After making his successful 2006 film, Who Killed The Electric Car, director Chris Paine was elated to learn the auto industry was finally committing to electric cars (EVs). "I thought, wow, I'm never going to see this again in my lifetime - a renaissance, an industrial revolution. My team already...

Marathon Boy chronicles the treacherous true saga of a frail, dirt-poor four-year-old boy in India and his ambitious mentor-trainer who loves him and makes him famous for running long distance races. While many have heard of the boy, Budhia, few outside India know who powered the child forward with the...

I am immensely grateful to the three young Egyptian filmmakers whose film Tahrir 2011 took me on a breathless 94-minute ride through the making and breaking of a dictator. In this case, Egypt's 30-year president, Hosni Mubarak. If you think you already know what happened during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution,...

A 31-year old Swedish director has taken a swipe at a segment of Sweden's older generation in his first feature film, Avalon. The film premiered last week at the 2011 Toronto Int'l Film Festival. Its three main characters are all over 60, and...

Correction on 9-1-11: Rachel Maddow was not working at Air America Radio at the time of 9/11. She joined AAR in late March, 2004, when it started. Her radio career from 2000-2004 included a year at WRNX and two years at WRSI, both in Western Massachusetts.

On Saturday, August 20,...

I give this documentary, A Matter of Taste, three wows for three reasons.

First, New York City chef Paul Liebrandt, the film's subject, is fascinating. As he's a food artist, his sophisticated dishes are fascinating, too. We see close-ups of dozens being prepared in his real-life working kitchens during business...

Making her directorial debut in the new film Higher Ground, actress Vera Farmiga (Up in The Air, The Departed) has herself reached for higher ground. The title, shared by a popular Stevie Wonder song, signifies the search for one's spiritual nature, for God, and for where one belongs. Farmiga plays...

Luckily, American audiences will soon have the chance to see one of France's best new films, Romantics Anonymous. It's a clever romantic comedy about two interested but reluctant, stymied sweethearts who can't manage hinting, flirting or even a date outside their work at a chocolate factory.

Romantics Anonymous will reach...

Screenwriter and director Dennis Lee says the title of his new feature film, Jesus Henry Christ was recycled. He first used the name for his 13-minute thesis film made while he was in Columbia University's graduate film program. "It did well," he says modestly. Yes, it did. It won numerous...

One of the jurors at a Southern California Shakespeare competition recalls his feelings watching 2,000 high school kids screaming and cheering each other's performances. "When my friend and producing partner Brad Koepenick told me we needed to film this Shakespeare competition, I wasn't that interested. But then he sent me...

Osama bin Laden was not the only criminal for whom Americans yearned for justice. The Wall Street flimflam boys and their captains who made mad gambles to enrich themselves, knowing losses would be government-backed, are still at large. Millions here and beyond America yearn to see justice served on them,...

Documentary filmmaker Eva Mulvad is a walking, talking advertisement for her new film, The Good Life. She has good looks, a good marriage and a successful career. And wearing a European-styled dress with large white buttons (one red, a replacement), she entered my daughter Leslie Hassler's photographic studio sporting an...

Black Butterflies, a flawless Dutch biopic shot in South Africa, introduces audiences to the Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker, a wild, exciting, freedom-seeking woman who became one of South Africa's greatest poets. Covering the five most audacious years in her young life, the story takes place in a beach town near...

I didn't know I needed a vacation. But I got one when I saw the film Lands (Terras). Actually, I didn't just see it. I heard it, felt it, and fell for it. Your chance to see it comes Friday, August 20, 4:30pm at the New Museum, and...

New York has just played host to a unique film -- part social commentary, part an alert, part tragedy, part hopeful -- about three teenage girls in an economic and moral morass that leads to prostitution. At first I was shocked by the girls' brazen choices. But due to sensitive...

This season's Democratic primary in Arkansas, the run-off for which will probably be over when you read this, gives plenty of evidence as to how juvenile and wasteful so much our nation's election process currently is and which you are being asked to contribute to. The two top candidates, incumbent...

Imagine the luck of director Craig Teper when he landed the job of documenting the inspiring orphanage-to-riches life of the world's most influential hair designer, Vidal Sassoon. British-born Sassoon was an innovator in three areas: as a creative hairstylist, a salon designer, and later as a businessman with hair products....

Only rarely can a documentary match feature films for gripping human drama, but this one, The Two Escobars, has more than done that. Its two illustrious characters, born into unrelated Medellin families named Escobar, captivated the nation of Colombia for several years (ending in 1994) and shook its laissez-faire roots....

Here we have a documentary about the city of Washington, D.C that doesn't show the political side of town. At all. The political side would be the one depicted by the 7-year NBC-TV series West Wing. This film, The Other City, takes us to a D.C. that gets no attention...

Tribeca's jurors surprised a trio of family members with the Best Documentary Feature award for their film Monica and David. It's no wonder. Everyone in it and everything about this documentary shouts "winner." Despite the touchy subject matter - two people with Downs syndrome who fall in love and marry...