Film

The King of Queens star and the writer of last year's acclaimed film The Wrestler have collaborated on a wrenching movie about an obsessive football fan whose life is upended after a brutal encounter with his favorite player.

Straightforward and kid-friendly, Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo isn't the animation master's most complicated film. But in some ways, the film's simplicity offers a clearer look at the director's greatness. Movie critic David Edelstein explains.

Writer-director Max Mayer's latest film is a romantic comedy in which — what else? — boy meets girl. In Adam, boy has Asperger's syndrome; it's a high-functioning variant of autism that can cause social awkwardness. The film won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance.

Screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront, died Aug. 5 at age 95. Fresh Air remembers him with an interview he gave in 1990 — plus excerpts of chats with Elia Kazan and Eva Marie Saint.

Two summer movies — The Proposal and The Ugly Truth — perpetuate misogynist stereotypes of rabid career women in need of a man. What does it mean that they were created by women?

Louie Psihoyos' new film graphically — and movingly — documents the sale and slaughter of dolphins captured by Japanese fishermen. David Edelstein says the movie could be a game-changer for the industry.

Director Louie Psihoyos talks about his new documentary film The Cove, an expose of dolphin abuse in Japan. Former Flipper trainer Ric O'Barry joins the conversation.

Writer and director Armando Iannucci's new film In the Loop involves an unnamed country in the Middle East, whisperings of military involvement, epically foul tirades and razor sharp political satire.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews In the Loop the new British political satire co-starring James Gandolfini.

Writer-director Judd Apatow's new film Funny People is a vaguely autobiographical comedy starring Apatow's former roommate Adam Sandler as a comic mentoring a younger colleague (Seth Rogen).

Seattle director Lynn Shelton's fabulously squirmy film Humpday centers on two seemingly straight men who decide to have sex with each other as part of an amateur porn video competition.

John Powers reviews a luminous cinematic memoir by the 81-year-old French director Agnes Varda. Like all Varda's films, The Beaches of Agnes brims with its creator's independence and vivacity.

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest jaunt — as a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista — is funnier and riskier than Borat. Sure, he's a cheap-shot artist, but he's one who's often got a righteous point.

Iranian-American author and human rights activist Roya Hakakian talks about growing up Jewish in post-revolutionary Iran.

When it came out in 1961, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad perplexed and excited audiences with its surrealistic storytelling. John Powers has a review of the film's Criterion Collection re-release.

This lush, good-looking crime flick doesn't really have a theme, and it never quite sparks to life. But it's got lots of incidental pleasures — Johnny Depp's spirited performance chief among them.

Director Darren Aronofsky talks about making a realistic film about a notoriously fake sport. His Oscar-nominated film, starring Mickey Rourke as a professional wrestler well past his prime, will be released on DVD next week. (Segment)

Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow knows how to get under your skin and control your responses — as she does in her latest feature, the Baghdad-set war movie The Hurt Locker. David Edelstein has a review.

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow discuss their collaboration on The Hurt Locker, a combat movie about an Army bomb squad that roams Iraq in search of explosives to defuse.

James Gray's new film stars Joaquin Phoenix as a Brighton Beach man with a chance at happiness with one woman, and a passion for another who'll almost certainly bring him heartache.