1.2.2013

In the already iconic trailer for Kathryn Bigelow’s stunning Zero Dark Thirty, a SEAL asks his team leader if he really believes that they’re going after Osama Bin Laden this time, and not chasing yet...

Nowadays, it’s almost a strike against someone who doesn’t throw out a convoluted multi-hyphenate descriptor when explaining just what it is he or she does in the independent film world (“Me? I’m a...

Over the last couple of decades or so, the worlds of narrative and documentary filmmaking have been drawing ever closer together, like two ginat planets on a collision course. Narrative films like...

Before the 2012 edition of the Sundance Film Festival began, very few observers would have predicted that it would be dominated by a tiny little indie film set (and made) in rural Louisiana, starring...

Wes Anderson is often praised for his idiosyncratic aesthetic but panned for his supposed lack of depth. But as Matt Zoller Seitz points out in his video series “The Substance of Style,” and as other...

I moved to New York City in 1997 already a film lover, already infatuated with the city and its possibilities. As an impressionable teenager growing up in Flint, Mich., I had seen Manhattan, Woody...

The things that everyone can understand and appreciate, when considering other people – strangers or friends, are shortcomings. It’s in them where...

Joshua Tillman’s got a thing for mankind, or, more so a thing for the idea of the rapid decaying of mankind and what his role might be in it. Sure, he’s more worried about his own decay and what could...

Two weeks ago, I spent a few days out in Los Angeles, California, something that I never feel the need to do. It’s only happened twice, ever, and it likely won’t happen again for years. While out...

While nearly every other show is still in the midst of winter hibernation, NBC decided to resume Parenthood on New Year’s Day and make it the first new scripted content of 2013. The family drama...

“I can’t get the sun to reach me over here. Help me get a tan!” The request comes from an average-looking man standing on a rocky outcropping in a dim forested area I’ve stumbled into. Out comes...

You are sitting in the cockpit of a gigantic robot called a mech. Everything around you is quiet, save the the rhythmic crunch of massive, mechanical legs. You look around. Nothing moves but your...

Tennessee five-piece Moon Taxi has a sound that caught Paste’s attention for its dreamy blend of minimalist rock. Moon Taxi has also been praised for merging indie rock and jam-band sounds on their...

The Rescues has plenty to be proud of from 2012. Coming off of the release of their debut full-length Let Loose the Horses, the Los Angeles foursome has steadily built up a base of fans and made their...

It would be difficult for anyone to live up to Whit Stillman’s first three films, Metropolitan, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco. Even for Stillman himself. To his credit, he doesn’t try. Damsels...

Given her lineage, it’s no surprise that Zoe Kazan’s debut as a screenwriter results in a charming, heartfelt romantic comedy that is nothing less than sheer pleasure to watch from start to finish....

Undefeated is such a well-meaning, heart-on-its-sleeve documentary that one feels morally obligated to write words in praise of it. In fact, anyone admitting to a dislike of the film runs the risk of...

The Salton Sea is a fascinating enough topographic anomaly all its own, but these days, with its resort-heyday past and its crumbling decaying present, it’s an eerie post-apocalyptic setting for any...

At the last few Sundance Film Festivals, a running joke has developed about the ubiquity of Mark Duplass. It seems like if he’s not writing and directing an independent film with his brother Jay...

Blue Like Jazz represents Steve Taylor’s sophomore outing as a feature director. A riotous adaptation of Donald Miller’s book of essays reworked by Taylor, Miller and co-writer Ben Pearson into a tale...

Lee Hirsch’s Bully has been in the news lately at the center of a ratings war between the Weinstein Company, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the National Association of Theatre...

Filmmaker Alison Klayman gained an astonishing level of access to the celebrated Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei in the years following the opening of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Stadium in 2008. No...

From the outset, Ry Russo-Young’s Nobody Walks surges with sexuality. New York artist Martine (Olivia Thirlby in a cute pixie haircut) flies to Los Angeles to work on her experimental film and gets...

There’s a particular species of unease, a unique form of negative anticipation, generated when a beloved book is made into a film. The more “classic” the book, the greater the unease. This is hardly...

Let’s talk about Richard Linklater, the man who just doesn’t seem to care what you think. Or, to be more specific, what his critics think. And that’s a good thing. How else could an unknown director...

Mark O’Brien, also the subject of Jessica Yu’s Oscar-nominated short documentary Breathing Lessons, was a journalist and poet who, after a childhood bout of polio, was rendered immobile from the neck...

