You know what an audience-friendly film is. It tells a story that engages you about characters you can like and root for. Yet those films -- movies that seek to tell a story that uplifts or inspires -- often get short shrift from critics for that reason alone.

It takes painstaking work to replicate a mid-sixties Jersey garage band, particularly when your boss is Steven Van Zandt of E Street Band fame.

It's taken me a while to get around to it, but I wanted to offer a nod of approval for Walter Salles' On the Road, which came out in limited release at the end of 2012.

Here, in no particular order, are my favorite films of 2012. Some are great, some are guilty pleasures -- but all of them are films that gave me a jolt in some way, or reminded me why I love watching movies.

Film: Not Fade Away (2012) Cast includes: Jon Magaro (My Soul to Take), Jack Huston (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse), Will Brill (King Kelly), James Gando...

David Chase never had to deal with Twitter during his tenure as show runner of "The Sopranos." It's a good thing, too, since one only needs to look at...

The 'burbs are alive with the sound of music. Especially in the sixties, especially if you were a teen in New Jersey jamming with your friends in a ga...

David Chase's Not Fade Away is one of my favorite films of 2012, a heartfelt but clear-eyed look at what it's like to be a teen-ager who falls in love with rock'n'roll.

-- As drummer in a forgotten New Jersey band in the 1960s, David Chase never got close – never even got close to close – to making it in ...

NEW YORK -- After "The Sopranos" went black, David Chase's next move was never in question: He would make a movie. In all Chase's time toiling as a w...

David Chase's "Not Fade Away" premiered at the New York Film Festival on Friday morning, and in a bid to capitalize on that buzz, Paramount has unveil...

The 2012 New York Film Festival announced its main slate of movies Thursday. The 32 movies draw from a healthy mix of big named directors and indie fa...

David Chase, the man behind the "Sopranos," has reason to celebrate this evening. Chase's first feature film, "Not Fade Away," has been selected as th...