Brad Balfour

Though the 32-old Sarah Shahi seems far too beautiful to be a feisty lawyer like Kate Reed in USA Network Friday night series Fairly Legal, the way she plays against her looks illustrates that she understands her character far too well.

When the series debuted last season, Kate's father has...

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi manages to both enlighten and mystify. Maybe that's why he's been able to evade both the censors and jailers who police filmmakers for thought crimes against the mega-fascist Iranian state.

Or maybe because this director/writer so "honored" Iran by becoming the first Iranian to win an...

When actress Jessica Chastain attended the Sundance Film Festival more than a year ago, making the rounds for the film Take Shelter, she spoke on a panel for The Creative Coalition. The focus was squarely on her co-star Michael Shannon, who had been graced with an Oscar nom -- and...

I was glad to have interviewed doc directors Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin -- whose film Undefeated cleared nearly all the award hurdles and got into that rarefied place of being a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominee -- before viewing this year's Super Bowl. Talking with them made me appreciate...

Who knew that when actress Michelle Williams first appeared as the bad girl in Dawson's Creek, she would have the uncanny good sense to take on roles which offered her real challenges? From a supporting part in Brokeback Mountain to the lead in Wendy and Lucy, she rose to the...

Wily provocateur and indie screen mogul Harvey Weinstein sees beyond the obvious and recognizes value in some rather offbeat films. Thankfully, that support has so far paid off. Four of Weinstein's pictures won awards at this year's Golden Globes, with a bloc going to one of 2011's most unusual films...

Despite the inordinate gossip-media attention George Timothy Clooney gets for his love life, this dapper male star deserves the spotlight for his other assets -- acting talents, social concerns, creative work, self-effacing humor and general good-guy demeanor.

Earlier in 2011, The Ides of March was released, a film Clooney directed...

Exotic locations, fast cars, beautiful women, and crazy gadgets are the excitements in today's cinematic thrillers -- whether they be spy-oriented, crime adventure, or a suspense mystery.

And with such films as Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows, Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, The Adventures of Tin Tin,...

Whether Sean Durkin wins at IFP's 2011 Gotham Awards for Breakthrough Director of the Year (held at Cipriani Wall Street tonight) or not, he enters this season's award cavalcade through his debut feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene (which is also nominated for Best Ensemble Performance).

Launched at Sundance Film...

While his furry animated version in Puss in Boots holds out broader appeal, the more perverse skin that veteran actor Antonio Banderas wears in The Skin I Live In is drawing a very different kind of audience. Both, however, are equally passionate about leather, knives and fur. 

Traversing the bounds...

Best known as Caspian X in The Chronicles of Narnia film, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, English actor Benjamin Thomas "Ben" Barnes plays a very different character in Killing Bono. Loosely based on music writer Neil McCormick's 2003 memoir Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelgänger, the...

Tonight, Halloween, the Museum of Modern Art features a screening of The Holy Mountain, Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky's incredible film of surrealism-meets-mystic-revelation.

The following night, November 1st, the Lincoln Center's Film Society will host a viewing of the 82-year-old's bizarre masterpiece, El Topo.

And Jodorowsky will make a rare...

Despite a substantial effort to integrate gays into mainstream America, anti-homosexual violence continues for those who don't conform to this country's far too conservative mores. Though it's hard to believe that it continues, bullying still spurs teen suicides in a country charged by Tea Party extremism.

So director Abe Sylvia...

Boy, did director Lavina Currier take on a challenge. Not only did she elect to direct the film Oka! in Africa, but she made it about a people, the Bayaka, and in a country, the Central African Republic (CAR), that are thoroughly unfamiliar with modern filmmaking.

Based on an...

Having grown up enjoying Roger Corman's filmic retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's horror tales -- many with the legendary actors Boris Karloff and Vincent Price -- his garish productions were lodged in my brain forever. This was the guy who inspired so many trendy directors -- such as Quentin Tarantino...

Conan The Barbarian will be among the many personalities attending this weekend's New York Comic Con at the Javits Center. Well, not exactly, but the 6' 4" Jason Momoa, who played the sword-slashing Cimmerian in the recent reboot of the series that came out this summer will be there --...

When I saw the 2008 documentary Flow: For The Love of Water -- about the privatization of water resources -- it infuriated me that something so abundant and essential could be turned into a commodity for profit and exploitation.

So when I heard about the Water4 Foundation through its publicist,...

Through Bunraku, an archly-stylized swordplay fantasy, 33-year-old actor Josh Hartnett returns to the genre spotlight playing an enigmatic drifter appropriately called, "The Drifter." This computer-enhanced tale revolves around Hartnett's character, a "Man with No Name" and draws heavily on Samurai and Western tropes in an alternate-world dystopia where guns are...

Dread provides a major component to horror films, and horror jefe Guillermo del Toro is a master of it. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, a remake of the 1973 made-for-television film of the same name, which he produced and co-wrote (with Matthew Robbins) is the most recent example.

Directed...

On the heels of the International Documentary Association's Docuweeks annual August kickoff, Current TV launched a five-part celebration, 50 Documentaries To See Before You Die on August 2 hosted by energetic documentarian Morgan Spurlock.

The hour-long weekly series counted down 50 of today's most powerful, provocative and moving docs. With...