Sinnerman Buns

As a plague sweeps 17th-century France, theocrats need a scapegoat and the king needs a city's walls torn down, so church and state join forces to destroy a hedonistic priest (Oliver Reed) who won't bend. Banned, butchered, and buried, Ken Russell's notorious moral-panic masterwork The Devils has finally been reassembled and restored in all its uncut NC-17 vices and virtues (the long-lost "Rape of Christ" sequence recovered from a print Russell supervised before his death). It's an intense psychosexual fever dream that mirrors life in America today: corruption dressed as virtue, zealotry wearing the crown, the whole rotten pageant of faith weaponizing a woman's body and visions as instruments of power.

It's a pestilence double-feature! Humanity has been mostly wiped out in Ben Sottak's action-horror romp Hallowarrior, yet lone teen Pumpkin (Hereditary's Milly Shapiro) still strings up festive lights, sends radio broadcasts into the void, and waits for trick-or-treaters at her family's isolated farmhouse. A strange, melancholy setup becomes a gory home-invasion siege with the arrival of raiders (led by Shannyn Sossamon) and some choice practical effects. A brisk, affectionate Halloween curio that plays like Home Alone in a corner of the Mad Max universe.

Nina Simone, Bobbie Gentry, maybe a little Cocteau Twins? June McDoom’s debut, "Follow the Light", lets its influences float past: delicate alt-folk melodies, harp, synth, drums, and an oscillating dub low end, blurring into a dreamy, liminal haze both inviting and mysterious. The Florida-raised, NYC-based singer-songwriter's roots help explain the sound: her grandfather was a preservationist of mento (Jamaican acoustic folk, the prototype for reggae and ska) and her father a DJ who built his own home sound systems. Her family called the records she gravitated toward "sleepy music," but here it's a compliment.

Two Questions for Michael M. Bilandic. Ever embracing weirdos in his shaggy lower-Manhattan comedies, the DIY auteur (Jobe'z World, Hellaware) returns with Cabaret Boys, an irreverent ensemble goof led by Theodore Bouloukos as a "galaxy-brained" therapist alongside cameos by Adam Friedland, Larry Clark and Abel Ferrara. Bilandic and I caught up before tonight's sold-out World Premiere at the Roxy, part of The Downtown Festival (through Oct. 18):

How do you still find outsiders in a city that keeps pricing them out? I don't really think of things the way you're framing it, about gentrification, past or present. I'm interested in what's entertaining in front of me right now. I was reading this Post article about the Meatpacking District; there's this crew bothering these girls at soccer practice every day. One of them wears a penis-nose mask that says "Mr. Anger" on it, and he has 30 piercings. His homie is called "Firebug" and sets all the benches on fire. Another guy in a Groucho Marx mask hangs out with them at this gas station on 8th Avenue. It's just weird out there.

The microbudget freedoms of your films give them a "putting on a show" joy. What would you do with a six- or seven-figure budget? I would do a great job. It would be the greatest movie these guys have ever seen, and they'd be so happy that they put their money into it. They say there's nothing harder than making it look easy. Doing stuff cheap isn't a virtue. It's just how it is, not something to be proud of. For the studio, I'd say, "Oh yeah, I'll listen to what you have to say. I'll be respectful to the investors and the executives, and it'll be very painless." It'll be on time, under budget, and they'll be like, "Man, I can't believe we didn't ask this guy to do this a long time ago."