My first zombie movie was “Night of the Living Dead,” viewed at a midnight screening at the old Harvard Square Cinema, attended by a small coterie of late-night freaks and stoners. With its relentless dread and entrail-chomping ghouls, it was a film beyond the ...

I recall watching “Quantum of Solace,” the 007 movie directed by Marc Forster, and thinking, “This man should never have been put in charge of an action movie.” A fine director of art-house fare such as “Finding Neverland” or “The Kite Runner,” Forster handled ...

Director: Wong Kar-wai Language: Cantonese, Mandarin (subtitled in Japanese) Before “The Grandmaster,” Wong Kar-wai had already done a martial-arty film, and better. Now, 1996′s “The Ashes of Time” gets a rerelease on DVD, with a gorgeously restored print, but a cut that’s mysteriously seven ...

Magic Mike,” director Steven Soderbergh’s peep into the world of male strippers, almost feels like a response to his 2009 film “The Girlfriend Experience,” which looked at online escort services. Despite starring wildly popular porn starlet Sasha Grey, the film was cool, cerebral and ...

Somewhere in the nexus between “Family Guy,” “The Hangover” and “Jackass,” grossout humor became very, very mainstream. Once upon a time, a movie with jokes about pooping on one’s partner or shooting Tabasco sauce up a bodily orifice would have been John Waters territory: ...

Director: Seth MacFarlane Language: English I thought it was about as dumb as “Movie 43,” but everyone I know enjoyed this comedy about the magical talking teddy bear (Seth “Family Guy” MacFarlane) who grows up to be a foul-mouthed, beer-swilling, whore-consorting enabler of bad behavior ...

Actor Matthew Fox saw his career take off in the 1990s with the role of Charlie Salinger in the American TV series “Party of Five,” and he gained even more popularity as Jack Shephard, the central character in the innovative series “Lost.” Now, though, ...

Emperor,” a rare Japan-U.S. joint production, aims squarely for that old-school “Casablanca” vibe, a tragic romance set against a backdrop of wartime intrigue, with mixed results. Based on the book “His Majesty’s Salvation” by Shiro Okamoto, the topic is one guaranteed to raise eyebrows: ...

It’s no secret that producer/rapper RZA — nee Robert Fitzgerald Diggs — is a big fan of vintage chop-socky films; his group Wu-Tang Clan lifted its name from one such flick. RZA has worked steadily at crossing over into cinema, starting with a soundtrack ...

Language: English Someone coined the term “crack-TV” when “24″ was hot to describe those pulse-racing series that always kept you chasing your next hit. I’d say “The Walking Dead” and “Breaking Bad” are two of the best current examples, but right behind them is ...

If you were into art-house cinema in the 1990s, you were into Julie Delpy, whether it was her boho-romantic Celine in Richard Linklater’s classic “Before Sunrise,” her ice-cold vixen in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s magisterial “Three Colors: White,” or even the clichéd hooker-with-a-heart in Roger “Pulp ...

If she’s known for anything, Julie Delpy is known for her films “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset,” made with director Richard Linklater and costar Ethan Hawke. And while those films were about the giddy feeling of falling head over heels for someone even when ...