It is surely no coincidence that most prominently displayed amongst Iranian filmmaker Jafar Pahani’s DVD collection is a copy of Rodrigo Cortés’ Buried starring Ryan Reynolds. The story of a man trapped against his will and being slowly suffocated by his surroundings, the similarities between the plot of Buried and the real life predicament of Pahani are all too readily apparent. Director of critically acclaimed films such [...]

Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, Source Code) hasn’t aimed low with her debut directorial effort. Adapted from Carolyn S. Briggs’ memoir “This Dark World”, Higher Ground is a thoughtful, quiet film about Corinne, a woman struggling with her faith portrayed in later life by Farmiga herself. It’s ambitious territory to tread, especially when you consider Hollywood’s rocky track record at [...]

Craig Brewers’ previous films Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan — the former about a pimp reinventing himself as a rapper, the latter about an aged blues musician who takes a troubled nymphomaniac under his wing — are both infused with a hot, sweaty, down and dirty electricity that elevates them above their exploitative subject matter. So if Hollywood ever had to remake Herbert Ross’ Footloose — which, evidently, [...]

Quirky is the new cool. Introverted is the new extroverted. Freeze frames are the new flashbacks. And if that montage doesn’t come with a wry voiceover or a dry folk-rock track, you might as well forget about it.

These are a few of the unwritten laws of the coming-of-age indie: films that are so concerned with being different, they’re at risk of becoming the same. Sometimes, the quirkiness comes across naturally [...]

The sophomore film from Thumbsucker director Mike Mills’, Beginners succeeds, in spite of some occasional moments of self-conscious quirk and indie affectation, thanks mostly to it’s phenomenal cast as well as its genuine and clearly very personal approach to the difficult subjects of love and grief. Written by Mills and based in part on his relationship with his father, the film uncovers a place for itself as a moving, melancholy [...]

The road to happiness is not an easy one. In the new comedy Horrible Bosses from director Seth Gordon (Four Holidays), three friends find that their respectively unbearable bosses are huge obstacles on that road. They have a simple solution. Murder their bosses. What could go wrong?

The answer, of course, is everything.

The film follows three initially separate story lines. Jason Bateman (Paul) is Nick Hendricks, a corporate salary man who [...]

In 2008, a certain Irish film proved that the f-word can, in fact, be used almost exclusively as an adjective with achingly funny results. It also proved, much to the dismay of Ralph Fiennes, that swans are not everybody’s f***ing thing. If you hadn’t guessed, that film was Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, and it was nothing short of a masterpiece of pitch-black comedy.

I remind you of [...]

Less of a horror movie and more of a jet-black satire of good ole’ fashioned American family values, The Woman tackles gender politics in a way you’ve never seen them tackled before. A disturbing deconstruction of misogyny and the abuses of women in both genre films and in greater Western society, the movie is a very new twist on a fish-out of water tale, as director Lucky McKee blurs the [...]