Wes Anderson may be the only living American auteur whose very name gives you everything you need to know about a movie, yet almost nothing in terms of its specifics.

A free, inaugural event organized by the Quad Cities' newest non-profit Truth First Film Illiance Inc., a special screening of the documentary Stout Hearted: George Stout & the Guardians of Art will be held at Davenport's Figge Art Museum on November 11, the film's titular figure an Iowa native whose heroic actions in World War II were memorialized by George Clooney in the 2014 movie The Monuments Men.

Currently holding a perfect 100-percent critical-approval rating on RottenTomatoes.com, Fritz Lang's classic 1931 thriller M enjoys a November 12 screening at Rozz-Tox, this breakthrough for star Peter Lorre the latest presentation in the Kinogarten series of acclaimed, German-themed works hosted by the Rock Island venue and Davenport's German American Heritage Center.

After an appealing opening half-hour, this odd, ultimately unsatisfying blend of time-travel adventure and horror yarn grows more ludicrous and lifeless as it progresses, and by the finale, you can't even recognize it as an Edgar Wright film anymore. While there's a great beat, at least initially, I'll be damned if I could dance to it.

While it may not be a “complete” entertainment quite yet (and as of this writing, no followup is contractually guaranteed), there's so much that's engaging and inventive and glorious about the Dune world according to Denis Villeneuve that the movie practically nullifies your complaints while they're occurring to you. That's not to say I didn't leave with a few; I just didn't mind them much.

While Ridley Scott's latest is ultimately engrossing, if for deeply complicated and largely upsetting reasons, I couldn't help but find my thoughts also drifting away from its #MeToo angle and toward a familiar fairy tale, as one third of the film is too hot, another third is too cold, and the final third is … . Well, it's not just right, but it certainly believes it's right.

No Time to Die is more of the same – and at 163 minutes, a lot more of the same – but with heightened yet human-scale threat, as well as an emotional urgency that makes the old feel close to new.

On September 29, the lauded film received a News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing, and on October 17, The Story of Plastic will be screened at Davenport's Figge Art Museum as the latest presentation in River Action's annual QC Environmental Film Series, this fascinating documentary suggesting, as stated by the Wall Street Journal's John Anderson, “that a giant problem really will be resolved through the smallest gestures.”

They're both follow-ups to hits that also enjoyed October openings – one in 2018, and the other in 2019. They're both blessedly short, running 97 and 93 minutes, respectively. And if you're wondering what else Venom: Let There Be Carnage and The Addams Family 2 might have in common, they're both considerably better than the works they hailed from, although in only one case does the improvement result in something resembling a good movie.

While it's intermittently moving and generally well-acted, the film version of Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen, as you may have heard, has a number of problems: an unconvincing, even preposterous premise; blithe depictions of teen depression and mental instability; a 27-year-old lead cast as a high-school student. We'll get to those shortly. But the movie's biggest issue, it seems to me, lies in a sensation that you might only recognize if you've seen a lot of stage musicals, or least a lot of sub-par ones.

Pages