(BY ALI NADERZAD) Eklavya (The Royal Guard) has been voted [...]

Blurring the line between good and bad is a good bet for a screenwriter nowadays. Good versus evil is so passe. The good guys usually win and they're often uninspiring. Oftentimes I find myself rooting for the bad guy, hoping he'll change his ways. Which is why The Brave One, which stars Jodie Foster and opened in the US this past weekend, is my redemption--kind of. Foster plays Erica Bain, vigilante by night, radio-show host by day. A devastating event turns Bain into a different person. Once, when asked by the detective close to her case (Terrence Howard) how she could have gone on after the tragedy she replied that she didn't, she simply became a different person. It's a bit shallow, especially when your trail is littered with bodies.

At the Cannes Festival sometimes things can turn violent between journalists. Or at least that's what I feared upon exiting the Debussy theatre this past May after a press screening of James Gray's We Own the Night, which has its commercial release later this October. The film got copiously booed as end credits rolled--in my opinion because of its formulaic zeal, when you see the final scene, you'll understand--and I partook in the booing. After all, what's a festival if not for the prerogative to holler out your views loud and clear?

About a year ago former president Jimmy Carter launched on a national tour to promote his new book "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid." Filmmaker Jonathan Demme tagged along to document the tour and record a nation's reaction to the new, if short-lived, controversy surrounding the book. Slated for release later this Fall, Man From Plains (Plains refers to Carter's Georgia hometown) shows both the private and the public life of the former president.

Manda Bala, a penetrating new documentary by Jason Kohn about Brazil's recent slew of kidnappings and the intricate net of contradictions animating Brazilian society is a tortured study in tightrope walking. The story is similar everywhere in South and Central America: kids from rich families are plucked from standing traffic at gunpoint and soon a ransom is demanded. Sometimes, an earlobe will follow by mail, and other body parts, until the money is received.

What's the life of a gay teenager from the Midwest like and why should you care? Fat Girls isn’t about heavyset munchkins hobbling about Wal-Marts. It’s more zen-like, a yardstick by which your claim to existence among the cool clique is measured. Films centered around lifestyle choices can quickly turn to yawn-inducing half-truths but writer-director Ash Christian uses the ‘fat girls’ tenet to raise the ante and helps to give an otherwise anodine yarn like high-school life in rural America substance and wit.

(BY HAL CROWTHER) Nashville, by any reckoning one of the [...]