You can tell right away that Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased (Focus Features, 11.2) is well acted, especially by Lucas Hedges (Manchester By The Sea, Lady Bird) as the real-life Garrard Conley, whose experience with Christian gay-conversion therapy was the subject of his 2016 novel, “Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family.” Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman also quote good, it appears, as Hedges’ hardcore Christian parents. It also seems as if Edgerton is suitably abrasive and obnoxious as Hedges’ conversion therapist. You sense strong emotional currents. Obviously an awards-bait film, but how will the New Academy Kidz respond?

Posted on 7.10.18: Two dramas about gay teenagers subjected to the ravages of conversion therapy will open soon. The presumed award-season contender is Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased (Focus Features, 11.2), based on Garrard Conley‘s true-life memoir. It costars Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) as the 19-year-old Conley, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe as his rigidly conventional parents, and Edgerton as a gay conversion therapist. Opening three months earlier is The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Film Rise/Vertigo, 8.3), set in 1993 and based on Emily M. Danforth’s 2012 novel. It’s about the teenaged Cameron Post (Chloe Grace Moretz) being sent to a Christian gay-conversion camp in Montana. Costarring Sasha Lane, John Gallagher Jr., Forrest Goodluck and Jennifer Ehle. Post won a Grand Jury Prize at last January’s Sundance Film Festival.