Jeremy Saulnier’s darkly comic revenge thriller about a man woefully ill-suited to exacting revenge bears a strong Coen brothers influence, most significantly in its flawed yet tragically relatable protagonist.

Writer-director Steven Knight, who scripted Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things and created the show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, puts Tom Hardy in the driver’s seat in this powerful morality play on wheels. 

Leslie Mann, Cameron Diaz, and Kate Upton star in this modern-day 9 To 5 as a trio united in a mission to take revenge on the fatuous Ken doll (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who cheated on them. 

This glossy but effective documentary about American Samoa’s bottom-ranked national soccer team is the rare underdog-sports story where reality fits the formula.

The derring-do of a Jewish vigilante in occupied Budapest sounds like a ripping wartime yarn, but this plodding, sub-History Channel production mostly inspires a trip to Wikipedia instead. 

Jeremy Saulnier’s darkly comic revenge thriller about a man woefully ill-suited to exacting revenge bears a strong Coen brothers influence, most significantly in its flawed yet tragically relatable protagonist.

Writer-director Steven Knight, who scripted Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things and created the show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, puts Tom Hardy in the driver’s seat in this powerful morality play on wheels. 

Leslie Mann, Cameron Diaz, and Kate Upton star in this modern-day 9 To 5 as a trio united in a mission to take revenge on the fatuous Ken doll (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who cheated on them. 

This glossy but effective documentary about American Samoa’s bottom-ranked national soccer team is the rare underdog-sports story where reality fits the formula.

The derring-do of a Jewish vigilante in occupied Budapest sounds like a ripping wartime yarn, but this plodding, sub-History Channel production mostly inspires a trip to Wikipedia instead. 

The first non-Joss Whedon-directed film from Whedon’s production company is a good-natured but disappointingly generic rom-com. Surprisingly, the trouble is all in Whedon’s script.

Faced with a neglectful, alcoholic mother (Mira Sorvino) and her abusive new boyfriend, two high-school-age sisters (Abigail Breslin and Georgie Henley) take drastic steps to change the situation in this uneven mix of melodrama and “dark quirk.”

This film’s rare genre hybrid, the horror-musical, shows how important it is for any wannabe Sweeney Todds to balance both halves of the equation.

Picking up where Volume I left off, Lars von Trier’s arresting opus follows Charlotte Gainsbourg’s protagonist as she becomes desensitized to sex and resorts to desperate measures to get any kind of feeling back.

Despite the boundless promise of Billy Zane’s hood-cloaked head spiraling across the screen, this Greek zombie thriller adds little more than derivative ideas and cheap gore to an overplayed genre. 

Lars von Trier’s playful, approachable side comes out in this documentary, in which he asks fellow Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth to remake his avant-garde short “The Perfect Human” five times under various conditions.

In the wake of the 1952 riot at Jackson State Prison, producer Walter Wanger and director Don Siegel addressed a hot-button social issue with two-fisted genre chops in this tough yet nuanced action-drama. 

A year after winning an Oscar for From Here To Eternity, Frank Sinatra continued his film-career revival by playing a sad, self-deprecating musician in Gordon Douglas’ domestic drama. 

Czech animator Jan Svankmajer mixes live-action, puppetry, and stop-motion animation in his surreal 1988 adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, turning the children’s classic into a hypnotic nightmare. 

A transitional Lars von Trier film found the director between two styles, and drawing from both—while also discovering the dramatic power of putting female characters in torment.

Clyde Bruckman collaborated with everyone from Buster Keaton to Harold Lloyd to The Three Stooges. But after enjoying tremendous success as a writer and director, his life took one bad turn after another.

A 2010 remake of Alexander Payne’s Sideways, Saidoweizu became an unexpected hit in Japan. Though never intended for Western audiences, what the remake discarded, and what it picked up, is telling.

The Portlandia co-creators and stars talk about the enduring influence the grandaddy of mock-rockumentaries has had on music, comedy, and their own work.

From Blood Simple to Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coens have offered an often funny, but always bleak, view of how the world works.

An exhaustive look at Bill Murray’s career traces his journey from comedy star to respected actor—and finds his two talents have long been intertwined.

A filmography defined by long odds and improbable victories has made the man who was—and continues to be—Rocky Balboa one of cinema’s greatest survivors. But survival comes at a price.

The new Johnny Depp thriller about a man uploaded into an all-powerful computer isn’t a particularly smart film, but it does tap into a long tradition of anxiety-driven stories about how new tech might destroy our lives.

