The tiny, fierce, frizzy-haired heroine at the heart of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is undoubtedly an indomitable heartbreaker and the force largely responsible for much of the swooning praise being heaped on this gritty, low-budget, post-apocalyptic fable by film festival audiences and...

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Sand Sharks” In a certain realm of salty horror movies, sharks are ubiquitous – from the signature opening beach scene in the classic “Jaws” to the recent hybrid Syfy Channel B-movie spoofs of “Dinoshark” and...

Writer-director Terrence Malick’s film “To the Wonder,” shot primarily in Oklahoma, will make its world premiere at next month’s Venice Film Festival. The lineup for Venice’s Aug. 29-Sept. 8 event, announced Thursday by festival director Alberto Barbera, includes the romantic...

In our Internet-saturated age of sampling and mixing and fingertip access to a world of music, images and media riches, the issues of copyright law and protection of intellectual property are becoming ever more vague and thorny. And Hollywood is in many crucial ways the epicenter of the ongoing...

In the spring of 2010, 63-year-old Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic sat upright in a chair in New York’s Museum of Modern Art – six days a week, 7 1/2 hours a day for 90 days, without eating, drinking or moving – while some 750,000 patrons queued up to sit opposite her and...

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “10,000 More Ways to Die – Spaghetti Western Film Collection” For most movie fans, the term “Spaghetti Western” sparks up vivid images of Clint Eastwood’s steely-eyed man with no name in classics such as “A Fistful of...

When that sweep of orchestral strings and jazzy piano line flowed from the TV speaker every Friday night on CBS, it sounded like freedom on the open road, which of course made Nelson Riddle’s theme perfect for setting the mood of “Route 66.” Created by Academy Award-winning writer...

            A book many cinema buffs credit with lifting low-budget horror movies and B-level genre pictures into the more respectable realm of film scholarship is being resurrected in a new, expanded edition. “Forgotten Horrors,” the 1980 volume by Michael...

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Get the Gringo” After his recent history of tawdry personal troubles and terrible publicity, Mel Gibson’s movie career is at its lowest ebb. So with the gritty and aggressively sordid action film “Get the Gringo” (due out on...

Tangerine trees, marmalade skies and seas of green come to brilliant life in the restored Blu-ray edition of “Yellow Submarine,” the Beatles’ joyous 1968 animated acid trip for the whole family. Long out of print, this milestone of graphic splendor looks as vibrant and fresh as the day...

BY GENE TRIPLETT Ronny Cox didn’t land his role in “Deliverance” because he knew how to paddle a river. “John Boorman wanted me to play the guitar and I was hired for the picture because I play the guitar,” the actor/musician said in a recent phone interview from his Los Angeles...

  NEW YORK – Maybe it’s a generational thing, but two of the key actors in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” the first in Marvel Comics’ fledgling new round of summer blockbusters, have never read the comic books that inspired the superhero series. In the current “reboot” of the...

In Italy, Woody Allen’s amusing, leisurely rail tour of the Continent goes slightly off track. “To Rome With Love” is not exactly a train wreck – Allen is too wily and witty a filmmaker to let that happen – but it definitely feels like his European sojourn is running out of steam and...

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “All In: The Poker Movie” The disreputable, outlaw aura of card sharps and riverboat gamblers hangs over director Douglas Tirola’s rambling, sympathetic documentary “All In: The Poker Movie” (due out on DVD Tuesday). The...

BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – Welsh actor Rhys Ifans asserts that he’s oddly and uniquely qualified to play the raging, reptilian villain in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” the epic new rebuild of Marvel Comics’ classic superhero franchise. As the earnest, brilliant Dr. Curt Connors, the...

BY GENE TRIPLETT Lesley Ann Warren has a picture of herself in bed with James Garner. How’s that for a big red-ink headline on a tabloid cover? But don’t start spreading lurid gossip. The photo on Warren’s office wall was taken during the filming of the gender-bending musical comedy...

Hardcore fans of Marvel Comics’ legendary teenage superhero Spider-Man and the three summer blockbuster movies the pulp crime series has spawned within the past decade (2002, 2004 and 2007), might be forgiven for casting a jaundiced eye on “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which at first blush...

NEW YORK – Denis Leary has no patience for macho actors who claim they do all their own stunts. (Bleep) that,” the often profane actor and stand-up comic said during a recent press day for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” in which Leary plays the tough police Captain Stacy. “First of all...

BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – Andrew Garfield knows he has some serious spandex tights to fill in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” the summer’s hotly anticipated cinematic rebooting of the iconic Marvel Comics superhero series, which swings into the nation’s multiplexes on Tuesday. As the new...

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Some Guy Who Kills People” With its blunt, eponymous title, its impressive cast and the producing clout of John Landis, “Some Guy Who Kills People” (due out on DVD Tuesday) slyly defies its slasher-comedy pedigree and rolls...