Maybe as compensation for the soggy weather, many must-see films are brightening screens this spring, among them features Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach and Before Midnight by Richard Linklater, and the docs Dirty Wars from Jeremy Scahill and We Steal Secrets:The Story of Wikileaks from Alex Gibney.

Joining them is...

To judge by the miles of wordage expended on The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann is a PR genius. The critical consensus on the film has run from entertaining mess, to meh, to rotten tomato, to 'WTF is this'? But bottom line, it doesn't matter what's been said, only how much....

I'm often struck by how American feature films -- both studio and indie -- seem to unfold in a social/political vacuum. When was the last time you saw one that took a political perspective, or even account of the larger world beyond the personal conundrums of the characters? Currently you'll...

Jeremy Scahill's documentary Dirty Wars is a game-changing, mind-blowing film on par with Charles Ferguson's great Inside Job which deconstructed the financial meltdown of 2008. In it, Scahill, the Nation's investigative journalist, and director Rick Rowley expose the covert undeclared war America is waging around the globe -- "hidden in...

South Korean director Park Chan-Wook has won a cult following, largely due to his film Oldboy (look for the remake by Spike Lee). An ultra-violent vision of vengeance rendered with impeccable control, Oldboy features incest, an octopus swallowed live, and a bit of amateur dentistry that either provokes nervous laughter...

"We're here because the rich guys who finance movies like to meet celebrities."

With that MC Mike Birbiglia drolly kicked off the ceremony portion of the Gotham Awards Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street. Bestowed by the Independent Film Project, the awards are the season's earliest, often a bellwether...

Many American filmmakers have the bad habit, in my view, of taking an impartial stance when it comes to stories about the behavior of borderline criminal characters. Consider such feature films as Margin Call by J.C. Chandor and, more recently, Arbitrage by Nicholas Jarecki, which follow the toxic maneuvers of...

It seems the Holocaust will never be done delivering its tales. From that era comes yet another story that both illumines humanity's darkest period from a fresh perspective while delivering the story of an astonishing hero little known in America. Orchestra of Exiles, by Academy Award-nominated Josh Aronson, chronicles the...

To judge by Fog of War, Inside Job, and two upcoming features -- No about the dismantling of Pinochet in Chile and At Any Price, an expose of U.S. agribusiness -- all from Sony Pictures Classics, one could be forgiven for imagining the distributor has a progressive agenda. Certainly, it...

I suggest you drop everything and do whatever it takes to cop a ticket for Tabu, the exquisite new film from Portuguese director Miguel Gomes. The toast of international festivals, Tabu captured the FIPRESCI Prize in Venice, and bows Oct. 10 (repeating on the 14th), at the New York Film...

For its 50th edition, the NYFF has pulled out all the stops with an array of films that highlight the enormous range and versatility of cinema. Culled from what fest organizers deem the year's crème de la crème, the lineup stretches from the artistry of Amour by Michael Haneke, arguably...

Against the tsunami of praise for The Master, a period piece about the roots of Scientology by Paul Thomas Anderson, allow a minority dissenting voice. This is more a film for critics to bloviate about than for discerning moviegoers to embrace. In fact, it's become virtual heresy to propose that...

Perhaps few films have divided critics more at this year's Toronto than Terence Malick's To the Wonder. While few would deny its surpassing visual beauty, some viewers are put off by the film's vaunting religiosity, paucity of story, virtual absence of dialogue. Over dinner last night, one critic friend called...

Time was when blonde bombshells meant women. Here at Toronto 2012 the hot blonds are the guys. Consider goldilocksed Aaron Taylor-Johnson, over-the-top-sexy as Count Vronsky in Joe Wright's dazzling Anna Karenina. I'd kill to get the name of his hairdresser -- and, yes, full disclosure, I'm obsessed with Aaron T-J,...

I arrived in Toronto on a muggy afternoon to be blown away by Joe Wright's adaptation -- by way of Tom Stoppard -- of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I saw the film at a private space in the Hazelton Hotel, fitted out with leather couches and bottled water like a mogul's...

Some find it debatable to focus on gender when it comes to the arts. More than a few women filmmakers, for example, have expressed discomfort at drawing attention to their sex. Says Mira Nair, whose The Reluctant Fundamentalist opened the Venice Film Festival, "I am beyond gender and inspired by...

In Farewell, My Queen Benoît Jacquot reinvents the historical film. Far from a musty costumer, his account of the waning hours in the court of Versailles pairs the excitement of a contemporary eruption with the intimacy of a whispered confidence. Jacquot pulls this off in large part by filtering the...

We were at the press day for Woody Allen's To Rome with Love and you had to love the guy. There's the mistaken perception that Woody's averse to talking candidly with journalists -- but here he was up on a podium surrounded by the film's stellar cast, yakking away with...

Hick, the acclaimed novel by Andrea Portes, features one of the freshest, catchiest voices in recent fiction. The voice belongs to Luli, the 13-year-old daughter of a pair of lushes in Nowhere Nebraska, and it's funny, trashy, snarky, outrageous -- a great yawp from the heartland that rings heart-breakingly true....

The good news: several of this year's standout films at the Tribeca Film Festival are by women. The bad news: some of the fest's worst misfires are also by women.

The good news first. Your Sister's Sister by Lynn Shelton (Hump Day) is pure delight, from its opening scene to...