Film

The Sergio Leone Anthology includes A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker.

The zombie comedy Fido offers satire along with splatter; Fresh Air's film critic says it's "the blood wedding of George Romero and SCTV, and it's a treat for those who don't mind gnawed-off limbs with their hijinks." It's set in a '50s-flavored, Fiestaware-colored retro society, which can be a bit tiresome, because the decade's father-knows-best archetypes have been picked clean. Still, Edelstein says, "director and co-writer Andrew Currie treats his characters with so much affection that even the stereotypes have a fresh life."

George Clooney and the gang return to Vegas and to the casino caper for this third installment in Steven Soderbergh's hit franchise.

While Ocean's Twelve was all over the place, this one's as elegant and streamlined as hero Danny Ocean. As the plotting gets knottier, Soderbergh's technique gets more fluid — the editing jazzier, the colors more luscious, the whip-pans more whiz-bang.

Steven Bach's biography Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl examines the filmmaker who celebrated the Nazi ideal and created the Third Reich's iconic images in Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. Bach details Riefenstahl's ruthless, opportunistic ambition, analyzes her "self-righteous entitlement," and explores her relationships with Hitler, Goebbels and Albert Speer. What emerges is a compulsively readable and scrupulously crafted work.

The premise of Knocked Up is as blunt — as basic — as its title: An attractive and newly successful TV correspondent becomes pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with Ben, who's not just unsuitable but an unholy monument to self-indulgence. Judd Apatow's film is conventional, even conservative, but somehow it plays like one of the hippest movies ever made.

Judd Apatow has been a writer for Larry Sanders and Ben Stiller, and he worked on the cult-favorite TV comedy Freaks and Geeks. But you'll know him as the writer-director of the hit film The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Now he's back with Knocked Up; guest host David Bianculli talks to Apatow and to Knocked Up star Seth Rogen, who plays an oafish slacker confronted with the prospect of fatherhood after a one-night stand.

The 60th Cannes Film Festival drew more than 4,000 journalists, so it's possible you've heard a little something about the hits and misses there. Michael Moore screened a damning documentary about the U.S. health-care system, while singer Norah Jones made her acting debut in a film from Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai. Critic-at-large John Powers reports on other high- and low-lights.

Actor-director Kevin Costner won the Oscar for Dances With Wolves, but he made his first movie splash as a corpse in The Big Chill: He played the friend whose suicide brings a group of old friends together, but all of his speaking scenes were cut from the film, so all we see of Costner is a shot of his hand peeking out from beneath a sheet.

Costner went on to star in Field of Dreams, Tin Cup, Waterworld, Bull Durham and The Upside of Anger; in his latest film, Mr. Brooks, he plays a loving family man who's also a serial killer.

Bug, the new psychological thriller from director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), got its start as a paranoia-driven stage play by actor-writer Tracy Letts (Killer Joe).

The film won the international critics' prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, but it's only now getting a U.S. release. It features Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr. and Lynn Collins, as well as Michael Shannon, who starred in the Off-Broadway production.

Misunderstood giants? None have ever been as popular as Shrek, star of two huge summer hits since 2001. Paramount's grumpy-green-ogre franchise is the epitome of the hand-hold movie: family flicks that serve up action, tomfoolery and life-lessons for the kids, nonstop pop-culture in-jokes for the adults, and fart jokes for the whole family.

A new box-set DVD collection of early musicals starring Hollywood's favorite wholesome blonde includes Romance on the High Seas, My Dream Is Yours, On Moonlight Bay, I'll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon and Lucky Me. Lloyd Schwartz has a review.

Think of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 as a kind of Ben-Hur for our time — it delivers state-of-the-art spectacle, but it also yearns to throw a spotlight on the struggle between good and evil. It ends in deathbed conversions and churchy epiphanies, and it offers more homilies than the average Sunday sermon.

Critic-at-large John Powers reflects on what he thinks is the single greatest movie ever made about the city of Los Angeles — Killer of Sheep, an independent film made in the late '70s by Charles Burnett. It's on the Library of Congress' National Film Registry; it will be showing in selected theaters in the next few months, and it comes out on DVD this September.

Canadian actress Sarah Polley, who's perhaps best known in the United States as the injured Nicole in Atom Egoyan's wrenching The Sweet Hereafter and the drug-dealing Ronna in Doug Liman's Go, makes her directorial debut with the intimate indie drama Away from Her.

The new movie is based on a short story by Alice Munro; it stars Julie Christie as a woman with Alzheimer's, and features Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy and Gordon Pinsent. The movie has generated buzz on the film-festival circuit, and opens in the U.S. on May 4.

The star of Friends and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is featured in the new film Numb; he plays a screenwriter plagued by feelings of anxiety, detachment and panic. The story is based on an autobiographical script by Harris Goldberg (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo), who also made his directing debut with the film.

David Edelstein reviews Alain Resnais's film "Coeurs" or "Private Fears in Public Places."

David Edelstein reviews "Hot Fuzz."

The 68-year-old director Paul Verhoeven hasn't made a film in his native Holland since his 1983 thriller The Fourth Man.

That picture led to a long and lucrative career making Hollywood action, suspense, and sci-fi movies, including Starship Troopers, Showgirls and Basic Instinct.

You may know Irish actor Gabriel Byrne from The Usual Suspects, or from Miller's Crossing, or from Into the West — a film he helped produce, as well as perform in. But before finding his way into acting in his late 20s, he tried his hand at archeology, teaching and even short-order cooking. His new movie is Jindabyne.

Children of Men, the breathtaking Alfonso Cuaron film based on P.D. James' dystopian-futurist novel, has just come out on DVD. Critic-at-large John Powers takes a look at one of 2006's most talked-about movies.