A new crop of prestige titles plant a flag at the arthouse in limited release this weekend from Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All to Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, to Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection. Greenwich Entertainment opens doc Love, Charlie: The Rise And Fall Of Charlie Trotter IFC Films presents Bad Axe and Cohen Media Group is taking a swing at Fernando Trueba’s Memories Of My Father.
A host of other specialty releases are holding over even as She Said from Universal Pictures and The Menu from Searchlight Pictures open wide. Juggernaut Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is in week two. It’s getting crowded here. Sony Pictures Classics just said it will push a November 25 release date for The Son back to Jan., citing “a marketplace that appears to be getting more overcrowded daily.” (It’s keeping the Nov. date for a one-week only qualifying run.)
But that also means waves of new and interesting films. Watch critics Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy opine on a few of this week’s entrants led by Bones And All. Guadagnino’s first film shot in America, presented by UAR, opens in five locations in New York and Los Angeles, expanding nationwide Nov. 23. The reviews are great. Deadline’s here. And then there’s Chalamet’s star power. His enthusiastic fandom led Italian police to shut down a red carpet event in Milan last weekend.
The unique thriller featuring cannibalism, romance and a road trip nabbed two prizes at the Venice Film Festival, with director Guadagnino winning the Silver Lion Award for Best Director, and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor going to Taylor Russell. She plays Maren, a young woman learning how to survive on the margins of society, who meets Chalamet’s Lee, an intense, disenfranchised drifter. Together, they search for identity in a perilous world that cannot abide who they are. Screenplay by David Kajganich. With Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz and Mark Rylance. Based on the Novel by: Camille DeAngelis.
Skolimowski’s EO from Sideshow/Janus Films is told and shot through the eyes of a grey donkey. He meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures as the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. Opens at Film at Lincoln Center and Film Forum in NYC this weekend, moving to LA next and expanding thereafter. Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize. Deadline review here.
A24 presents The Inspection on five screens in New York and LA. The narrative feature debut for writer-director Bratton premiere at Toronto and screened at the New York Film Festival. Jeremy Pope is powerful as Ellis French, a gay and homeless young man whose life takes a seismic turn when he joins the marines. Gabrielle Union play his withholding mother, Inez. See Deadline review.
IFC Films presents SXSW Audience Award winning doc Bad Axe in NYC at the IFC Center and LA at Laemmle Glendale. Also on VOD. The feature debut of David Siev, who moved from his NYC home to small-town Bad Axe, Michigan in 2020 to shelter during Covid with his family as they fought to keep their restaurant afloat. Siev kept the camera rolling through the harsh shutdown and stressful reopening amid rising anti-Asian sentiment and a community backlash after family members participated in a Black Lives Matter protest. Siev’s father, a survivor of the Cambodian killing fields, embodies the promise and conflict of the immigrant experience, and it all leads up to the high-stakes 2020 presidential election. See Deadline’s SXSW interview with Siev.
Greenwich Entertainment opens doc Love, Charlie: The Rise And Fall Of Charlie Trotter by Rebecca Halpern at the Quad in NYC, Laemmle Monica in LA and Music Box in Chicago. Also on TVOD. Trotter revolutionized American cuisine and paved the way for today’s celebrity chefs. His eponymous Chicago restaurant was one of the world’s top dining destinations. With exclusive access to never-before-seen material, the film reveals Trotter’s relentless pursuit of excellence. Featuring Grant Achatz, Emeril Lagasse, and Wolfgang Puck.
Cohen Media Group presents Fernando Trueba’s Memories Of My Father, which premiered at Cannes back in 2020 and was Colombia’s international feature film Oscar submission that year, acquired by CMG in 2021. Opens in New York and Miami, which was a great market for the distributor’s recent Javier Bardem comedy The Good Boss. The theatrical release follows a Trueba retrospective at the Quad this past week curated by longtime New York Film Festival director Richard Pena. Screenings at the Spanish Consulate, the Columbian Consulate and other orgs. (Trueba is Spanish, the film is Colombian). It follows Héctor Abad Gómez (Javier Cámara), a doctor and a human rights activist concerned with both his own children and the children of the underprivileged classes in the violent 1970s in Medellin, Colombia. This is an intimate story seen through the eyes of his only son, Héctor Abad Faciolince (Nicolás Reyes Cano/Juan Pablo Urrego), one of the most outstanding writers in contemporary Colombia. Deadline review here.
RLJE Films Presents Taurus by Tim Sutton in about 25 theaters and on demand. With Colson Baker, Maddie Hasson, Demetrius “Lil Meech” Flenory, Ruby Rose, Scoot McNairy, Lil Tjay, Naomi Wild. A rising but troubled musician searches for the inspiration to record his next song, pushing himself deep into the void. A work of fiction that explores fame, addiction, the artistic process, and the music industry. Deadline’s Berlin review.
Netflix opens Robert Downey Sr. doc Sr. at the IFC today and the Laemmle Monica in LA next Wednesday. (Also, The Swimmers continues in 5 theaters. Bardo expands to about 150 theaters in 50+ cities and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio expands to 520 theaters in 130+ cities.)