About the rabbits

Good Time

Crit

Wow, twice in one weekend a character so far skewed from reasonable and self-preserving behavior that to watch is to cringe. This one, Connie (Robert Pattinson, leaving vampire romance behind forever), plots the perfect crime, enlisting the assistance of his mentally challenged brother Nick (Benny Safdie, who codirected with brother Josh). What could possibly go wrong? Right: that, and then some. An excellent adventure in Sad Bastard Land.

Trailer

• The Killing of a Sacred Deer--Yorgos Lanthimos, director of the wonderfully weird The Lobster and Dogtooth, is back. Hell yeah.

Lost in La Mancha

The Trip to Spain

Crit

For a third time, we follow Steve Coogan and Rob Bryson on a gustatory Odyssey featuring gorgeous scenery, gorgeous food, and gouging jousts of celebrity impersonation, with just enough real-life-seeming problems to suggest that someone thought, mistakenly, that a semblance of plot was necessary. I'm in for wherever's next--France seems a fair bet.

Single White Album

Ingrid Goes West

Crit

OK, I've seen more disturbing films about genocide, and about war. Famine, yeah. Ecocide, maybe. But you get past the heavy hitters in the woozy-making genre, you get down to one fucked-up person making you cringe, making you desperate to shake some sense into her, making you somehow have sympathy for her no matter how awful she is, and there aren't many to compare. There's Young Adult, which comes to mind in part because neither that film nor this one ever flinches from its misanthropic principles, and I'd call Aubrey Plaza here as courageous as Charlize Theron there except that Plaza has already built a body of unpleasant work, whereas Theron had more to lose.

Still: wow.

Trailers

• Gemini--Crime & mystery. Skeptical.
• Beach Rats--Just released in NYC to strong reviews.
• Last Flag Flying--Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne, and Bryan Cranston in a buddy road movie. A possibility.

Dope as shit

Brigsby Bear

Crit

Dogtooth meets Napoleon Dynamite, except it's not in Greek, like the former story of overprotective parenting, and while it shares a gangly adolescent sensibility with the latter, that sensibility engaged me a lot more here. Add to that a spot-on depiction of the lovefest that grows up around the making of an independent film, and we have maybe my favorite weird pic of the year, and one of my favorite pix.

Trailers

• Novitiate--Oh, this looks scary good, with Melissa Leo as an anti-Vatican 2 mother superior in 1964.
• Call Me by Your Name--Another homoerotic teacher-student teaser.
• The Florida Project--If it can avoid oversweetness (trailer suggests it can), this might be in Little Miss Sunshine territory.

Ocean's 7-Eleven

Logan Lucky

Crit

Very smart, very Soderbergh. Did I laugh my ass off? Only in one sequence that I'd rather you discovered on your own (and that you might not laugh your ass off at anyway, depending on your specific nerd zones). But did I laugh, and did I appreciate the intricate plot and the intelligence of ostensibly dim country folk--not to mention the neck tattoo in the shape of West Virginia? Yes, I did.

Trailers

• Black Panther--Sadly, this does not look as kickass as the Marvel character (who was, as far as I know, the first mass-marketed black superhero) deserves.

Reservation sniper

Wind River

Crit

Second feature (and first for a while, and first mature one, looks like) as a director for Taylor Sheridan, who wrote the screenplay, as well as those for Hell or High Water and Sicario. This one, as intense as those, is a gripping story of murder on the rez, and the collateral victims thereof. Jeremy Renner, who just seems to get quieter and better with every film, plays another guy good at killing from long range but less good at dealing with rifleless life.

Trailers

• Suburbicon--This looks like a Coen movie, particularly like Fargo, and there's a good reason for that: Ethan and Joel collaborated on the script with director Clooney, and lots of the repertory company is in it, including Matt Damon, Oscar Isaac, and My Future Wife Julianne Moore. In the old days, I'd call this a 5, as in only the worst reviews imaginable could keep me away.
• Polaroid--Another creepy movie for kids that looks like a remake of something that was probably better in Japanese.

Breathe

Sage femme (The midwife)

Crit

Oh! The French title is the idiomatic term for the English rendering. Catherine Frot is wonderful in the title role as a woman dealing with the potential collapse of her career, an unambitious son with a pregnant girlfriend, her late father's self-centered longtime mistress (Catherine Deneuve, as good as she's ever been), and a cultured, sexy truck driver.

Menashe

Crit

You know how I feel about religion in general, and about religion that interferes with love in particular. So Menashe (Menashe Lustig), whose marriage was arranged and loveless, and who would otherwise would be better off widowed, can't keep his son unless he remarries (and even then, apparently his new wife won't be able to touch the first wife's offspring). A fascinating slice of a life I want no part of.

Trailer

• Brad's Status--Mike White wrote it, and directs Ben Stiller; I'm a strong maybe. 

Call me maybe

Landline

Crit

Apart from a great cast--and that's not nothing, as Jenny Slate, Edie Falco, John Turturro, Jay Duplass, and Abby Quinn nearly convince us that we haven't seen the cheating-father-angry-mother-engaged-but-cold-footed-daughter-rebellious-younger-daughter bit a jillion times before--the main selling point here seems to be returning us to those days of yore when we didn't all have phones and computers in our pockets or purses.

Life during warmtime

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

Crit

Another fine angrymaking documentary, as former president Al Gore, as I call him, magically rescues the Paris Accord from the recalcitrance of the Indian government, the financial sector, and technocrats, but can he rescue the planet from that guy in the White House now? Stay tuned for An Inconvenient Apocalypse: I Fucking TOLD You, Dammit!

Trailers

• Victoria and Abdul--Wait, hasn't Dame Judi already played Queen Vic?
• Breathe--Wait, isn't this just that Stephen Hawking movie again?
• The Mountain between Us--Good cast, plausibility problem.
• Only the Brave--Ditto.

Battle of Algiers

Detroit

Crit

Yes, I suppose it's possible that someone more Rust Belt and more urban could have tunneled ever more unerringly into the essence of the 1967 uprising and the Algiers Motel killings than did white southerner Kathryn Bigelow, but if that had happened, I'm not sure I'd have been able to lift myself from the theater seat afterward. This is an absolutely brutal gut blow, its picture of race relations and police attitudes depressingly timely a half-century on.

Oh, and John Boyega, whom I should have but didn't call to your attention when I saw Attack the Block? He's going to have lots more than a Star Wars career.

Trailers

• Death Wish--Didn't see it w/ Bronson, and it looks equally despicable w/ Willis.
• Justice League--Best I can say is that I'm a lot more likely to see it than before Wonder Woman.

Good sheet

A Ghost Story

Crit

Truth in packaging: this weird, beautiful, quiet, smart, unique, nonscary-but-nonetheless-creepy film really is the story of a ghost, of the sadness of a ghost, who, as Marley tells Scrooge about some despairing spirits he sees, wishes still to be a force for good on Earth but has lost the power forever. The closest analogue I can think of (and it's really not that close) is Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, except that this one is a million times less pretentious and more engaging.

Trailer

• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri--Frances McDormand as foul-mouthed and unpleasant and irresistible as can readily be imagined; I'm in.