Film

Fresh Air's critic-at-large ponders the 40th-anniversary edition DVD of the The Graduate.

Released in 1967, The Graduate starred Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft and won an Oscar for director Mike Nichols. It was also nominated for six other Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress.

Fresh Air's film critic reviews the new Sean Penn film, adapted from the best-selling nonfiction narrative by Jon Krakauer.

Critic Milo Miles reviews the new four-DVD set, Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938. The animated series features the classic Popeye cartoons by the Fleischer Brothers studios. Miles calls the set a first-rate reissue.

Fresh Air's film critic reviews Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, which stars Tommy Lee Jones as a former military MP — and the father of a young soldier who's gone AWOL after returning from active duty in Iraq.

Viggo Mortensen stars in Eastern Promises, a new David Cronenberg thriller set in London, in the dangerous underworld of sex trafficking.

The film was written by Steve Knight, who wrote the screenplay for Dirty Pretty Things.

Cronenberg and Mortensen's last collaboration was the acclaimed 2005 film A History of Violence.

Fresh Air's film critic reviews 3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.

It's a remake of the 1957 movie of the same title — which was in turn based on an Elmore Leonard short story.

Fresh Air's film critic doesn't much like the new film, based on the best-selling novel of the same name. It stars Laura Linney and Scarlet Johanssen.

Superbad might be the most provocative teen sex-comedy ever made. I hedge because it's just opening, and the only ones provoked so far are nerdy male film critics. We love it! Its heroes are graduating high-school buddies swimming in hormones and uncertainty. Seth, played by Jonah Hill, is blobby and loud. Evan, played by Michael Sera, is skinny and hysterical. Seth is a virgin and likely to remain so for some time but talks of nothing but sex — a nonstop stream of naughty words that would make David Mamet sit up and salute.

Actor Peter Fonda is probably best known for his role in the cult-classic road movie Easy Rider. His recent roles include one in the film 3:10 to Yuma, a 2007 remake of the 1957 Western of the same name, which was itself based on the 1953 Elmore Leonard short story. The movie also stars Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Fonda, the son of actor Henry Fonda, is also the author of the memoir Don't Tell Dad.

Celebrated salsa musician is the subject of the film El Cantante. Our music critic takes a look at his career, marked by dazzling musical highs and personal lows including heroin addiction and a suicide attempt.

In his new film, Resurrecting the Champ, actor Samuel L. Jackson plays a homeless, broken-down former heavyweight contender. The movie is directed by Rob Lurie and set to open Aug. 24. Jackson's other films include Black Snake Moan, Pulp Fiction, Jungle Fever, Coach Carter, Freedomland and Unbreakable. He studied dramatic arts at Atlanta's Morehouse College, and after he graduated he originated two August Wilson roles — Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson and Wolf in Two Trains Running — at the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Fresh Air's critic reviews the new film Stardust, which stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro. It's a supernatural story based on the Neil Gaiman novel.

Jeffrey Blitz's new film Rocket Science is a partly autobiographical coming-of-age tale about a teenager who joins the high school debate team. Blitz won the Dramatic Directing Award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival; he also directed 2002's Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, along with several episodes of the hit NBC television series The Office.

Interview is an American remake of a film by Theo van Gogh, the outspoken Dutch director who was murdered in 2004 by an Islamic extremist. It's not politically incendiary, but it's dramatically charged. It's a psychological duel to the death. Steve Buscemi plays Pierre Peders, a war correspondent stuck doing puff pieces on celebrities; Sienna Miller is Katya, the gorgeous prime-time soap goddess and horror-film actress he's assigned to talk to. She shows up very late to the trendy restaurant, feigning ordinariness but radiating entitlement.

Paul Rudd, who co-starred in Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, produced and stars in the new independent film The Ten — a series of irreverent vignettes that reinterpret the Ten Commandments for a modern audience.

Rudd also stars in the upcoming movie I Could Never Be Your Woman, with Michelle Pfeiffer. His other films include Clueless, Anchorman and The Cider House Rules, and he's been seen on TV's Friends and Reno 911!.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews “The Simpsons Movie.”

Nancy Cartwright's work is widely heard and well loved, but not many people know it's her. She's the voice of Bart Simpson on TV's The Simpsons — and in the long-awaited feature film that hits theaters this week.

Al Jean knows Marge, Homer, Bart and the gang better than almost anyone. He's executive producer and writer for The Simpsons, and he's been with the show since it began. The new Simpsons movie, he's been heard to say, is about "what happens when a man doesn't listen to his wife."

Before The Simpsons, Jean worked on TV's A.L.F. and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog discusses his new film Rescue Dawn, a Hollywood adaptation of his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Both the movie and the documentary are based on the true story of Dieter Dengler, the only U.S. pilot to successfully escape from a North Vietnamese-controlled prison.

There's something about the journey of John Waters' Hairspray to its current incarnation as a candy-colored, big-budget movie musical that I can't quite believe.