Somber, thoughtful, elegiac, Oslo, August 31st asks why life is worth living when it’s been squandered. It’s not as if the main character, Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), has had the most difficult...

In December 2010, renowned Iranian director Jafar Panahi (Offside) was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making films for 20 years. His crime? Supporting the opposition party during...

Terence Davies belongs to that select group of filmmakers—alongside Kubrick and Terrence Mallick—who get around to making a movie once or twice a decade and whose films become exemplars of a singular...

Ambitious, visionary and playful, Cloud Atlas is the fascinating culmination of an unprecedented collaboration among Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix movies) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) to bring...

The first thing you notice is the breathing. Jean Valjean is standing atop a hill in the French mountains, contemplating his future after 19 years of prison, and you can hear the weariness in his...

James Bond is the elder statesman of action movies, celebrating his 50th anniversary in film this year with the release of his twenty-third(!) feature, Skyfall. It goes without saying that adaptations...

The first ten minutes of Sound of My Voice are some of the most claustrophobic, dread-filled moments to grace American cinema in years. With no preamble, we follow a young couple as they voluntarily...

Writer/Director Julia Loktev made an auspicious fiction debut with Day Night Day Night, the story of a young, female, Times Square suicide bomber. While not exactly a sophomore slump, in The Loneliest...

Consider the humble Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Chocolate. Peanut Butter (-ish). Two ingredients—each tasty enough in its own right—brought together in the right proportions. The result? Adult-onset...

For a movie chock-full of twists, perhaps the biggest is that despite all appearances to the contrary, The Cabin in the Woods is a heartfelt love story. Mind you, not between any of the young and...

“The Story of the Forgotten Genius” is such a well-worn formula for music documentaries that it was already being parodied more than three decades ago in This is Spinal Tap. In Searching for Sugar...

The buzziest documentary of the Sundance Film Festival was also one of the very best. The involvement of Peter Jackson (one of the film’s producers), Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, and others, as well...

The best thing about Quentin Tarantino is also the worst thing about Quentin Tarantino—he believes, wholeheartedly, in whatever he’s doing. Most of the time, what he’s doing consists of overly...

Directed by David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a documentary about one of the greatest masters of the culinary world who no one has ever heard of. This man is 85-year-old sushi shokunin (Japanese...

Leos Carax’s latest film Holy Motors follows a day in the life of Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) as he travels through a series of work appointments in the back of a limousine. However, as the viewer...

For those people with lingering questions about Ben Affleck’s talents as a filmmaker, Argo should remove any doubt. The actor has now directed a trio of hard-working, blood-pumping dramas—his latest...

On June 13, 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay disappeared from his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. Being from a turbulent, working-class family, he received little attention from the media and it...

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, co-written and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is a Turkish police procedural based on the real-life experiences of one...

Director Philippe Falardeau’s new film, Monsieur Lazhar, presents various lives with seemingly few similarities forced to deal with tragedy in ways that are remarkably and movingly similar. At a...

The Kid with a Bike continues the Belgian writing-directing brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s extraordinary run of charting the lives of European down-and-outers navigating difficult moral and...

Reading the description of Kahlil Hudson and Tyler Hughen’s remarkable film—two friends who are world-class fishermen, half a country apart, take a trip to British Columbia to fly fish and...

“Excuse me … excuse me … excuse me,” the voice insistently repeats. It is a thin voice, not imbued with the same presence as the one it interrupts. Prior to this moment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The...

Austrian filmmaker and sometime provocateur Michael Haneke has mellowed out a bit over the last few years, as evidenced by 2009’s The White Ribbon, a slow-motion, black-and-white exploration of...

After seven features, a Wes Anderson production is unmistakable: white, upper-middle-class dysfunctional families deadpanning wry dialogue amid meticulous mise-en-scène to an eclectic soundtrack....

It’s a rare occasion when a major theatrical film is as timely as director Kathryn Bigelow’s widely acclaimed military drama, Zero Dark Thirty. Bigelow had been collaborating with her The Hurt Locker...

Bad Books is the duo of singer-songwriter Kevin Devine and Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull. Paste gave their most recent release, II, a rave review and the guys were kind enough to stop by the office...

The Great Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (1932-1986) died in exile in Paris at age 54. In this memoir, published the year of his death, Tarkovsky breaks down cinema through the prism of his...

I’m at the laptop writing this review, and I’m trying to remember what I liked about Rangan’s Conversations with Mani Ratnam, a book I read many weeks...