Five single mothers deal with tough children and fraught love lives in Tyler Perry’s latest Madea-free endeavor, which treats the existence of single moms like a lid-blowing revelation. 

There’s a familiar, tired trope at the center of this Oscar-nominated, César-winning French animated feature about a mouse and a bear who become friends, but that doesn’t hold it back in the slightest.

With the Fast & Furious franchise currently on hold, this videogame adaptation about road racing, including a 45-hour cross-country dash, mostly gets the job done, despite an excess of backstory and poor post-conversion 3-D effects. 

Jason Bateman’s directorial debut brings black comedy to the national spelling-bee circuit.

Writer-director Jonathan Sobol has found an appropriate title for his derivative con-man movie, but star turns from Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Terence Stamp, and others make it a passable time-filler. 

A bored, emasculated pharmacist (Sam Rockwell) has an affair with a slinky femme fatale (Olivia Wilde) in a smug suburban noir that recalls American Beauty. 

True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten shows a flair for sweet-hearted, dunderheaded slapstick, but Jeremiah Chechik’s rom-com about a national laughingstock who tries to court a married woman is plagued by illogic. 

Based on a true story, this exploitation thriller about a teenage boy who stabs his friend doubles as a scolding moral tale about the consequences of using the Internet. 

Five single mothers deal with tough children and fraught love lives in Tyler Perry’s latest Madea-free endeavor, which treats the existence of single moms like a lid-blowing revelation. 

There’s a familiar, tired trope at the center of this Oscar-nominated, César-winning French animated feature about a mouse and a bear who become friends, but that doesn’t hold it back in the slightest.

With the Fast & Furious franchise currently on hold, this videogame adaptation about road racing, including a 45-hour cross-country dash, mostly gets the job done, despite an excess of backstory and poor post-conversion 3-D effects. 

Jason Bateman’s directorial debut brings black comedy to the national spelling-bee circuit.

Writer-director Jonathan Sobol has found an appropriate title for his derivative con-man movie, but star turns from Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Terence Stamp, and others make it a passable time-filler. 

A bored, emasculated pharmacist (Sam Rockwell) has an affair with a slinky femme fatale (Olivia Wilde) in a smug suburban noir that recalls American Beauty. 

An adaptation of Jon Savage’s book Teenage: The Creation Of Youth Culture attempts to trace the invention of adolescence as we now know it.

After a wildly successful Kickstarter, the big-screen revival of the long-cancelled cult TV show about a teenage sleuth (Kristen Bell) aims so strongly at fans that newcomers may be left in the dark. Does it matter? 

True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten shows a flair for sweet-hearted, dunderheaded slapstick, but Jeremiah Chechik’s rom-com about a national laughingstock who tries to court a married woman is plagued by illogic. 

Based on a true story, this exploitation thriller about a teenage boy who stabs his friend doubles as a scolding moral tale about the consequences of using the Internet. 

After a wildly successful Kickstarter, the big-screen revival of the long-cancelled cult TV show about a teenage sleuth (Kristen Bell) aims so strongly at fans that newcomers may be left in the dark. Does it matter? 

The first part of Lars von Trier’s latest provocation uses one woman’s complete sexual history to address his career-long preoccupations with gender roles, authoritarianism, religion, obsessive behavior, and lust.

Faced with a neglectful, alcoholic mother (Mira Sorvino) and her abusive new boyfriend, two high-school-age sisters (Abigail Breslin and Georgie Henley) take drastic steps to change the situation in this uneven mix of melodrama and “dark quirk.”

Before writing and directing this year’s Sundance-winning Whiplash, Damien Chazelle scripted another music-themed movie, this one a crazed thriller about a concert pianist (Elijah Wood) forced to play the perfect show or suffer the consequences. 

A contraption used to communicate with the dead is just one of many nonsensical elements in this indie horror dud about a haunted house and the spooky owner who’s immune to its terrors. 

Say this for Forest Whitaker: He keeps his mistakes quiet. It’s unlikely anyone will even notice he appeared in this predictable pseudo-spiritual drama about a dark secret kept between two brothers. 

Sundance rejected David Gordon’s Green 2000 debut, but it still helped redefine what we expect from American indie films.

