BREATHE (Bleecker Street – Oct 13):  BREATHE wasn’t the favored Triumph of the Human Spirit drama at Toronto this year; that title went to Stronger, with Jake Gyllanhaal as a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing.  Not having seen Stronger, I can’t compare the two, but Breathe has plenty in it to please audiences […]

  INHUMANS:  Friday 9PM on ABC (starting Sept 29) – Change the Channel In this world of Peak TV, it’s harder for a new series to break through the clutter than it’s ever been, and that thicket will be a veritable forest during the fourth week of September, when the major broadcast networks will follow […]

  A film festival is certainly the place for a feature-length semi-linear flow of unscripted dialogue and bizarre imagery if anywhere is, so welcome to UNDER THE SKIN.  The writer/director Jonathan Glazer has gradually been transforming into an abstract filmmaker:  he started with Sexy Beast, which was a fairly traditional narrative, then followed it with Birth, a piece […]

  SHIRLEY (no distrib):  Josephine Decker’s film isn’t really a biography of the horror writer Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery), played here by Elizabeth Moss.  The script by Sarah Gubbins is based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell loosely inspired by Jackson’s life, and that fictional story has been changed […]

> Chris Columbus’ Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were well-crafted, entertaining movies, but Alfonso Cuaron’s 2004 HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN was the first real Potter film. It’s also the least successful financially (if you think $795M worldwide is something to complain about).  This may be because it’s burdened by the most […]

Michael Shannon is brilliant in ICEMAN, but it has to be said that he’s brilliant in just about the same way that he was in Take Shelter, in Revolutionary Road, on Boardwalk Empire, and even in The Runaways (although at least there he got to be funny).  For an actor who only became known to a wide audience 3 years ago […]

  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 […]

> See Also: 2011 HONORABLE MENTIONS 2011 WORST 10   As a movie year, 2011 felt, more than anything else, like a reflection of an art and a business in disarray.  Economically, it was a down year and for the major studios, a frightening one:  beyond the special case of the Harry Potter  finale, virtually […]