Tony Gilroy had been writing screenplays and watching directors turn them into movies for about a decade when he wrote Michael Clayton. For six years, the project simply would not get up off the ground. Then along came Jason Bourne. With the help of, among others, George Clooney, Sydney Pollack and Steven Soderbergh, he was finally able to get Michael Clayton made - and direct it himself. The film was well-received when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival and lauded in Toronto. And now It's out on DVD next week, just in time for the Oscars. It's been nominated for seven of those, including Best Picture, and Gilroy's been nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Michael Guillén spoke with him on the eve of its theatrical run. Read article >>

Romance & Cigarettes  Rent 

"There is more raw vitality pumping through John Turturro’s passionate ode to the sensual pulse of life in a working-class neighborhood of Queens, than in a dozen perky high school musicals," wrote Stephen Holden in the NY Times. "This is a movie in which a dirty mind is a good thing. Call it “The Singing Id.” Prudes, be forewarned." Adds Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "It's the most original picture by an American director I've seen this year, and also the most delightful." A great cast includes James Gandolfini - Tony Soprano, singing? We're there.

Gone Baby Gone Rent  

A good year for Casey Affleck (with this and an Oscar nom for Jesse James) and brother Ben, too, who made his directorial debut with this powerful crime drama based on a novel by Dennis Lehane. "A superior police procedural, and something more," Roger Ebert wrote, "a study in devious human nature." "In his strikingly downbeat directorial debut," adds Village Voice's Jim Ridley, "Affleck has created something of a blue-moon rarity: an American movie of genuine moral complexity. "

Also out today: The Bubble (see below); Lubitsch Musicals (Eclipse); Martian Child; Blade: The Series; Tell Me You Love Me: First Season; We Own the Night; Introducing the Dwights; Becoming Jane; The Amateurs; WB Classic Shorts - The Academy Award Collection Winners; Why Did I Get Married?; No Reservations; Blue State; A Zed & Two Noughts; The Draughtsman's Contract; Black Blood Brothers, Vol. 1; Naruto Box Set Volume 6; Kanon: Volume 2.

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DarkBlueAlmostBlack Rent  Read  

Accumulating yet more evidence for the rising reputation of Spanish cinema, DarkBlueAlmostBlack is also a movie about which you'll want to know very few plot particulars prior to viewing. Reading a synopsis of events makes the film sound relatively ridiculous, and yet writer/director Daniel Sánchez Arévalo tells his story so cleverly and interestingly that you will most likely go along with each bizarre step in this tale of two families fractured by everything from prison to proper employment, homosexuality to infertility. Arévalo hooks you on feelings first, so that--no matter how strange events become--you'll care too much for the characters to... read review here >>

More like this Far Side of the Moon | Amor de Hombre

The Bubble  Rent   Read  

No, it's not a documentary exposing the underside of America's real estate market. Director and (with Gal Uchovsky) co-writer Eytan Fox's The Bubble is about the denizens of a mostly gay enclave in Tel Aviv, Israel. This cordoned-off area (not literally, perhaps, but figuratively--by being liberal, secular and "other" in a country not particularly noted for these attributes) is the "bubble" of the title, and its citizens--young, good-looking, smart and self-aware--are not oblivious to the fact that they are living in a kind of homogeneous "closed society." The thing about bubbles is: They tend to burst, and rather easily, too. Mr. Fox has already given us two fine films... read review here >>

More like this Walk on Water | Late Marriage

The Amazing Screw-On Head Rent Read  

This 22 minute animated short based on Mike Mignola's award winning comic book has quickly ascended the 'steampunk' cult classic ladder. Ripe with 19th century banter, mystical artifacts, and technological anachronyms, The Amazing Screw-On Head takes viewers back, then sideways, to a time when the world was simpler, and yet, more bizarre. It's no wonder that Mignola of Hellboy fame, won another Eisner Award (the "Oscars" of the comic book industry) in 2003 for The Amazing Screw-On Head under Best Humor Publication. And this is a rare brand of humor... read review here >>

More like this Hellboy: Sword of Storms | Blood and Iron

GreenCine editor David Hudson has immersed himself fully at Berlinale, Berlin's marvelous film festival, and occasional surfaces to post his thoughts - and some from other film bloggers - on one of the world's great film events. Read it all, at GreenCine Daily.