Like many other people, I took English in high school, and like many other high school English students, I was moody, brooding, and really into canon "romance" novels. So it should come as no surprise that Wuthering Heights holds a dear, dear place in my heart. I was fully prepared to love Andrea Arnold's new film adaptation of the Emily Brontë masterpiece, especially given that Arnold directed 2009's instant classic Fish Tank and had ... Read More

  Daniel Barnz directs this narrative sister to the school-reform doc Waiting for Superman, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as two Pittsburgh mothers who want to fix their kids’ failing elementary school. Gyllenhaal plays an Erin Brockovich-like character with tattoos, heels, and an “I’m not an activist, I’m just a mom working two jobs” mentality. Her daughter is dyslexic, but neither ... Read More

You're familiar with the stereotype of the crazy middle-aged lady with fourteen cats or the hoarder who keeps more pets than she can count. Academy Award-winning actress Melissa Leo plays just such a woman, sans stereotypes, in the new movie Francine, opening September 12. Award-winning documentary filmmakers Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky (The Patron Saints, Fish Kill Flea) make their fiction debut with Francine. After serving time in ... Read More

Crickets. They’re all that can be heard above the swish of bathwater as Little Birds opens, and the sound is an apt introduction to the sleepy Salton Sea, CA, town where the film begins. For a couple of restless 15-year-old locals, Lily (Juno Temple) and Alison (Kay Panabaker), the depressing surroundings are just too much to bear. So when a chance encounter with some street kids en route to L.A. offers them a way out, they take ... Read More

  Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud overwhelmed film lovers with the 2007 animated film Persepolis, based on Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel about growing up in Iran. Chicken with Plums, their second collaboration, is also based on a graphic novel by Satrapi. But Plums is primarily a live-action feature with a robust international cast and the lush aesthetics of a grand old studio film. The directors also employ ... Read More