Film

Woody Allen is the subject of a new two-part, four-hour special on the PBS series American Masters. TV critic David Bianculli says the documentary is "a smart, sometimes serious study of a smart, sometimes serious filmmaker."

George and Ira Gershwin wrote some of their best songs for movies -- one of which, 1937's A Damsel in Distress, has just been issued by Warner Archives. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says it may be the oddest of the Gershwin brothers' films.

Lars von Trier's Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg as sisters who undergo a psychological transformation as disaster approaches. Critic David Edelstein says the film is a sublime fusion of form and content with a truly Wagnerian climax. (Recommended)

In Drake Doremus' drama Like Crazy, a young couple is forced to separate when one of them violates the terms of her student visa. Movie critic David Edelstein says the movie is painful and compelling -- and reminds him of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.

The lives of writers drive two films opening this week: The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp, dramatizes a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, meanwhile, examines who wrote Shakespeare's plays. Critic David Edelstein says both films show how hard it is to write about writers.

This fiscal thriller, starring Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto and Demi Moore, is set during one day in 2008, as a group of brokers try to prevent their firm from going belly up. David Edelstein says that given the headlines, the film's timing couldn't be better. (Recommended)

Pedro Almodovar's film The Skin I Live In reunites him with actor Antonio Banderas, who first came to international attention as an obsessive lover in the director's 1987 film Law of Desire. This time, Banderas plays a scientist driven to replace his dead wife with a carbon-based copy.

An idealistic campaign press secretary (Ryan Gosling) finds himself in the middle of a scandal that could threaten his candidate's chances of becoming president.

In Take Shelter, Michael Shannon dreams of an apocalyptic storm, and builds a backyard bunker for his family to survive. Critic David Edelstein says the film is terrific.

Moneyball stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager who used analytics and statistics to stay competitive against other teams with much larger payrolls. Critic David Edelstein says the film, based on the 2003 Michael Lewis book, is "entertaining as a sports-underdog story."