A film that created news on the festival circuit this year is Ryan Coogler's "Fruitvale Station," due out this Friday. It is based on true events that occurred in the eponymous metro station in Oakland, Calif., namely, a violent tussle that led to an innocent man dying at the hands of the police. The events were captured via mobile phone camera by an eyewitness, the footage of which is shown at the start of the film. "Fruitvale

It is called Hashima Island and it is located a few miles from Nagasaki, Japan. This island was the inspiration for the setting of "Skyfall," released at the end of 2012. James Bond fans who want to experience the mystical atmosphere of the island that was inhabited by the evil Raoul Silva (played by Javier Bardem) can now tour this strange piece of land via Google Street View.

Previously a major mining site, Hashima became a ghost town

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Memo to bombastic directors who come up with ill-digested “Philosophy for Dummies” concepts on the nature of love and life in hardly watchable films (e.g. Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life”): Don’t. Unfortunately, chances are they won’t listen and will continue to come up with these half-baked offerings to convey a message so obscure we don’t get it. Case in point, “The Congress.” But before talking about that movie, note to self: Never assume that a director who gave us a masterpiece as first film will follow up with something half as good. High expectations set us up for big disappointments. So we’re mad when Florian Von Donnersmarck, author of the superlative “The Lives of Others,” hits us with a dud like "The Tourist"

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According to interviews which he gave afterward Werner Herzog was shaken up by it, and it's understandable why. When shooting for "The act of killing", which he co-executive-produced, began, it's likely that he did not know such a major upheaval was about to occur in documentary filmmaking. Just like Joshua Oppenheimer, who lensed this film, did not expect to shoot such a documentary upon returning to Indonesia.

Alain Guiraudie’s film, shown in the “Un certain regard” section at the last Cannes Film Festival, is a perfect illustration of why European cinema works while American cinema is drowning in a sea of either loud, big productions wrapped in close-ups of interchangeable actors (Brad Pitt or Leo di Caprio? Nicole Kidman or Jessica Chastain?) and special effects or self-indulgent, quirky indies where one almost hears the whirring of the