Say, did you hear anything about this movie that opens today, Cloverfield? No? Yeah, it’s kind of a [Spoiler Alert!] obscure art-house thing, all shot with a camcorder from the perspective of a few friends fleeing a massive monster smashing Manhattan. We attended a screening earlier in the week and deemed it top-shelf disaster porn; though the main characters are rather annoying and the apocalypse takes a little too long to blast off, “by the......

Prestige filmmakers take note: If you want the Times critics to really love you, what you need to do is put the fear in them. At least it worked for Tim Burton; his adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd gave reviewer A.O. Scott nightmares. And for that, Scott deems the film “close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme – I am tempted to say evil – genius.” (Current Rotten Tomato rating: 88% fresh.) One......

The reviews are in for the $180 million production of The Golden Compass, and they’re lackluster at best, which is a pity not just for fans of the novel from which it’s adapted but for New Line Cinema, which was banking on another Lord of the Rings cash cow. Times critic Manohla Dargis calls it flawed and cluttered, although her description of Nicole Kidman ought to sway any dudes reluctant to see a movie starring......

Thanksgiving officially marks the start of the holiday movie season, and this weekend, one film seems poised to make a run for the box office crown. Enchanted, the Disney film that mixes animation and live-action to spoof its classic fairy tales, received some pretty stellar reviews. It's 92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and most reviews are calling this the star-making performance of Amy Adams, who was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for Junebug......

Army of Shadows (directed by Jean Pierre Melville) Only in New York: one of the best reviewed movies last year by local critics was a little drama about the French Resistance originally made in 1969 called Army of Shadows. Loads of screenings over multiple limited runs during the course of 2006 at Film Forum sold out, as flocks of New York film geeks rushed to see this flick which had never been released before in......

You know it's the beginning of January when the gyms are filled with New Years resolution exercisers and the movie theaters are filled with post-New Years dreck. Frankly, it's best to focus on getting caught up on last year's best (see our Top 10 and the subsequent comments for suggestions) and leave this week's releases for suckers with movie money to burn. Hilary Swank often stars in Oscar-lauded movies but her newest about an inner-city......

Okay, so it's been 2007 for the last four days but since everyone's doing it from the critics circles to the awards nominating pools, it seemed worth it to weigh in on last year's movies. However, constructing end of the year top ten lists can be both painful and thrilling. Looking at a long list of the year's movie releases reminds you how many films passed you by in the theaters and playing favorites amongst......

For New York moviegoers, this is a good week for those who worship at the cult of the director. In both the theatrical releases and the repertory columns, film fans of various established and up in coming auteurs will surely get their fill. Brooklyn’s own Spike Lee takes on the action thriller genre in his newest, Inside Man starring Clive Owen as a bank robber, Denzel Washington as the hostage negotiator on the case and......

Gothamist has enjoyed Manohla Dargis's writing since she was at the LA Times, so we were curious to see what she'd say in her Readers' Opinions > Questions for . . .: Manohla Dargis" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/readersopinions/dargis-questions.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=8f9b4f78c510cd3b&ex=1103259600">Q&A with NY Times readers. And when asked what is a difference between writing for the Times and other publications, it's that she can't swear: Well, the major difference, what changed radically in my move from the alternative-weekly world to the......

There might not be anything better than beating the heat with a little zombie action. To make up for their spectacularly misguided adaptation of The Beach, Danny Boyle and Beach writer Alex Garland give a bleak vision of London in 28 Days Later, where mankind is being ravaged by a virus, Ebola with a twist, as the infected turn into zombies that sprint after the uninfected. Meditations on humanity interspersed with vomiting blood and red......

Harrison Ford, where art thou? You're our Han Solo, our Indiana Jones...hell, our Jack Ryan (we need a good CIA hero in this day and age, we suppose). It seems you've been going through a three-quarter-life crisis. In love with Calista Flockhart? The earring? The crappy movies? It's so sad to Gothamist that you have to star in a movie with Bedhead (as for Hollywood Homicide, A.O. Scott likes it, Manohla Dargis doesn't). Yes, you're......

Someday, Gothamist will go to the Cannes Film Festival. But until then, we will continue to get excited about films that premiere there and eagerly await for them to come Stateside. Like Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's bestselling novel. Gothamist had heard how wonderful a book Mystic River was ("Don't mind the 'New York Times Bestseller' and mass-market paperback size, Jen."), both in terms of the thrill and emotional story telling.......

The L.A. Times's Manohla Dargis answers your questions, no matter how stupid they are. This is just a bit of what Manohla answered this past Sunday. Her answers are more fun than Roger Ebert's Movie Answer Man, though Gothamist finds him useful too.......

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon is one of my favorite film critics today. She's smart, funny, a huge Buffy fan, and incisive. I admit to being disappointed when she likes something I don't or vice versa, but she's the only female movie critic worth reading these days (well, Manohla Dargis of the L.A. Times is pretty great). What solidified this feeling my agreement with her position that she can't give up on Sandra Bullock yet and......