RECOMMENDED: Having grown up art fag in the 1980s, I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever tire of what is now a microindustry dedicated to excavating the finer points of the downtown NYC scene circa that city at its most gloriously weird and downtrodden. On the Netflix Instant queue alone, docs about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith [...]

RECOMMENDED: Our only recommended film this weekend is also the only film being widely released this weekend. While Submarine(which looks impressive even though the trailer features one of our least favorite cliches: troubled character? Have them jump into a pool fully clothed) and Beginners open in LA only, X-Men: First Class comes to theaters everywhere. [...]

RECOMMENDED: Is it an abiding love for directorial offspring like Sofia and Roman Coppola that draws us to Cracks, the directorial debut of Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley? Or is the creepy Heavenly Creatures-ish vibe that seems to prevail here? Or is it really just the fact that we’ll watch anything with a British accent [...]

If you’ll allow us to nerd out with you all for a moment, we just got a press release about this and instantly envisioned real-deal lazy, laid-back, air-conditioned mid-week summer fun. Over three consecutive Tuesdays next month, the entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy will be shown on big screens across the country for one [...]

RECOMMENDED: Forgive us, but Werner Herzog is one of our very favorite freaks, and each new doc he makes where he can’t help but insert himself into the action only endears this weirdo to us more. With that in mind, Cave of Forgotten Dreams promises tons: Not just good ol’ Werner snooping around, but Werner [...]

NOT RECOMMENDED: It’s days like this when one looks towards Hollywood and all of that sky-is-falling debate about The Death Of Narrative and The Crisis Of Content and all of that, and you can’t help but think, “Bitches, you DESERVE to go out of business.” Look at all of these stupid movies that are opening [...]

RECOMMENDED: Dark horse choice, we know (especially in a week where there’s a new Rob Redford movie out), but fuck it: Go see Scre4m, the fourth installment in the Scream saga. It’s got all the O.G. players: David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, directed by Wes Craven and still pumping sweet ’90s-bred meta-horror irony [...]

CINEFEST 2011 IS CURRENTLY UNDERWAY. CLICK HERE FOR OUR FESTIVAL PREVIEW! RECOMMENDED: We know it’s crazy, but it could be true: The remake of the Dudley Moore classic Arthur, starring Russell Brand, may actually be, in some ways, better than the original. And we say this as devout original-Arthur fans. Why, you ask; but how? [...]

RECOMMENDED: Juliette Binoche nabbed Best Actress at Cannes for her work in Certified Copy, but that’s not why I’m recommending it this week. I’m recommending it because I’m man-struating and it seems like the most lovely thing in the world to sit in one of the Ritzes this weekend in a theater full of old [...]

RECOMMENDED: We can’t say if Heartbeats has substance, but one thing is for sure: Xavier Dolan‘s writer/director/star turn has style for miles. And after making the festival circuit for a while — if the trailer looks familiar to you, that’s because it played at the Philadelphia Film Festival last fall — Heartbeats is now seeing [...]

RECOMMENDED: Well, first off, you’re probably not going to the movies this weekend, but if you were, wouldn’t it be great to sneak some beers in and hot box on the way over with your friends like you used to do back in the day? If you somehow manage this, A) call me, and B), [...]

RECOMMENDED: Boasting a screenplay by Paul Laverty — whose film The Wind That Shakes the Barley might just have been the greatest movie ever made about Ireland — comes Even The Rain, another film about the oppression of a nation for centuries at the hands of imperialist forces. This time, though, the struggle is Bolivia, [...]

RECOMMENDED: Real talk: It is our sincere belief that Paul Giamatti has been doing a quite but rugged form of penance ever since Sideways, the results of which have slowly but surely put him way back in the black. He was about as fine as an actor can be John Adams a few years back, [...]

RECOMMENDED: Another Year is the latest from that serial-monogamist-of-the-talky-English-movie vibe Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies, Topsy Turvy), and it stars regulars Jim Broadbent (Topsy Turvy, When Did You Last See Your Father) and Ruth Sheen (High Hopes). Broadbent and Sheen play — and the movie is about — one of those anchor [...]

RECOMMENDED, IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAS NEVER BEEN UPTIGHT ABOUT ADMITTING YOUR LOVE FOR THE 2000s ROCK BAND THE STROKES: I know that Black Swan will put me in a bad space mentally. I have no desire to see Christian Bale impersonate a cracked-out dreamer because, shit, I just moved out [...]

Even before the shift toward “truthiness” in media, Andrew Jarecki showed interest in the murky relationship between fact and fiction. His directorial debut was Capturing The Friedmans, an accidental documentary that ushered in the era of titular, voyeuristic self-filming. David Friedman was New York City’s most revered party clown, and all was right in his [...]

RECOMMENDED: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, of course, is the third and final installment of film adaptations of the Stieg Larsson books — all of them, moody, long-ish and deeply Scandanavian. Not to be That Guy, but soak this up before the American adaptations come along, what with their George Clooneys and chick-from-Twilights. [...]

RECOMMENDED: As we mentioned earlier this week, It’s Kind of a Funny Story stars Zach Galifianakis as a mental patient in a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest update for the Judd Apatow/Bucket Brigade generation. It looks not so bad. ALSO NEW IN THE THEATERS: Life As We Know It, part of God’s great plan [...]

RECOMMENDED: Well, out of the box, we can say this: Jesse Eisenberg has completely nailed that mildly Asperger’s-entitled-fuck thing that’s always made us wanna smack Mark Zuckerberg. But is Aaron Sorkin‘s The Social Network based on anything more than a hammed-up version of how you and me and everyone we know came to be unrepentant [...]

RECOMMENDED: See that headline? ACTUAL PIECE OF DIALOG FROM THE ABOVE MOVIE. At this point, most of you know that Oliver Stone is a chronic “intellectual” masturbator whose carbon footprint will now never be justifiable in any way with the art it has left, like a dead lizard skin, upon the Earth. What you don’t [...]