EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS (no distrib):  The noted painter Titus Kaphar has made an impressive shift into scripted feature films.  Although Exhibiting Forgiveness isn’t strictly speaking autobiographical, Kaphar’s protagonist Tarrell (Andre Holland) is a successful painter whose canvases resemble the filmmaker’s.  Tarrell travels with his wife (Andra Day, playing a recording star) and young son to […]

> Although Sundance still has several days to go, and surprises could spring up at any time (yesterday The Surrogate, a drama with John Hawkes as a man in an iron lung who decides to lose his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt, came out of nowhere to win a huge $6M […]

  Maybe it’s time for a filmmaker who doesn’t give a damn about the Beat Generation to make the next movie about them.  Michael Polish’s BIG SUR joins last year’s On the Road as a Jack Kerouac adaptation that’s gorgeously filmed, performed with seriousness and commitment, and dramatically paralyzed.  (I missed this year’s other Sundance […]

  THE LAST WORD (Bleecker Street):  Shirley MacLaine does the irascible codger thing.  She’s smart enough not to overplay the very familiar hand she’s been dealt by screenwriter Stuart Ross Fink and director Mark Pellington, but still there’s little here we haven’t seen many times before.  Harriet Lauler (MacLaine), while a holy terror to everyone […]

  MISS AMERICANA (Netflix – January 31):  There are certainly areas of Taylor Swift’s life that are carefully elided in MISS AMERICANA (her actor boyfriend’s face and name are absent, for example, and there’s no mention of Cats), and Lana Wilson’s documentary culminates in an inspirational push that is very much on-message with Swift’s latest […]

  EMILY THE CRIMINAL (no distrib):  John Patton Ford’s feature debut is a lean, gritty, accomplished thriller with a smashing star performance from Aubrey Plaza.  Plaza (who also produced) plays the titular Emily, an aspiring artist whose career got derailed due to a violent incident in college, giving her a record that’s preventing her from […]

  MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, which won the Sundance US Dramatic Directing award for Ava DuVernay last night, is in no rush.  The films moves with deliberation as it establishes its leading character and her difficult situation:  Ruby (Emayatzy E. Corinealdi) isn’t a single mom, but she might as well be, with husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) […]

  Joe Swanberg, the director, writer and co-star of HAPPY CHRISTMAS, which premiered at Sundance earlier this week, makes Woody Allen look lazy.  He’s had something like a dozen features to his credit since the start of the decade, and that doesn’t include his shorts and contributions to compilations like V/H/S, to say nothing of the projects […]