JACKIE (Fox Searchlight – December 9):  The most impressive film of the festival thus far is director Pablo Larrain’s jewel-like examination of the realities and artifices behind our perceptions of history, viewed through the prism of Jackie Kennedy, who is played by Natalie Portman in a performance that goes beyond (brilliant) impersonation to deliver […]

  WAVES (A24 – November 1):  Trey Edward Shults’ third film (after the micro-budgeted indie Krisha and the horror movie They Come By Night) manages the remarkable feat of feeling both experimental and grounded, as propulsive as an episode of Euphoria without that show’s smug affectations.  There isn’t a lot of plot, and what there […]

  THE ZONE OF INTEREST (A24 – TBD):  Jonathan Glazer has only directed 4 feature films in his 23-year career (the most recent was Under the Skin a decade ago).  His latest, The Zone of Interest, is a work of formal brilliance, although unlikely to be to the taste of mainstream audiences.  So rigorous and painstaking in its […]

>   THE DESCENDANTS:  Worth A Ticket – Flawed But Heartfelt It’s taken an unaccountable 7 years for Alexander Payne to follow up Sideways, the biggest hit of his career,  with THE DESCENDANTS, which will hit theatres in time for a serious awards season push in late November.  Sideways and Payne’s earlier Election are two […]

  It’s not really a surprise to see Alfonso Cuaron join James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott in that small group of film artists who have made 3D part of the essential toolbox of their imagery (no, Baz Luhrmann and Guillermo del Toro don’t make the list, although Michael Bay might).  Cuaron is a […]

  Marc Abraham, for his second film as director (prior to that, he was a veteran producer), has chosen his second consecutive mid-20th-century biography, following 2008’s Flash of Genius with I SAW THE LIGHT, which premiered tonight at the Toronto Film Festival and will open in theatres in November.  The life of country music star […]

  PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN (Annapurna – Oct. 13):  In the hothouse of a film festival, movies that are unrelated inevitably begin to collide with each other in the viewer’s mind.  So it’s difficult, in a festival that’s given us the extraordinary Disobedience, to give similar weight to Angela Robinson’s much frothier and thinner […]

  BELFAST (Focus/Universal – Nov. 12):  Kenneth Branagh’s semiautobiographical film walks a path laid by many great works by master filmmakers, including Fellini’s Amarcord, John Boorman’s Hope and Glory, and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma.  Compared to those, Belfast is a relatively minor work, yet quite enjoyable on its own terms.  The setting is 1969, as “the […]