Deepa Mehta, the woman behind the Elements film trilogy—Fire, Earth, and Water—directs this adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s 1980 novel, an epic story that deftly combines elements of magical realism, historical fiction, Indian postcolonial literature, and deeply personal family dynamics. At midnight on August 17, 1947—the very moment of India’s independence from Great Britain—two baby boys are born ... Read More

With two of Hollywood’s most consistently funny and charming actors topping the bill, a fitting subtitle for Admission could have been “Oh My God, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd: I Love Them!” Fey stars as Portia, a strait-laced admissions officer at Princeton University whose uneventful life is intruded upon by her former classmate John (Rudd), a well-meaning high school teacher. John wants to introduce Portia to his student ... Read More

  The titular character in this haunting film by Somersault director Cate Shortland is the 14-year-old daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official. When Allied forces inter her parents in their sweep through Germany as World War II comes to a close, Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) is left to care for her four much-younger siblings, including a baby. So she leads them on a trek through her devastated country to find safety at their ... Read More

It’s the perfect time for Jack Kerouac’s iconic autobio- graphical novel On the Road to come to the big screen, despite skepticism that this singular staple of beat liter- ature has finally been sold out. Today we find ourselves in an era of uncertain futures populated by emasculated, cigarette-smoking young men with thick-framed glasses and the women who love them—not unlike the late ’40s. Screenwriter Jose ... Read More

  A family unit is like a fragile ecosystem—the introduction of a foreign species can have dangerous ripple effects. In Ry Russo-Young’s Nobody Walks (co-written by Girls’ Lena Dunham), sexy gamine Martine (Olivia Thirlby) stays for a brief spell in the pool house of an L.A. clan, and changes everyone, for better and for worse. The film takes place over the course of a few hot, summery weeks during which Martine ... Read More