At the movies: Poetry.

One of the stunners from this past year's New York Film Festival. This movie has just about everything. Crime, intrigue, knowledge, beauty, disease, pleasure, torment, and the cruelty of the body. Until David Cronenberg makes a movie about Alzheimer's, this is one of the best ever on the subject.

At the movies: Of Gods and Men.

A great teaching tool for religious tolerance, as well as a sad companion to Roland Joffe's 1986 masterpiece The Mission. That film, if you didn't know, had me wanting to be a Jesuit for a while. This one didn't have as much of an impact, but I see it as a useful film, and one that I look forward to wrangling folk in to see.

At the movies: Certified Copy.

The new Abbas Kiarostami film is kind of awesome. It's alive and strange and it does things to your mind...

It even restored my Boston associate's love of the cinema for a little while.

At the movies: White Material.

It's staggering that it took almost two years for the latest Claire Denis film to make it to the U.S. But we can certainly be glad that it did. It's a haunting and majestic film that will nonetheless make you think about what Africa is and represents in your own life.

At the movies: Paul.

So, apparently I liked this movie way more than the rest of the world (barring Steve K and Zack H). I acknowledge some of its flaws, but I stand by it as being a lot weirder and more complex than it's getting credit for.

Also, it does that epic tracking shot along the underside of a spacecraft, and I just adore that.

At the movies: Cedar Rapids.

A genial enough comedy about institutional corruption and nascent Peter Panism.

At the movies: Kaboom.

The more I think about Gregg Araki's latest film, the more I love it. I've seen it three times now, and its genial awesomeness grows exponentially. It's very Nowhere, but with a great deal more positive sex vibes (which is something that the world desperately needs). If I said this was like the sex-hippie version of Demonlover, would that make you want to go?