Only Lovers Left Alive has us thinking about our favorite bloodsuckers: The movies that do vampires differently, the movies that don’t, and why the vampire trope is as undying as the creatures themselves.

For all its singular qualities, Under The Skin is also part of a trend of films that could be ushering in a science-fiction renaissance.

Robert Altman didn’t seem like a logical directorial choice for a big-budget, family-friendly musical adaptation of Popeye, but the film still fits snugly into his career.

Michael Mann’s debut, Thief, helped set a tone for a career marked by stylish grit. But with this sophomore effort—filled with Nazi villains and an evil, imprisoned entity—he attempted work on a bigger scale.

When filmmakers from abroad visit America, they tend to find angles on the country that native directors would never consider. Michelangelo Antonioni’s sole film made on American soil is no exception.

In the star-packed 2007 road comedy, would-be bikers played by John Travolta, William H. Macy, Martin Lawrence, and Tim Allen discover freedom isn’t really worth the bother.

There was a time when Gibson could coast on charm through a breezy romantic comedy. This is a relic of that time.

2004’s Shark Tale traffics in lazy gags and lazier characters that reduce celebrities to cartoons in more ways than one.

An alternate poster for Her uses a blurred image to see the film more clearly.

Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond The Hills gets a poster inspired by rolling landscapes, a Belgian illustrator, and ambiguity.

Graphic designer Sam Smith creates a new image for his favorite film of 2013 and lists this year’s 10 best movie posters.

In the years before computers became commonplace, films like Alphaville, Colossus: The Forbin Project, and Demon Seed projected our worst fears on them.

Long before Jurassic Park restored Michael Crichton to ascendancy, he dominated the 1970s with films like The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, and The Terminal Man, which considered the human cost of progress.

After Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, filmmakers redefined the Apes franchise with each successive entry, while maintaining its daring central premise.

Clyde Bruckman collaborated with everyone from Buster Keaton to Harold Lloyd to The Three Stooges. But after enjoying tremendous success as a writer and director, his life took one bad turn after another.

Our Movie Of The Week forum examines what made Buster Keaton’s work exceptional in both the silent era and today.

Buster Keaton understood that comedy thrives inside a fixed frame. By confining his hero to a rectangle, Keaton makes him a prisoner of cinema—and of all the tricks at a filmmaker’s disposal.

1954 saw plenty of great performances, but only one that changed the nature of screen acting.

Jessica Lange was up for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress trophies in 1982. She took home what some viewed as a consolation prize, though it rewarded some of her best work.

Michael Caine took home a well-deserved Oscar in 1999. But that year’s Best Supporting Actor field included some magnificent work—some of which never even got nominated.

Thanks to legal finagling, the rights to make Easy Rider sequels landed in the lap of Ohio lawyer Phil Pitzer, who decided there was no one better to write and star in the film than—Phil Pitzer.

Welcome Home Brother Charles is a giant-killer-penis movie with a social conscience.

After a string of action roles, 2008’s The Other Man could have been a chance for star Liam Neeson to get back to his dramatic roots. Instead, it seems intent on boring him and his audience to death.

On this week’s podcast, we celebrate the start of baseball season with a discussion of the transcendent sports-movie moments we hope for, talk to the author of a new book about Network, and play a very confusing game.

This week, we determine just how upset we should be over the continued convergence of film and TV, learn about the forgotten history of five wartime directors, and play a strongly suggestive round of Parental Guidance Suggested.

This week we share our expectations for actors-turned-directors and crowd-funded films like the new Veronica Mars movie, and play a game based on a 50/50 question that’s harder than it seems.

 This week, we share our wildest Oscar hopes and dreams, box ourselves into a conversation about the art of the claustrophobia film, and try to distinguish between the two big comet-about-to-smash-Earth blockbusters of 1998.

On this week’s podcast, we celebrate the start of baseball season with a discussion of the transcendent sports-movie moments we hope for, talk to the author of a new book about Network, and play a very confusing game.

This week, we determine just how upset we should be over the continued convergence of film and TV, learn about the forgotten history of five wartime directors, and play a strongly suggestive round of Parental Guidance Suggested.

This week we share our expectations for actors-turned-directors and crowd-funded films like the new Veronica Mars movie, and play a game based on a 50/50 question that’s harder than it seems.

 This week, we share our wildest Oscar hopes and dreams, box ourselves into a conversation about the art of the claustrophobia film, and try to distinguish between the two big comet-about-to-smash-Earth blockbusters of 1998.