For those that missed it, last year’s Paranormal Activity proved to be a mild phenomenon among weekend horror crowds. Claiming to be found-footage, a young couple sets up a night-vision camera to document the odd happenings that occurred while they slept, and discover, after many nights of bumps and shadows, that they’re haunted by a malevolent demon. Shot for a reported $11,000 by first-time...

At eighty years old, it seems only natural that Clint Eastwood would begin to consider themes of death. The prodigious actor-director-“composer” has credits enough to fill a coffin (in fact, Warner Brothers did just that last year in their tome Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years), but it wasn’t until somewhere around his seventieth birthday that he hit a renaissance in his work: Mystic River,

The opening credits are perhaps the most upbeat portion of Buried: winding graphics reminiscent of the stylish opening credits of Alfred Hitchcock’s later films, and set to a Bernard Hermann inspired tune. But as soon as the credits finish, we’re plunged in darkness, six feet under the ground. And we remain there for the rest of the film, as we experience what it’s like to be buried alive in the middle of the Iraq desert, with no hope but a lighter and a weakly...

I don’t think anyone who saw Let the Right One In had the thought, “I wished they’d remake this in English.” The Swedish import about an adolescent relationship between a boy and his vampire neighbor gained a cult following, becoming one of the most successful foreign films in 2008 and has since been regarded as one of the best vampire films ever made. Its fans are so loyal than when the DVD of Let the Right One In came out with different subtitles,...

Catfish is being marketed as a “reality thriller,” but after having seen it, it’s hard to call it either a reality or a thriller. The first third of the film, following college-aged Yaniv “Nev” Schulman as he begins a correspondence with a Michigan family through Facebook, feels staged and gimmicky. The last third isn’t the Hitchcockian thriller the advertisements have promised – but strangely, that’s all for the better. ...

Cinema sponges its advances from other media: Citizen Kane stole from radio, Kazan stole method acting from the stage, and now, at least in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the forms to plunder are video games and erratic Cartoon Network shorts. It’s not so much a giant stylistic leap as a lazy bachelor slouch forward, but these clear influences are what give Scott Pilgrim its liveliness and...

While the narrative thrust may be from the plight of down-on-her-luck Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), an Ozark Mountain girl who must solve the mystery of her missing father in order to save her family’s rustic home, what separates Winter’s Bone from the hundreds of other mystery thrillers like it is the gothic flavor of its environment. If set in suburbia, Winter’s Bone would be no more than TV-level scripting: all the dialogue is straightforward, with Ree...

The Oxford Murders is so unbelievably bad that you’ll want to pull other people into the room to show them how ridiculous it is. There’s a sex scene that involves spaghetti. A school bus of mentally-challenged kids singing “Frère Jacques," which is then hijacked in a high-speed chase set to dramatic music. Characters routinely wield cell phones like bricks, as the film is set inexplicitly in 1993 (although, besides the phones, there is nothing to suggest we...

Kisses opens with a shot of a dead fish floating in its bowl. The color slowly drains from the image, until it is completely black-and-white, and we zoom out to see Kylie, a young Irish girl staring into the bowl. It’s aesthetically pleasing and set to atmospheric music, but Kylie doesn’t seem affected at all by what she sees, and once she turns aside to leave, she immediately forgets the fish, never to mention it again. The entire film is like this: Kylie, and her young...

The tagline “Angelina Jolie is Salt” pretty much sums up the only reason anyone should be interested in Salt, an otherwise typical action thriller involving Russian spies, cold war paranoia, car chases and fiery explosions. The only smart move this film makes is casting Jolie in the lead, in a part designed and typically given to a male actor. (It’s no secret that her part was originally written for Tom Cruise.) But it’s this combination of Jolie’s...

If you fell asleep in a room with The Matrix, James Bond, Shutter Island, Fantastic Voyage, and every heist film ever made all playing simultaneously, you might have a dream like Inception. Christopher Nolan did, anyway. For his follow-up to the The Dark Knight, he writes and directs a story so complicated, so layered, so frustratingly indefinite, that only a director whose...

The Kids Are All Right feels like a script leftover from the 1970s, which is surprising given its attempt to show a “modern” family. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play Jules and Nic, a lesbian couple who have spent their adult lives building a home, a family, and a decidedly normal existence for themselves. We know this right from the start: the family is seated around the dinner table, and Nic (Bening) nags her daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) about sending off thank...

There is perhaps no question that more quickly exposes the ignorance of plebeians and academics alike than this one: What is art? Because, as is soon apparent, everyone has their own answer – which often isn’t an answer at all. Something beautiful. Something new and challenging. Something with an indistinct je nais se quoi. But when asked what is an artist, there is but one answer: a person that sells his art. Exit Through the Gift Shop exposes and dances...

We’re living in a fortunate time. Future generations of moviegoers will be jealous of us the way we’re jealous of audiences that got to see the original screenings of Kubrick and Hitchcock, film by film, not as established classics but as new films to be freshly discussed. The same attention and time that auteurs spent on each feature, Pixar Studios has devoted to each of their computer-animated films. Each summer audiences look forward to the newest offering, wondering not if it...

Vincenzo Natali’s Splice combines the DNA of several of film’s best science-fiction stories – Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, E.T. – with the destructive family dynamics of a staged melodrama. Our two scientists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) create a new life form by combining human DNA with that of various animals. But, rather than wanting to play God to the creature – a bald-headed nymph named Dren – Clive and Elsa would...