> Worth a ticket. The director and writer of Saw, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, combine again to bring us–hey, where are you going?  No, seriously:  don’t run away.  Leaving aside that Saw is rather unfairly maligned (before it became the poster child for “torture porn” and a dumb sequel machine for Lionsgate, the original […]

      CONTRABAND:  Worth A Ticket – Working-Class Thriller   CONTRABAND is a B movie, but oddly enough, that’s one thing in short supply these days.  Action movies in modern Hollywood usually come with giant CG-laden budgets, or with a Drive-like overweening sense of self-importance.  A modest picture that simply wants to entertain for […]

> Derick Martini’s HICK is like a Sundance movie that took the wrong indie-film exit and wound up in Toronto.  For whatever reason, Toronto’s film festival tends to find itself with fewer stories of young people from small towns who come of age on the road, so Hick has a little air of distinction here. […]

> Today, 3 films from first-time directors: Caroline Bottaro’s marvelous QUEEN TO PLAY is, in a sense, a sports movie.  We have the out-of-nowhere player whose newly-discovered talent shakes up her whole life, the wise and somewhat eccentric mentor, even the climactic competition.  The game here, though, is chess, and the film (in French, with […]

LOLA VERSUS:  Watch It At Home – An Unmemorable Woman   LOLA VERSUS‘ ambition is pretty clear:  it wants to be the 2012 version of Paul Mazursky’s 1978 comedy-drama AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, which is to say covering all the bases except the “married” part.  We meet Lola (Greta Gerwig) on her 29th birthday, and she […]

  THE HATE U GIVE (20th – October 19):  YA radicalization.  George Tillman Jr’s film, from a sprawling script by Audrey Wells (based on the novel by Angie Thomas) centers on Starr (Amandla Stenberg), an African-American teen who witnesses her friend shot to death by a white cop.  But the story also wants to encompass […]

  Worth a ticket.   Tom McCarthy has been carving a modest but very impressive niche for himself in the indie film universe. His films The Station Agent and The Visitor were both superbly written and performed, and he takes a small step toward the commercial mainstream with the new WIN WIN. Paul Giamatti stars […]