NOW PLAYING: Seraphine! Worse Lieutenant, Serious Man, Ed, Gents, Loud, Wild

Jeff Overstreet said to see Seraphine, sounds like a candidate for Soul Food flick of the year. It's at Videomatica and other local shops, but today's great news is from N.W. Douglas, who tells us it's playing at The Hollywood this week! Best theatre in town, like a time-travel trip to the days of Bogart and Bacall - with prices to match. Thanks, N.W.!

(The random-firing letter scrambler in my brain read

"in French with English subtleties."

Balancing that distinctively French tendency to overstatement, I suppose...)

If you were thinking of taking in Werner Herzog's BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS because you saw or heard about Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT - which, however foul it may have been, was also completely preoccupied with Christian redemption... Don't rush out to buy tickets. The Guardian reports that "Herzog’s remake jettisons the Catholicism and is lighter in tone.” New at Tinseltown

A SERIOUS MAN continues at 5th Avenue, and continues to stick in my mind. I've posted a Fuller review of this Job-fashioned tale of sixties suburbia from a theology buddy of Robert K. Johnston. (Here's a link to my post-movie musings...)

AN EDUCATION continues at Fifth Avenue and Tinseltown. Director Lone Scherfig did ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS. I'm told this one involves a tour of C.S. Lewis sites in Oxford as a seduction strategy. Hmmm...

Most wouldn't rush to GENTLEMEN BRONCOS for its theology, but The New Yorker might. Granville 7.

IT MIGHT GET LOUD is about guitar heroes, including The Edge. Denman, daily at 2:30.

And I don't know that WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is in any particular sense a Soul Food movie, but I'm starting to think it's bumping UP from the top slot on my 2009 roster. Utterly unique, with monsters rendered as a sullen clique of just-barely-teen-agers, slipping back and forth between unfettered kidness and terrified pseudo-adulthood.

And coming next weekend: Jeff Overstreet's 2009 favourite, MUNYURANGABO. Thanks for the tip, Mr Chattaway!