IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (Annapurna – November 30):  Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to Moonlight received a rapturous standing ovation at its Toronto premiere, and it’s unquestionably a beautiful piece of filmmaking,  Jenkins reunited with most of his Moonlight creative team, including cinematographer James Laxton and composer Nicholas Britell, and with a higher budget at […]

  The first half of The Walking Dead‘s 9th season included so many major changes that its ratings continuing their general downward trend rather than collapsing entirely may count as a sort of moral victory, even though the numbers are now at series lows.  New showrunner Angela Kang had 8 episodes to cover a whole […]

  GAME OF THRONES:  Sunday 9PM on HBO Concerns have been as high as expectations for the final season of GAME OF THRONES.  Season 7, the first with little recourse to George R. R. Martin’s novels due to the lagging rate of his writing, was generally considered a warning of trouble ahead, with a pace […]

  ALMOST FAMILY:  Wednesday 9PM on FOX Whether we like it or not, the strongest lead-in on broadcast television right now is The Masked Singer, which makes it somewhat surprising that FOX has given the precious slot afterward to the mess that ALMOST FAMILY appears to be.  Even more surprising is that the lead producer […]

  ONE SECOND (Neon – TBD):  Zhang Yimou’s film was notoriously the subject of controversy with the Chinese government, which held it back from its originally scheduled film festival debut in 2019, and forced some reediting and even reshooting, so one assumes that in its initial version, the story, set during the Cultural Revolution, was […]

  YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (A24):  The title of Nicole Holofcener’s newest film is a fair guide to its stakes.  Her projects (Walking & Talking, Lovely & Amazing, Friends With Money, Enough Said) have always been modest in scale, but this one in particular feels more like a collection of anecdotes than even a short […]

  ON SWIFT HORSES (no distrib):  In the years after World War II, Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) marries Lee (Will Poulter), who’s hardworking and in love with her but not exciting, and they move into the Kansas house she inherited from her family.  First she hears about, then she finally meets Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi), who’s […]