Film

John Waters' movie Hairspray, about a full-figured teen who bops her way to popularity (and fights for racial integration) on a TV dance show in '60s Baltimore, was a cult camp classic that became a hit Broadway musical. Now that stage musical has been re-adapted into a film — starring John Travolta, no less, in the role created by Waters' drag-queen muse Divine.

We talk with director and choreographer Adam Shankman, who directed The Wedding Planner and choreographed Boogie Nights — not to mention the legendary musical episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

Fresh Air's critic-at-large reviews a new DVD set featuring two masterpieces by French filmmaker Chris Marker: 1962's La Jetee and 1984's Sans Soleil.

The first is a science-fiction story set in a post-apocalyptic Paris; except for two seconds of motion, the entire story is told in still photographs.

The brilliantly perceptive Sans Soleil's narrator tells viewers about the letters she's received from a globetrotting friend; her monologue is accompanied by footage from around the world.

Kasi Lemmons' film Talk to Me, which opens this weekend, centers on the radio DJ, television personality and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. (played by Don Cheadle). Greene was a driving force in the black community of Washington D.C.; we talk with Lemmons and with Dewey Hughes, who first hired Greene at the D.C. radio station WOL-AM.

David Edelstein reviews "Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix."

Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist with an expertise in health-care politics and policy, discusses problems with the U.S. health-care system and considers how other countries handle health care. He'll also give us a critique of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko. Oberlander is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Rescue Dawn, the first Hollywood feature from German New Wave director Werner Herzog, is the true story of Dieter Dengler, the only U.S. pilot to sucessfully escape from a North Vietnamese-controlled prison. This dramatized version, starring Christian Bale as Dengler, marks the second time Herzog has told the story.

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt stars in Ratatouille, the new animated feature from Pixar. He's also a writer and stand-up comic, who starred in his own comedy specials and appeared in the TV shows The King of Queens and Reno 911! He'll release a new comedy album, called Werewolves and Lollipops, on July 10.

Two momentous films open nationwide on the same day. Sicko radically challenges our perspective on health care. Ratatouille radically challenges our perspective on rats in kitchens. Cynics will say there's a better chance of a rodent becoming a chef than of universal health care for Americans. That underestimates the big fighting rat at the center of Sicko.

Director Brad Bird and actor Patton Oswalt talk about their film Ratatouille.

The new picture, from digital-animation powerhouse Pixar, opens nationwide tomorrow; it's a comedy about a foodie rat who becomes a chef in a top Paris kitchen.

Bird previously directed and wrote The Incredibles and The Iron Giant.

Oswalt, who provides the voice of the leading rat, Remy, is a writer and stand-up comedian. He's also something of a serious foodie himself — which is in part why Bird wanted him to play his furry hero.

A Mighty Heart tells the story of the hunt in Pakistan for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl through the eyes of his very pregnant wife, Mariane. The film is gripping: Apart from flashbacks that dramatize Mariane's idyllic memories of Daniel, it's clipped, blunt, and grimly realistic. It's almost a police procedural, with a focus on the nuts and bolts of the investigation. Our suspense is lessened, though, by our knowledge that it will end badly.

The Sergio Leone Anthology includes A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker.

The zombie comedy Fido offers satire along with splatter; Fresh Air's film critic says it's "the blood wedding of George Romero and SCTV, and it's a treat for those who don't mind gnawed-off limbs with their hijinks." It's set in a '50s-flavored, Fiestaware-colored retro society, which can be a bit tiresome, because the decade's father-knows-best archetypes have been picked clean. Still, Edelstein says, "director and co-writer Andrew Currie treats his characters with so much affection that even the stereotypes have a fresh life."

George Clooney and the gang return to Vegas and to the casino caper for this third installment in Steven Soderbergh's hit franchise.

While Ocean's Twelve was all over the place, this one's as elegant and streamlined as hero Danny Ocean. As the plotting gets knottier, Soderbergh's technique gets more fluid — the editing jazzier, the colors more luscious, the whip-pans more whiz-bang.

Steven Bach's biography Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl examines the filmmaker who celebrated the Nazi ideal and created the Third Reich's iconic images in Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. Bach details Riefenstahl's ruthless, opportunistic ambition, analyzes her "self-righteous entitlement," and explores her relationships with Hitler, Goebbels and Albert Speer. What emerges is a compulsively readable and scrupulously crafted work.

The premise of Knocked Up is as blunt — as basic — as its title: An attractive and newly successful TV correspondent becomes pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with Ben, who's not just unsuitable but an unholy monument to self-indulgence. Judd Apatow's film is conventional, even conservative, but somehow it plays like one of the hippest movies ever made.

Judd Apatow has been a writer for Larry Sanders and Ben Stiller, and he worked on the cult-favorite TV comedy Freaks and Geeks. But you'll know him as the writer-director of the hit film The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Now he's back with Knocked Up; guest host David Bianculli talks to Apatow and to Knocked Up star Seth Rogen, who plays an oafish slacker confronted with the prospect of fatherhood after a one-night stand.

The 60th Cannes Film Festival drew more than 4,000 journalists, so it's possible you've heard a little something about the hits and misses there. Michael Moore screened a damning documentary about the U.S. health-care system, while singer Norah Jones made her acting debut in a film from Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai. Critic-at-large John Powers reports on other high- and low-lights.

Actor-director Kevin Costner won the Oscar for Dances With Wolves, but he made his first movie splash as a corpse in The Big Chill: He played the friend whose suicide brings a group of old friends together, but all of his speaking scenes were cut from the film, so all we see of Costner is a shot of his hand peeking out from beneath a sheet.

Costner went on to star in Field of Dreams, Tin Cup, Waterworld, Bull Durham and The Upside of Anger; in his latest film, Mr. Brooks, he plays a loving family man who's also a serial killer.

Bug, the new psychological thriller from director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), got its start as a paranoia-driven stage play by actor-writer Tracy Letts (Killer Joe).

The film won the international critics' prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, but it's only now getting a U.S. release. It features Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr. and Lynn Collins, as well as Michael Shannon, who starred in the Off-Broadway production.

Misunderstood giants? None have ever been as popular as Shrek, star of two huge summer hits since 2001. Paramount's grumpy-green-ogre franchise is the epitome of the hand-hold movie: family flicks that serve up action, tomfoolery and life-lessons for the kids, nonstop pop-culture in-jokes for the adults, and fart jokes for the whole family.