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10 NEW TO NETFLIX "Apocalypse Now Redux" " The Aviator " " Brokeback Mountain " "The Burbs" " Fletch " " Jerry Maguire " " Minority Report " "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" " Sing Street " " Top Gun " 10 NEW TO HBO MAX " Before Sunrise " " Hereditary " " John Wick " (1-3) " Lawrence of Arabia " " The Lobster " " Matilda " " The Menu " " Strange Days " " Tenet " " Zero Dark Thirty " 14 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD " The Adventures of Baron Munchausen " (Criterion) Terry Gilliam may still be a Criterion fave (" Brazil ," " The Fisher King ," and " Time Bandits " were all previously released) but the legacy of the man has been impacted by recent revelations about his treatment of Sarah Polley on the set of this film. Criterion doesn'...

Sundance unleashed a baffling mess last week with the satire “ Landscape with Invisible Hand ,” the latest movie from “ Thoroughbreds ” director Cory Finley . For his third project, he invests a lot of time and care into a story about existence after an alien invasion, which features a lot of funhouse reflections on human life. But the movie is so disjointed that Finley’s take on absurdity only leaves one cold instead of amused. It’s the 2030s, and a race of aliens called the Vuvv—pink bread loaves with slippers for hands that they talk with using scrapes—have taken over the world. But they haven’t taken away much of what makes life in America. They’ve just rebranded it. The education system is still struggling, as students like Adam ( Asante Blackk ) and Chloe ( Kylie Rogers ) have to learn about Vuvv culture and language, things that will only help them become drones, not free-thinkers. And human lives are treated as entertainment, so Adam and Natalie start to broadcast their high ...

Andrew Bowser is a filmmaker who deeply commits to his creations, and I suspect that will help his budding career as a writer/director/editor/actor. Take his hilarious and impressive Midnight movie “ Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls ,” a handmade horror gem that centers Bowser’s geeky occultist character Onyx. Bowser has been working on Onyx for years in YouTube videos, and he brings Onyx to the big screen with a dedication to the same mannerisms he took to fake news interviews. With something of a resting stressed face, Onyx speaks quickly and anxiously as if trapped in the mannerisms of a dungeon master; he constantly looks uncomfortable, but the performance is seamless like great and memorable comedy characters are. Some people are going to find this level of actorly dedication really annoying. I couldn’t get enough of it.   “Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls” finds our nervous Satan-worshipping hero on a retreat to hang out with his favorite occultist...

Trauma has long been a theme of independent cinema—it doesn’t cost a lot of money to tell stories of human resilience. And so it makes sense that a festival like Sundance would have a large selection of what could be called depressing cinema. However, “depressing” is often a more complex descriptor that it sounds. Two of the films in this dispatch are undeniably bleak, but they overcome that mood through dense character detail and ace filmmaking. The third wallows in its bleakness with too little artistry to balance out the sense that the audience is merely being punished for buying a ticket. The best of the three is Noora Niasari’s confidently personal debut “Shayda,” which won an Audience Award over the weekend for the World Dramatic Competition program. Reportedly based on the filmmaker’s own experience, it’s a drama that surges with truth, thanks in no small part to a stunning performance from Zar Amir Ebrahimi , winner of Best Actress at Cannes for “ Holy Spider .” Ebrahimi...

Director Michael Jacobs , now 67 years old, adapted his 1978 play for “ Maybe I Do .” The title’s contradiction between the tentative and the declarative reflects the different views on love and marriage represented by three couples: a young woman ( Emma Roberts ) who wants to marry a boyfriend ( Luke Bracey ) who is not ready to commit. Her parents ( Richard Gere and Diane Keaton ) are sadly estranged, and his parents ( William H. Macy and Susan Sarandon ) are bitterly estranged. The two families meet for dinner, not knowing that some of them have already met. The Gere/Sarandon characters have been having an affair and the Macy/Keaton characters met the evening before and had a long, intimate conversation. In an interview, Jacobs talked about which actor’s character had a backstory and which did not need one and what he told his children about love. The costume and production design really helped to establish the characters. Our costume designer is Sarah Fleming. And Sarah an...

It wouldn’t be Sundance without a half-dozen or so profile docs. It’s a form of non-fiction filmmaking that often drives me a little crazy as filmmakers too commonly dismiss form to plant a camera down in front of someone willing to tell anecdotes about somebody they used to know. Often called a “talking head doc,” these movies require minimal effort and typically offer very little insight. Occasionally, a bio-doc can break form (like Brett Morgen ’s fantastic “ Moonage Daydream ”), but too many documentary creators are content to adopt a “then this happened” approach to telling the private story of a public life. Three profile docs from Sundance almost feel like they’re in conversation with each other, targeting the thousands of people in the audience who were children of the ‘80s that read Judy Blume, listened to the Indigo Girls, and watched Brooke Shields . And yet, what’s funny is how these three films prove that even the bio-doc can range in quality as there’s a distinct hie...

" Close ," about two small-town Belgian boys who are as tight as brothers, is a devastating movie. But to what end?  I can't say what I mean by that question—not at this point—because "Close" is critic-proof, perhaps discussion-proof, if the reader or listener hasn't already seen it. A pivotal early plot development makes it impossible to discuss at length, or in detail, lest the writer be pilloried for "spoilers." And yet to avoid discussing the rest of the movie is to avoid discussing the movie. So all that remains is handing out compliments to the cast (they are superb, no doubt—especially Eden Dambrine and Gustav de Waele as the young friends) and to director-cowriter Lukas Dhont , who imbues the story with a polished naturalist quality that occasional evokes Terrence Malick (" The Tree of Life " comes to mind often). Let's just say at the top of this review that, evaluated purely...

It was with a measure of trepidation that I entered Alamo Drafthouse Wrigleyville last night for its dedication ceremony held prior to its opening today at 3519 North Clark Street. The venue is located not very far from the Music Box Theatre, which I along with countless other movie lovers in Chicago consider a sacred temple for the communal experience of cinema. Would the opening of an Alamo Drafthouse in the same neighborhood somehow endanger the Music Box's survival? It didn't take long for those fears to be put to rest: this theater chain offers an entirely different type of moviegoing experience, and it only expands upon the great mixture of new releases and revival screenings that have long been the Music Box's trademark. With over 500 people attending the current Billy Wilder weekend matinee series at the Music Box, there is clearly enough movie love in the city to justify the existence of multiple spectacular movie theaters.  Tickets for Alamo Drafthouse W...