Film

Seattle director Lynn Shelton's fabulously squirmy film Humpday centers on two seemingly straight men who decide to have sex with each other as part of an amateur porn video competition.

John Powers reviews a luminous cinematic memoir by the 81-year-old French director Agnes Varda. Like all Varda's films, The Beaches of Agnes brims with its creator's independence and vivacity.

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest jaunt — as a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista — is funnier and riskier than Borat. Sure, he's a cheap-shot artist, but he's one who's often got a righteous point.

Iranian-American author and human rights activist Roya Hakakian talks about growing up Jewish in post-revolutionary Iran.

When it came out in 1961, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad perplexed and excited audiences with its surrealistic storytelling. John Powers has a review of the film's Criterion Collection re-release.

This lush, good-looking crime flick doesn't really have a theme, and it never quite sparks to life. But it's got lots of incidental pleasures — Johnny Depp's spirited performance chief among them.

Director Darren Aronofsky talks about making a realistic film about a notoriously fake sport. His Oscar-nominated film, starring Mickey Rourke as a professional wrestler well past his prime, will be released on DVD next week. (Segment)

Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow knows how to get under your skin and control your responses — as she does in her latest feature, the Baghdad-set war movie The Hurt Locker. David Edelstein has a review.

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow discuss their collaboration on The Hurt Locker, a combat movie about an Army bomb squad that roams Iraq in search of explosives to defuse.

James Gray's new film stars Joaquin Phoenix as a Brighton Beach man with a chance at happiness with one woman, and a passion for another who'll almost certainly bring him heartache.

Filmmaker Robert Kenner explores the underbelly of America's food industry — and the health consequences of its food-supply stranglehold — in his documentary Food, Inc.

Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen discusses his life and his films — and why audiences shouldn't confuse the two. His latest movie, Whatever Works, tells the story of a "genius" professor in New York who marries a much younger woman.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of the 1974 subway-hostage thriller starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, and Luis Guzman.

Actor Ed Helms, co-star of the new film The Hangover, studied improvisation with The Upright Citizens Brigade and got his start in comedy with numerous sketch comedy groups. He currently plays Andy Bernard, the salesman who loves a cappella, on the NBC comedy series The Office.

Seventy-two-year-old actor David Carradine was found dead in his hotel room in Bangkok. He was best known for his role in Kill Bill: Vol 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and the Kung Fu TV series.

In Chandler Burr's You or Someone Like You, the wife of a powerful Hollywood executive unexpectedly finds herself at the helm of a popular book group. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a "smart novel" that offers "a very tough reflection on the idea of 'group-ness' itself"

It's a double feature from critic David Edelstein, who says Pixar's sublime new film Up reaches heavenward, while Sam Raimi's deliciously gory Drag Me to Hell crawls in the opposite direction.

Our critic at large returns with the second part of his report from this year's Cannes Film Festival, including his impressions of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and the South Korean vampire flick Thirst — both due out in the United States later this summer.

Critic-at-large John Powers reports on the scene at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

The latest from the Monsters, Inc. director is an adventure story featuring a grouchy old man, a chubby boy, a 13-foot-tall flightless bird and a house set aloft by balloons.