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PETER KEOUGH
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Driving through the wasteland
In Nuri Bilge Ceylan's minimalist "Eastern," the Leone-esque title seems ironic, as a team of bumbling investigators spend hours driving through the Anatolian wasteland searching for the grave of a murder victim.
Audacious premises
You've got to hand it to Brit Marling when it comes to audacious premises, both in Another Earth (in which she starred and co-wrote with director Mike Cahill), and in this high concept sci-fi head-scratcher, in which she also stars and co-wrote with director Zal Batmanglij.
Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood
By the time Dark Shadows gets to the opening credits, it is already Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood , but then I've always had a soft spot for the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin."
A lot of blood
There actually is a safe in Boaz Yakin's Safe , but you have to wade through a lot of blood to get there, and then more after that.
Nicholas Stoller's inventive, funny, and sometimes subversive romantic comedy won't revive that benighted genre, but it does offer hope.
Awkward first steps
Even for a hard-ass like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), head of the ultra-secret S.H.I.E.L.D agency, getting a billionaire genius in a metal suit, a scientist with a bad temper, a cryogenically preserved WWII warrior, a Norse god, and two secret agents (how did they get in?) to play nicely together can take a while.
Camping out
For many filmgoers, their exposure to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender cinema might be limited to a midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
John Cusack as Poe
If only Poe could find the solution to the mystery in his own texts! Or if the filmmakers made any use of them.
Ann Hui's aptly titled film
The most sensitive and heartbreaking depiction of old age since Korean director Lee Chang-dong's Poetry, Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui's aptly titled account of the slow decline of a beloved housekeeper doesn't involve violent crime like Lee's film, but does recreate the evanescence of everyday life with equal evocativeness.
Bob Marley remains elusive
After two-and-half hours of hagiography, talking heads, archival footage, still photos, and snatches of his songs, Bob Marley remains elusive in Kevin Macdonald's documentary.
Ridiculous commercial auditions
Daniel Martinico's minimal, elliptical style and his use of repetitions and variations almost overcome the predictability of this case study in repression and alienation.
Comedy and sleep disorders
What compels people to perform comedy?
Absurd and gut-wrenching
If Spirit of the Beehive took place in Napoleon Dynamite country, it might turn out like David Zellner's absurd and wrenching coming-of-age tale.
Back to the moors
Unlike in her harsh romances set in Britain's urban wastelands, it's nature that rules in British director Andrea Arnold's audacious adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights .
China's most famous artist
Chinese activist Ai Weiwei combines the chutzpah of Michael Moore, the antic iconoclasm of Duchamp, and the humility of Gandhi, and it's not enough.
Scott Hicks's adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks bestseller
Who knew that PTSD is the secret to an ideal boyfriend?
The life of Aung San Suu Kyi falls prey to Luc Besson's filmmaking
In addition to making dumb action flicks, Luc Besson has another hobby — turning the lives of valiant women into mediocre movies.
We have a dud
That College of Cardinals, what crazy guys.
Down the rabbit hole -- er, cabin
Youth will be served — as victims — in three movies in the theaters this week (four if you include the re-release of Titanic in 3D): The Hunger Games, Bully, and The Cabin in the Woods, the last being the most ingenious, entertaining, and sadistic.
Stuck in the schoolyard
The MPAA claims to have given Lee Hirsch's well-intended but disappointingly perfunctory documentary about the bullying epidemic an "R" rating because of a couple of common expletives.
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