QUEER (A24 – TBD):  Luca Guadagnino has unearthed glamour in the blood-soaked dance troupe/witches’ coven of Suspiria and the cannibal romance of Bones and All, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that his seedy 1950s Mexico City and South America of Queer glistens with swank.  Queer is based (by Justin Kuritzkes, who wrote Guadagnino’s Challengers) […]

  SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD – Watch It At Home – Apocalypse Rom-Com Now   SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD marks the directing debut of its writer Lorene Scafaria, who until now has mostly been known as screenwriter of the marvelous 2008 Nick and Norah’s Infinite […]

  BEAUTIFUL CREATURES:  Watch It At Home – Many Witches, Little Magic BEAUTIFUL CREATURES can’t be dismissed as merely an overlong TV episode meant for the CW, but it never really comes together, either.  Richard LaGravenese’s film is another on the tall pile of Young Adult fantasies trying to latch onto audiences now adrift without […]

> Oren Moverman’s first film as a director, The Messenger, was a beautifully contained, emotionally detailed story about soldiers assigned to deliver tragic news to the families of the deceased.  In his new film RAMPART, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Moverman is more ambitious and, unfortunately, a victim of the sophomore jinx. This […]

  A REAL PAIN (Searchlight/Disney – TBD):  David (Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) are cousins born just months apart and raised in close companionship.  Over the years, though, they’ve drifted apart.  Partly it’s because David remained in New York City, where he has a mundane but successful job selling […]

  UPSTREAM COLOR:  Worth A Ticket – But Not If You Require Coherent Plotting I’d be lying if I said I really knew what the hell was going on in UPSTREAM COLOR, and yet the experience of watching it was surprisingly enjoyable, even gripping in an odd way.  Watching Shane Carruth’s film (he serves as […]

> Watch It At Home:  Morgan Spurlock’s latest doc is more stunt than revelation. If Michael Moore were a movie franchise, Morgan Spurlock would be the direct-to-video entry in the series.  Or maybe the one that adds cheesy 3D effects to squeeze out every last dollar.   Moore is, lord knows, self-aggrandizing and fond of the […]

  Pending the arrival of this week’s finale, Mike Newell’s 2005 HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE may be, on balance, the most satisfying of the series.  It combines first-rate moviemaking with one of J.K. Rowling’s most ingeniously constructed, emotionally rich stories–capped, of course, by the unveiling of Ralph Fiennes as the finally fully […]