warners – October 4):  One’s perception of Todd Phillips’ JOKER may depend in part on the context in which one sees it.  In the 11 years since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the MCU has taken over not just Hollywood’s financial heart but the very tone and definition of the comic-book genre.  The […]

  LONE SURVIVOR:  Buy A Ticket – A Powerfully Visceral Tale of War Peter Berg’s LONE SURVIVOR, which was shown at the AFI Film Festival tonight in advance of its release late next month, is a docudrama in the truest sense:  based on the memoir by Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, it exists with one aim […]

  SIDNEY HALL (no distrib):  Shawn Christensen’s literary drama (written with Jason Dolan) is initially engaging as a modern-day sort of J.D. Salinger story, told simultaneously across three time periods, with Sidney Hall (Logan Lerman throughout) presented as an arrogant but troubled teen, an acclaimed novelist, and a middle-aged man who’s run away from the […]