Film

Fresh Air's film critic reviews Cloverfield, a disaster film featuring a monster that attacks Manhattan; the nightmare is captured by shaky Blair Witch-style camerawork.

Los Zafiros, or The Sapphires, was bigger than The Beatles — in Cuba, anyway. Fresh Air's rock historian reviews a new DVD about the band: Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time.

In Paul Thomas Anderson's new film There Will Be Blood, the young actor Paul Dano plays a rural preacher at odds with the oilman (Daniel Day-Lewis) at the center of the story. Dano previously appeared in Little Miss Sunshine, playing the teen who was an elective mute.

How can anyone keep up with all the movies opening this time of year? I can't — and it's my day job. Between the popcorn flicks and the kiddie stuff and the art films that need to open before December 31 to qualify for the Oscars, it's madness, I tell you, madness. I've already praised The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, The Savages and No Country for Old Men; let's take the rest, from my least to most favorite.

Twenty-five years after its debut, the dystopian-future classic Blade Runner has been released on DVD in a re-edited version called Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Director Ridley Scott talks about that release, as well as about his most recent film, American Gangster.

Based on an Upton Sinclair novel, Paul Thomas Anderson's new film There Will Be Blood stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil prospector in the earliest days of the industry. Anderson's other films are the Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler.

Fresh Air's arbiter of things filmic offers his annual year-end movies wrap-up.

This time, his Top 10 list has 11 entries, as the number-nine slot features a tie. Edelstein tells Terry Gross why he needed an extra spot — and why some films that drew praise from other quarters didn't make his cut. Here's the list, with links to previously published reviews and features by Edelstein as well as by All Things Considered's Bob Mondello, Morning Edition contributor Kenneth Turan, and other NPR voices:

Richard Zanuck grew up on movies — literally. The son of legendary producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who founded and ran Twentieth Century Fox studios in Hollywood's golden era, he became an Oscar-winning producer himself. His latest project: Sweeney Todd, the big-screen version of the legendary Stephen Sondheim musical. Zanuck's credits include Driving Miss Daisy, Jaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict Rules of Engagement, and many more. Besides which, "I can mention a lot of pictures I'm unhappy about," he tells Terry Gross.

Jason Reitman's new teen comedy Juno, like Knocked Up, disguises its family-values stance with a liberal helping of four-letter words. Film critic David Edelstein says it's targeted firmly at the tweener crowd, and the relentless banter of Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets taken to a new level here. But every character's wisecracks, as in bad Neil Simon, come from the same place.

Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody are the director-screenwriter team behind the new film Juno, about a tough, sardonic 16-year-old girl; when she gets pregnant, she gives the baby up for adoption to a couple she finds through the PennySaver. New York Times critic A.O. Scott describes Juno as a "feminist, girl-powered rejoinder and complement to [the film] Knocked Up." Reitman also directed the satire Thank You For Smoking. Cody is the author of the memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.