The closure of Merrill's Roxy Cinemas in Burlington hasn't made it any easier to see the 2025 award contenders in Vermont, but some of those films are trickling to us. Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door is at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, with The Brutalist and Hard Truths starting January 24. And if you're curious to catch Daniel Craig's performance in Queer, for which the former James Bond won an award from the National Board of Review and a Golden Globe nom, you can still see it on a big screen. Adapted from William S. Burroughs' novella of the same name by Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me by Your Name), Queer plays at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury from Friday, January 24, through Thursday, February 6. In Burlington, Vermont International Film Foundation will screen the movie on Thursday, February 13, 7 p.m., at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center Film House. The deal In 1950 Mexico City, middle-aged William Lee (Craig) enjoys an expatriate existence that appears to consist mostly of drifting from bar to restaurant to bar, trading witty barbs with a friend (Jason Schwartzman) and attempting to pick up young men. His give-no-fucks attitude is clear from the first scene, in which he lazily trolls someone who isn't receptive to his advances. Then Lee spots clean-cut GI Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who inspires him to try a little harder. Allerton is friendly yet maddeningly elusive. He may or may not be bisexual. He's obviously bored when Lee holds forth during dinner, describing his personal coming-out odyssey, but he's eager to hook up afterward. The two share moments of tender intimacy and others of painful, cringe-worthy alienation. Lee persuades Allerton to accompany him to Ecuador on a quest for yage (or ayahuasca), which he's heard can induce telepathy — the unmediated togetherness of which he dreams. But Lee is already dependent on heroin, and his junk sickness in transit drives the couple further apart. Will you like it? Like Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name, Queer isn't so much a story as a vibe, an immersive study of a character and a historical moment. Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who also wrote the more plot-driven Challengers, gives Craig and Schwartzman plenty of pungent banter. But the real action happens in the spaces between the words, which are filled by the immaculate production design and camera work, strong performances,…