As I watched The Texas Killing Fields, I had one question running through my mind: why don’t they make more films like this? I don’t mean this in the Terrence Malick random acts of genius sort of way, as in “why can’t every filmmaker take seven years in post-production to create a high-minded masterpiece?” I mean it in a “whatever happened to the if it’s Friday, it-must-be-a-new-police-procedural movie” sort of way.

Steve McQueen's second feature reprises his collaboration with Hunger star Michael Fassbender and the effect is no less spellbinding. This time, instead of starving for a cause, Fassbender plays a man at the mercy of his urges rather than in control of them: a sex addict. In the frenetic world of New York City it's easy for Fassbender's Brandon to keep his private life a secret. When a vat of pornography is discovered on his work computer

It would be criminal to discuss the plot of Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, “The Skin I Live In,” in any linear or sensible fashion, for it would ruin the sick joke he’s setting us up for.

The best way to describe it is to lay out the unsettling images and metaphors Almodóvar fills the screen wtih for about an hour, after which, through assorted flashbacks, he gradually starts to link all the threads.

Judging from Martha Marcy May Marlene, one of the most talked-about feature films currently showing at the New York Film festival, relative newcomers writer/director Sean Durkin and actress Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley) were born with the right gene. This new thriller is so tight and poised that it appears to be the work of long-collaborating veterans (it may prove difficult for them to live up to this standard through the rest of their careers but that's a good problem for them--and us--to have to face).

If you hear the movie press machine tell it, I’m supposed to come away from 50/50 talking about how it’s a new type of cancer movie: frank, funny, and unconventionally moving and based on the real-life cancer experiences of its screenwriter, Will Reiser. Instead, I left with a cool feeling toward the film’s misogyny, something that Seth Rogen’s presence often serves as a dog whistle for. Whether intentional or not, 50/50 turns

Roman Polanski's latest effort is an adaptation of French dramatic auteur—and, for a short while, Nicolas Sarkozy confidante--Yasmine Reza's play “God of Carnage.” After being favorably received onstage, both Broadway and the West End mounted productions to mostly positive acclaim. It seems natural, then, that a film version—a ninety-minute set piece in which the characters barely leave the room

Limelight, the documentary directed by Billy Corben, is perhaps the most apologetic, mournful retelling of a party animal’s life since The People Vs. Larry Flynt, or at least, Blow. Given Corben’s kid-gloves treatment of his subject—1970s-through-‘90s dance club kingpin Peter Gatien—you may, by the end of this coke-fueled, debauchery-drenched saga, confuse Gatien with Saint Teresa of Avila herself. But whether you