Film

The flashy Denzel Washington thriller Safe House will probably gross in a few hours what Steven Soderbergh's Haywire has made in several weeks. But if you like action films, you should watch these two together, says critic David Edelstein.

Meryl Streep won a Golden Globe for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. She talks about preparing for that role, her other films and how her perceptions of herself have changed over the years.

Both Close and co-star Janet McTeer have received Academy Award nominations for their roles in the period drama. Set in Dublin before World War I, it centers on a woman who finds more freedom by living life as a men.

Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut adapts Shakespeare's Coriolanus, about a Roman general with his eye on political office. Critic David Edelstein says that in Fiennes' hands, the modern-day update makes for thrilling moviegoing.

Gerardo Naranjo's gripping film about the Mexican drug war is Mexico's submission this year for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Critic John Powers says it deftly illuminates a society plagued with fear.

In the past year, actor Michael Fassbender has played a mutant villain in X-Men: First Class, psychoanalyst Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method, Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre and a sex addict in Shame. He discusses several of those roles, as well as his part in Inglorious Basterds.

The Iranian film A Separation won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film on Sunday. Critic John Powers says the remarkable film takes viewers inside a country that is far more complicated and fascinating than news headlines indicate.

Meryl Streep stars as Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd's biopic about the former prime minister of the United Kingdom. Film critic David Edelstein applauds her performance, calling it "one of the greatest impersonations I'd ever seen."

The actor is so good at what he does, you might not recognize him from role to role. He's played everyone from Sid Vicious and Dracula, to Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films, and now George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The orphaned German shepherd was found in the wreckage of a kennel during World War I. Writer Susan Orlean details how he became one of the biggest film stars of the silent era in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend.