There are really only two key questions for anyone crafting a “people trapped somewhere” thriller: 1. How plausible is it that they can’t get help?, and 2. How do you sustain the premise once the peril has been established?

Perhaps the spate of “vengeful parent” thrillers over the past months—Taken, Law Abiding Citizen, the new Edge of Darkness—is a cinematic manifestation of our collective sense of helplessness ...

The based-on-a-true-story debut release by CBS Films’ theatrical division looks exactly like something that would have showed up on CBS proper 30 years ago ...

It’s a good thing first-time director Tom Ford—yes, the fashion designer—cast Colin Firth as the lead in A Single Man ...

Screenwriters Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont have committed plenty of crimes against cinema over the past decade. But Leap Year finds them guilty of the impossible: They managed to render Amy Adams utterly charmless ...

Frederick Wiseman has spent more than 40 years as a documentary filmmaker, virtually defining the “fly on the wall” approach...

Apparently tired of being a fringe filmmaker, Guy Ritchie has gone mainstream with Sherlock Holmes ...

If ever a movie demanded respect for the power of silence, it should have been the screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s devastatingly magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winner The Road ...

Over his 20-year career as a documentary filmmaker, Joe Berlinger has generally found gripping stories behind the surface stories he’s ostensibly covering ...

In the Golden Age of Hollywood, certain character actors spent their entire careers playing variations on the same basic type—the grumpy old codger, the funny sidekick, the fussy dowager ...