"Drive" (2011), the sleek pulp crime cool-meets-art-house​​ style thriller starring Ryan Gosling as a taciturn getaway driver, was an Oscar favorite when it debuted in the fall. Why it was left in the dust is something of a mystery, even with the critical backlash against its neon noir stylings and romanticized gangster movie tropes, and Albert Brooks was criminally overlooked by the Academy for his superb creation of a genially ruthless L.A. mobster. Director Nicolas Winding Refn embraces the genre with all his love of underworld tragedy and Gosling gives his unnamed hero an enigmatic chivalry.

 

"Land of the Dead" (2005) was George A. Romero returns to the zombie genre 20 years after completing his initial trilogy. Set in a gated community run by a corporate despot (Dennis Hopper) like a feudal kingdom, where class structure is strictly enforced while outside the zombies are evolving, it is rife with social commentary and political satire. Romero embraces the advancements of make-up effects, animatronics, and CGI enhancements, but at heart he’s an old-fashioned storyteller who relies on simple devices. It isn’t subtle, but Romero delivers the goods so effectively that many won’t even notice there’s a pointed message behind the cinematic carnage.

 

"London Boulevard" (2010), the directorial debut of Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan, stars Colin Farrell as an ex-con trying to make a fresh start with his girlfriend (Keira Knightly) while an underworld boss has other ideas. "Monahan's debut has verve and charisma, but, in the end, the tension of a late-night pub shrug," complains Village Voice film critic Michael Atkinson.

 

"No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos" (2008) profiles friends and fellow cinematographers László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond, who fled Hungary in 1956 and worked their way from exploitation films to shooting some of the defining American films of the seventies and eighties. Beginning with "Easy Rider" (photographed by Kovács), they helped redefine the way movies looked, from grabbing shots on the fly for young directors making personal films on low budgets to using natural light to give a heightened realism to their studio productions.

 

"Dawson's Creek: Seasons 1-6" (1998-2002) – Kevin Williamson turned from teen horror to autobiographical coming of age drama with this hit young adult series, a nicely crafted rural response to "Beverly Hills 90120" that become one of the defining shows of the fledgling WB network. James Van Der Beek stands in for Williamson, a movie-mad high school kid who wants to be a filmmaker, and the show launched the careers of Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson, who round out his circle of lovers and friends.

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For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for May 22

 

A breakout hit at Sundance, Rodney Ascher's "Room 237" is the story of "The Shining" -- not the film, but, rather, five different critics' and enthusiast's ideas about the film. To one, it's a metaphor for the genocide of the American Indian; for another, a metaphor for the Holocaust. To another, it's Kubrick apologizing, in the form of a hidden code, for faking the footage of the Moon landing in 1969 ... Full of crazy love for films and enough bizarre theories to keep you puzzled, and thinking, for weeks, it's perfect the film is playing in the Director's Fortnight her at Cannes. We spoke with director Rodney Ascher at great length; here's the first part of our interview. 

 

MSN Movies: Where exactly did "Room 237" come from? I guess it's going to involve your personal relationship with "The Shining" as well?

 

Rodney Ascher: Well, the first time I saw "The Shining" was actually just the first time I tried to see "The Shining." When it came out in 1980, I guess I was eleven or twelve, depending on the math, and I made it about ten or fifteen minutes into the movie before I ran out in terror. It was really just like the opening music over the reflective lake at the top of it with -- it was like the music more than anything. Just set the stage for this like apocalyptic sort of judgment on mankind. I guess, even when I just saw the scenes of Jack Nicholson being interviewed for the job in the hotel, the sense of dread and inevitability was more than I could handle. The way the steady-cam kind of leads him to the office, it was as if it was dragging me towards a destination I didn't want to go, and as deeply as I could dig in my heels, I would still be sliding on that marble floor on my way to the office. I think many childhood fears are very strong in visceral experiences like that. They stay with you, so a couple years later I sought out the film. Since then I've seen it again and again and again, and Kubrick has always been one of my favorite filmmakers. This project really got started when Tim Kirk sent me an article online about this (one) guy's radical interpretation of what the Shining really meant.

 

I read it and almost immediately I thought, "To turn this into a visual piece could be kind of interesting." I didn't want to just do a straight adaptation of that guy's one idea. Me and Tim kind of batted it around, and went for these long walks with our little kids thinking about the implications of this thirty-year old horror movie, and we started researching what other people had to say. I think pretty quickly we came across Bill Blakemore's article that he wrote in 1987, that was syndicated in newspapers around the country that the film was an allegory for genocide of the Native Americans. That one kind of rang a bell, and I remember being informed of that, and maybe even the article, but I kind of struggling to really see it when I saw the movie. He was actually the first guy that we interviewed. I spent three and a half hours the first time I talked to him, mostly just listening with my jaw on the floor. He really passionately and engagingly went through the film. 

 

Earlier this morning, Summit Entertainment launched a major Internet scavenger hunt to turn up clues that would help reveal three new character posters from their upcoming "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2." Clues were spread across a number of Twilight fan sites and, no surprise here, fans quickly put things together to unlock the new posters.

The hunt involved helping Bella, Edward, and Jacob assemble the different covens from around the world, covens comprised of vampires who are friendly to the Cullen clan (and some who also practice their own type of "vegetarianism"). Fans of Stephenie Meyer's book series know that those various covens will come very much into play in the final film of the franchise, so it's no surprise that Summit used them to put together a fun little hunt.

