Actors Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the prom queen and [...]

You’ve heard right! J.J. Abrams, whom you might remember from [...]

It’s that time of year again when this critic must sift through the hundreds of films consumed in the past twelve months and make choices—some easy, some more difficult—about the year’s best batch of films. A Separation – Asghar Farhadi’s marital drama snatched top prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and for good reason. Back in February, I wrote, “One of the film’s best qualities is that it treats heavy subjects in a down-to-earth

Nader and Simin: A Separation by Asghar Farhadi is the Iran-made candidate for Best Foreign Picture at the Academy Awards. Not only is it a superb film with nary a wasted shot, but actors Leila Hatami and Peyman Maadi (they won the Best Actor awards at the last Berlin Film Festival) give three-dimensional, wholly believable performances as the two sides of an acrimonious couple going through a sloppy divorce.

I am a sucker for spy movies. Whether it is the Bourne series, the revitalized Bond series or the Mission: Impossible series, and even though I have a love/hate relationship with the latter. The first one was really good with a lot of double-crossing and excellent action, but the second one was a train-wreck, from the script to John Woo’s over-the-top directing. And J.J. Abrams’s third film got the train back on the tracks

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We’re being aggressed by bad Hollywood fare on a weekly [...]