The artificiality and irreverence of John Waters’ early provocations is present in this nostalgia piece about growing up in Baltimore in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but there’s a touch of reality in the way he draws on boyhood experiences.

James Whale’s 1936 adaptation of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s landmark musical has been hard to track down, even though it’s preserved in the National Film Registry. Now that it’s on MOD, cinephiles can appreciate its music and consider its complicated racial politics. 

A decade after Chicago won Best Picture, it’s a good time for reassessment. The musical’s awards success diminished its reputation, but  it deserves to be seen in a more generous light. 

The participants all seem to agree that 1979’s The Visitor—an Italian knockoff of a host of 1970s films—is a comically incoherent, enjoyably deranged experience.

After Kafka put Steven Soderbergh’s ascendent career in a tailspin, he recovered with this lovely evocation of a young boy growing up alone in Depression-era Kansas City. 

Resonances of Roman Polanski’s personal tragedies, both received and inflicted, inform his adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s pessimistic 1891 novel, which follows its heroine (Nastassja Kinski) through a world of senseless cruelty. 

The original Shadow character influenced the look and style of many comic-book heroes that followed, including Batman. So there’s irony in the screen adaptation, arriving five years after Tim Burton’s Batman, being so derivative of the Caped Crusader. 

In the debut of his new column on follow-ups to cinematic breakthroughs, Nathan Rabin looks at Mallrats, Kevin Smith’s widely disparaged attempt to make a Porky’s-style comedy after Clerks. 

Our new feature talks to key contributors who may not be household names. First up, Adam Stockhausen, art director for Wes Anderson’s most recent films, and an Oscar nominee for his work on 12 Years A Slave.

As the South By Southwest film festival grows bigger and more daunting as a section within an even larger and more influential festival, it’s only fitting that this year’s features and documentaries focused on humans struggling against larger forces.

Dazed And Confused is famous as an incubator of talent: Many of its cast members, including Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, and Parker Posey, became household names. But let’s take a moment to consider the careers of those who didn’t blow up, and what might have happened if they had.

An exhaustive look at Bill Murray’s career traces his journey from comedy star to respected actor—and finds his two talents have long been intertwined.

A filmography defined by long odds and improbable victories has made the man who was—and continues to be—Rocky Balboa one of cinema’s greatest survivors. But survival comes at a price.

A guide to the long career of Fritz Lang, which produced a filmography of great diversity while circling around the same preoccupations.

From David Mamet’s early days as a screenwriter-for-hire to his later career as a writer and director, his gift for pointed, precise language has stayed consistent, even if what he uses that language to say hasn’t.

Wes Anderson’s latest prompts a discussion of what makes his movies work—and how seriously they should be taken.

 It was a big night for Gravity, 12 Years A Slave, selfies, and a meme accidentally spawned by John Travolta.

The theatrical release of Son Of God prompted us to look back at various attempts to put the Messiah on the big screen: the too-reverent, the not-so-reverent, and the ridiculous.

The skyrocketing film career of massively successful stand-up Kevin Hart isn’t an anomaly, but it is relatively rare to see a stage comedian transition into bona-fide movie stardom. How has he succeeded where so many other gifted performers have failed?

Michael Mann’s debut, Thief, helped set a tone for a career marked by stylish grit. But with this sophomore effort—filled with Nazi villains and an evil, imprisoned entity—he attempted work on a bigger scale.

When filmmakers from abroad visit America, they tend to find angles on the country that native directors would never consider. Michelangelo Antonioni’s sole film made on American soil is no exception.

The Marx brothers’ future looked dim after the cooly received Duck Soup. Enter Irving Thalberg’s MGM and an attempt to class up the act. Exit much of the mirthful anarchy.

Nothing in Barry Levinson’s filmography suggested he would direct a found-footage horror film. And yet The Bay exists.

A half-remembered 1996 effort found Schwarzenegger fighting a CGI alligator and jumping out of a plane.

Movies long struggled to figure out what to do with Richard Pryor, but his opportunities were seldom as insulting as this early-1980s effort co-starring Jackie Gleason.

The only positive thing that can be said of the pairing of hopelessly white Steve Martin and an Ebonics-spouting Queen Latifah is that history has been kind enough to half-forget it.

The roar of engines couldn’t drown the bad buzz surrounding the Top Gun team’s NASCAR film.

