The director Denis Villenueve has been staking out some interesting Hollywood territory for himself.  His new SICARIO, which debuted at Cannes and screened at the Toronto Film Festival prior to arriving in theatres next week, is, like his previous Prisoners, a serious adult thriller that demands audience attention and doesn’t compromise its dramatic principles, […]

  DARKEST HOUR (Focus/Universal – Nov. 22):  A shameless piece of rabble-rousing Hollywood biography, directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten, and served hot on a platter to Oscar voters.  The subject is Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman), and the terrain is the first few weeks of his tenure as Prime Minister, doubted by […]

  THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (Searchlight/Disney – in release):  The reason for expanding a documentary into a scripted narrative is typically to allow for an exploration of motive and emotional background not available in the existing footage.  A documentary can show what happened, but not necessarily why it happened.  That makes The Eyes of […]

  THE LIFE OF CHUCK (no distrib):  Although Mike Flanagan first gained attention as a director of low-budget feature films, he may be the first horror filmmaker to become an acknowledged master of the genre largely through episodic television, notably The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass and The Fall Of the House […]

> 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 […]

Stuart Blumberg’s first film as a director (his screenwriting credits include The Kids Are All Right), THANKS FOR SHARING, never quite manages to solve its own central problem:  how to make a sensitive and funny (and not harrowing) movie on the subject of sex addiction. We’ve had the harrowing version, of course, with Steve McQueen’s […]

  The writer/producer/director John Wells made his reputation as the showrunner of ER, and he’s known as one of the most consistent, professional producers in the network business, with impeccable shows like The West Wing and Third Watch to his credit.  In recent years, though, he’s been spending a lot of his time in the more rambunctious world […]

  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 […]