Awards season is Darwinian, often placing two titles in direct competition that have only general traits in common.  Last year we had the British biographies The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game, which might have canceled each other out in the end.  This year brings two excellent stories about journalism, Truth and now […]

  LOVE, BROOKLYN (no distrib):  Roger (Andre Holland) is a successful magazine writer who’s hung up on his latest piece, because it requires him to come to grips about how he feels regarding the Brooklyn bourgeoisie of which he’s a part, and the gentrification that’s taking increasing hold of the borough.  Is disruptive change something to […]

  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 OUTRUN (no distrib):  Films about alcoholics and addicts in recovery are too numerous to count, and it’s easy to understand why.  The stories offer a clear narrative path, usually with an inspirational destination (occasionally with a tragic end, which can be just as cathartic), as well as a ready-made showcase for the star, […]

  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 […]

  The title ZIPPER suggests something wittier and more enticing than Mora Stephens’ well-made melodrama turns out to be.  If a filmmaker is determined to reexamine the familiar story of a politician who can’t control his own personal excesses, some kind of new take or distinctive angle is advisable, but Stephens and her co-writer Joel Viertel […]

  It isn’t often that one needs to invoke Intolerance to describe a current film, but CLOUD ATLAS demands it.  Like D.W. Griffith’s epic, it intercuts between stories taking place across hundreds of years of human experience–in this case, from the 19th to the 23rd centuries–in order to tell a larger, inspirational story about destiny and freedom.  Although […]

  THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (Sony Classics – Dec. 20):  Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language feature is in keeping with his recent, more contemplative films (Pain and Glory, Parallel Mothers), but it’s even more restrained than those.  Based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez, it’s virtually a chamber piece for two actresses, Tilda Swinton (who’d previously starred […]