An alternate poster for Her uses a blurred image to see the film more clearly.

Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond The Hills gets a poster inspired by rolling landscapes, a Belgian illustrator, and ambiguity.

Graphic designer Sam Smith creates a new image for his favorite film of 2013 and lists this year’s 10 best movie posters.

Without seeing the film, graphic designer Sam Smith has created an unnerving poster for Jonathan Glazer’s science-fiction thriller.

Long before Jurassic Park restored Michael Crichton to ascendancy, he dominated the 1970s with films like The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, and The Terminal Man, which considered the human cost of progress.

After Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, filmmakers redefined the Apes franchise with each successive entry, while maintaining its daring central premise.

A string of films, including Rollerball and Logan’s Run, portray frightening visions of paradise, illustrating the danger of getting what we want without considering what we give up to get it.

Two 1971 science-fiction films build horrific futures from the materials of the present: one overrun by the violent ids of a barbaric younger generation, the other locked down tight enough to squeeze the humanity from its citizens.

Dazed And Confused is famous as an incubator of talent: Many of its cast members, including Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, and Parker Posey, became household names. But let’s take a moment to consider the careers of those who didn’t blow up, and what might have happened if they had.

A discussion of Richard Linklater’s second film considers what makes it so rewatchable, and what it gets right about teen life in 1976.

Richard Linklater makes movies filled with memorable dialogue. But sometimes the images tell the story.

Almost from the start, Wes Anderson has had a side career making commercials that push his distinctive style up against the boundaries of clear assignments.

 The Oscars have a long history of rewarding great actors for their work in less-than-great films.

In a competitive year for Best Actor, the Academy went with what it knew: Jack. In the process, it overlooked some great work, including one of the decade’s best performances—one that didn’t even earn a nomination.

Few recent Oscar winners have provoked so many strong feelings as Renée Zellweger, whose hillsy turn in Cold Mountain delighted some and appalled others. Elsewhere in the supporting-actress world, 2003 was a year of breakout performances from both veterans and newcomers.

George Sanders’ immortal turn in All About Eve gave the film its cynical soul. But his wasn’t the only memorable supporting acting turn that year.

Welcome Home Brother Charles is a giant-killer-penis movie with a social conscience.

After a string of action roles, 2008’s The Other Man could have been a chance for star Liam Neeson to get back to his dramatic roots. Instead, it seems intent on boring him and his audience to death.

For those interested in A Madea Christmas, Netflix recommends A Day In The Life, a hip-hopera written, directed by, and starring hip-hop veteran Sticky Fingaz. Anyone taking that recommendation will find a surprisingly innovative and unusual movie.

A 2008 supernatural comedy-romance-something-or-other provides a glimpse into the surreal lifestyle that may have provoked James Franco’s evolution into Hollywood’s pre-eminent weirdo.

This week we share our expectations for actors-turned-directors and crowd-funded films like the new Veronica Mars movie, and play a game based on a 50/50 question that’s harder than it seems.

 This week, we share our wildest Oscar hopes and dreams, box ourselves into a conversation about the art of the claustrophobia film, and try to distinguish between the two big comet-about-to-smash-Earth blockbusters of 1998.

Romantic comedies may be in a dark age at the moment, but love isn’t dead on this week’s Valentine’s-themed episode.

With Gravity hitting home video and being re-released in theaters at the same time, we debate whether certain spectacle-based movies retain their value off the big screen. We also check in from Sundance and revisit the ever-alarmed IMDB Parent’s Guide in Parental Guidance Suggested.

This week we share our expectations for actors-turned-directors and crowd-funded films like the new Veronica Mars movie, and play a game based on a 50/50 question that’s harder than it seems.

 This week, we share our wildest Oscar hopes and dreams, box ourselves into a conversation about the art of the claustrophobia film, and try to distinguish between the two big comet-about-to-smash-Earth blockbusters of 1998.

Romantic comedies may be in a dark age at the moment, but love isn’t dead on this week’s Valentine’s-themed episode.

With Gravity hitting home video and being re-released in theaters at the same time, we debate whether certain spectacle-based movies retain their value off the big screen. We also check in from Sundance and revisit the ever-alarmed IMDB Parent’s Guide in Parental Guidance Suggested.