The multitalented Tom McCarthy started off his career as an actor, small roles in some prominent films (like Meet the Parents, Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana), but as writer-director of the acclaimed The Station Agent and The Visitor, McCarthy's made a name for himself for smart indie dramedy. His latest is Win Win, set in New Jersey and starring Paul Giamatti, and Jeffrey Anderson chatted with McCarthy about the film, which just opened in select theaters nationwide. Read more >>

Times of Harvey Milk (Criterion)Rent  

Oscar-winning doc on the outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office, deservedly gets the full Criterion treatment. "A truly great documentary," writes Ruby Rich, "The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) has exceeded its original category with the passage of time. It is now an archive, a political case study, urban geography, melodrama, and cathartic expiation, and has inspired both an opera and a theatrical feature, Gus Van Sant’s Milk."

Punching the ClownRent  

Gregori Viens' and Henry Phillips' satire won the Slamdance Film Festival audience award, partly biographical, drolly fabricated comedy, writes GreenCine's Aaron Hillis for the Village Voice, it "may be the funniest movie ever made about trying to hold on to one’s artistic integrity in an image-obsessed world...[a] ramshackle, HD-shot delight ." Richard Brody calls it a "wry, poignant, smartly satirical comedy... [Phillips] puts himself into uneasy situations in which he doesn't always come out as the hero."

Also out today: How Do You Know; The Tourist; Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse; The Windmill Movie ["A remarkable documentary attempt to reconcile (Richard) Rogers's sense of personal, professional, and artistic malaise, which culminated in his decades-long attempt to make a film about his life"--Wesley Morris] ;Skyline [see giveaway below]; Yogi Bear.

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Waste LandRent  Read 

This year has been packed with documentaries about art and about the environment, but the Oscar-nominated Waste Land manages to take on both topics comfortably, without preaching, and with a positive outlook besides. Lucy Walker's film is inspirational without seeming self-righteous, moving without being hackneyed. It begins as the well-established Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz decides on his newest project. He goes to Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage pile near Rio de Janeiro; there, he meets a handful of pickers, people who work on the garbage heap, pulling out recyclable materials. They each have amusing/disturbing stories of the things they have found. Stunning footage shows...Read more >>

More like this Forever | Devil's Playground

Within the first decades of the 20th Century, Earth was becoming a smaller place. Most of the planet's surface had been mapped and the poles had been successfully reached. Only one natural superlative remained in defiance of man's despoilment: Earth's highest peak, Tibet's Mt. Chomolungma, known more familiarly in the West as Mt. Everest. Anthony Geffen's film The Wildest Dream, released as an IMAX spectacular via National Geographic's theatrical imprint, documents the doomed 1924 conquest of Everest by British mountaineer George Mallory. Mallory's story dovetails into American climber Conrad Anker's modern attempt to reach Everest's summit using Mallory's route... Read more >>

More like this Touching the Void | Everest

HereafterRent  Read 

The new Clint Eastwood film about near-death experience, life after death and love in the here-and-now, may be a lot of hooey, but it’s hooey done right: moment to moment, performance by performance, with precision and grace. Apparently, my opinion of the film goes against that of much of the critical establishment, not to mention the general populace, who, if it didn’t exactly ignore the film, certainly did not send its box-office reeling. Yet this unusually-themed, for Eastwood, movie bests the filmmaker’s heavy-handed Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino via its surprising delicacy -- never more so than when dealing with one-on-one moments. Perhaps this auteur’s choice of subject matter--less “macho” than most of his movies--put off his fan base, and that's too bad.... Read more >>

More like this After Life | The Forgotten

Up in the Air's Vera Farmiga co-stars in Source Code (director Duncan Jones' follow-up to Moon), a twisty new techno-thriller which screened as the Opening Night film at this year's SXSW Film Festival. Aaron Hillis chatted with Farmiga about her supporting role in this "spiritual story" and other topics for a new podcast.

Also on GC Daily, Steve Dollar's critic's notebook from SXSW: "The very best moments marking the film component of this year's SXSW had everything to do with emotion, the real, raw, rag-and-bone shop of the heart stuff, transfigured through the prism of cinematic art (or mayhem)." Steve picks his faves from the fest. Read more >>

Cloverfield meets B-movie thrills in the action-thriller Skyline, which arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray today. Starring Eric Balfour (of Six Feet Under fame), Donald Faison, and more attractive 20-30-somethings, Skyline delivers action in the style of Roger Corman's best B-Movies, and visual effects as big as you please. The directors, The Brothers Strause, are the visual architects behind the current blockbuster Battle: Los Angeles. And now you can join the action and win a Skyline DVD Prize Pack!

And don't forget you can win a cool Jane Eyre prize package too.