POSTED // Feb 15,2013 - Early on in Michael Haneke’s harrowing, moving Amour, 80-something-year-old Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant) brings his wife, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), back home to their Paris apartment to a life that

POSTED // Feb 14,2013 - Look, I’m gonna be frank here: This whole paranormal and/or apocalyptic teen romance sub-genre that appears to have taken over young-adult literature, movies and the world? It needs to die.

POSTED // Feb 8,2013 - Steven Soderbergh recently announced his retirement from making feature films—and it was a bleak day for those who think “genre” is a dirty word if you love movies.

POSTED // Feb 1,2013 - Leading up to the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, I started the “#SundanceReality” Twitter hashtag, including a comment that “Attendees tend to over-praise comedies

POSTED // Feb 1,2013 - If you heard the basic concept for Rust & Bone and assumed it was just another “wounded person learns to heal” drama, you’d be partly right. But not likely in the way you were thinking.

POSTED // Jan 25,2013 - Conventional wisdom—and far too many examples to mention—suggest that when a veteran actor finally steps behind the camera, the result is usually a very “actor-ly” piece.

POSTED // Jan 18,2013 - It has become a bit of film lore at this point: Slamdance was born out of rejection, when four filmmakers were denied access to the illustrious Sundance and began their own festival out of spite.

POSTED // Jan 11,2013 - A lot of generally intelligent people have said a lot of dumb things about Zero Dark Thirty, all likely with the best of intentions. Some have argued that it glorifies torture by showing that “enhanced interrogation methods”

POSTED // Jan 11,2013 - Early in Gangster Squad, circa-1949 Los Angeles crime kingpin Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) tells a Mafia rival he’s no longer beholden to the Italians in Chicago because he’s got a new vision for doing business.

POSTED // Jan 4,2013 - In the opening minutes of Promised Land, Steve Butler (Matt Damon)—a local representative for a massive energy company—awaits a meeting with a company boss as Butler is considered for a regional vice-president position.