The final film stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Rami Malek, Maggie Grace, Mackenzie Foy, Tracey Heggins, Judi Shekoni, Omar Metwally, Andrea Gabriel, Rami Malek, Angela Sarafyan, Marlane Barnes, Lisa Howard, Patrick Brennan, Noel Fisher, Guri Weinberg, Lee Pace, Toni Trucks, Bill Tangradi, Erik Odom, Valorie Curry, Joe Anderson, Olga Fonda, Janelle Froehlich, Masami Kosaka, Sebastiao Lemos, Amadou Ly, Ty Olsson, Wendell Pierce, and Carolina Virguez. One reason for that bloated cast? All those covens, of course!

After the break, check out larger versions of the three new character posters, along with a full list of the various fan sites who participated. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" opens on November 16.

 

After the massive kerfuffle that was yesterday's shocking announcement that "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" was fleeing its June 29th release date for March of next year in order to give the film time to get an unexpected post-production 3D conversion and that Universal had slipped their buzzed-about "Ted" into its place on the calendar, it seemed as if we might be done with release date mix-arounds (at least for awhile). We were wrong!

While the latest updates on release dates are likely not related to the "G.I. Joe" move, their announcement was likely kicked off by the flurry of interest in something as intrinsically boring as release dates. Per ComingSoon, 20th Century Fox has moved one release date and assigned another to two very different projects.

First up, the studio has moved up one of their biggest new projects - Ang Lee's take on Yann Martel's previously-billed-as​-unfilmable novel "Life of Pi." The film will now release a full month ahead of time, moving from a crowded Christmastime release (on December 21) to a clever Thanksgiving window (November 21). The film will now go up against the long-delayed "Red Dawn" remake, the animated "Rise of the Guardians," and David O. Russell's "The Silver Linings Playbook." It should prove to be family-friendly counter-programming for families without little kids to keep busy. Its previous release date would have put it in competition with stuff like "One Shot," "This Is 40," Kathryn Bigelow's untitled next film, "Django Unchained," "The Great Gatsby," and "The Guilt Trip," all opening in a crowded holiday field.  

"Let There Be Light" (1946), the third of three documentaries directed by John Huston for the US Army Signal Corps in World War II, isn't about battle. At least not the kind of battle conducted with guns and bombs.

 

This hour-long film took cameras to Mason General Hospital on Long Island, a racially integrated psychiatric hospital where soldiers suffering from psychologically scars underwent treatment. It was the first film to explore post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), before it was ever given that name, and attempt to share the difficulty of soldiers returning from combat to civilian life with the public.

 

That was not to be. The film was suppressed by the military brass. Not because it was inaccurate or insensitive, mind you, but because the portrait was too frank and too sensitive. And maybe for other reasons. It showed that integrated military life was not only possible but could be conflict free, at a time when the rest of the military was still segregated. It showed how vulnerable humans were to the psychological trauma of war. And for all the healing shown in the film, a shadow of the nightmares never quite leaves the lives of these soldiers.

 

The film was banned for decades, until 1980, when it received its first public screening. It was added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2010. 

 

Now it has been restored, with a new soundtrack donated by Chace Audio by Deluxe through the NFPF grant program, and is available for free via streaming video from the NFPF website, sponsored by Fandor.com, a web showcase for independent films and documentaries from around the world.

 

Visit the National Film Preservation Foundation website here for access to the film and information on the project, or go directly to the "Let There Be Light" page here.

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It's at this point in Cannes -- heading towards the second weekend, as the films thin out and the crowds dwindle a little and there's just a few films left -- when you get punchy. And thank God for Lee Daniels, the director of "Precious," who delivered this morning's film "The Paperboy," an over-ripe slice of trash that was made to be mocked. I mean, what can you say about a film where a sexually frustrated Zac Efron goes for a swim on the Florida shore, gets stung by jellyfish, and has to be saved by being urinated on? Even better, when a group of bystanders try to do the good-samaritan deed, Nicole Kidman shoves them away with the immediate catch-phrase of the Festival: "If anyone's going to pee on him, it's going to be me." (Kidman, at the film's press conference noted she hadn't seen the film, and I thought Wow, another way in which Nicole Kidman's life is waaaaay better than mine.) 

But I seriously want to thank "The Paperboy," with all of its spurious sex scenes and moments where Zac Efron is shot and lit like one of those creepy Calvin Klein wood-paneling ads from the '90s and John Cusack as the world's worst homicidal hillbilly swamp-dweller, because it lets you relax, breathe, laugh, and recognize that when a film with Kidman, Efron, Cusack and Matthew McConaughey, directed by an Oscar-nominee is one of the worst things here, you're seeing some great movies. 

A friend, last night, staggered out of a screening, groaning but happy, smiling but dizzy; "I feel like I'm drunk on movies," they said, and they won the award for the that-about-sums-it-u​p phrase of the night.  You do feel like you're drunk on movies here, and there's no end to it -- every choice you make to see a specific film means you're choosing not to see five, eight, ten other films. Never mind all the ancillary stuff going on around Cannes -- tonight, for but one example, you can choose between seeing "Jaws" in a restored print, on a big-screen that's been erected in the shallows of the surf so you sit on the beach and enjoy, the legendary, and free, Cinema du Plage … or a seven-screen immersive experience directed by Kanye West. It's an embarrassment of riches.

There's also the fact that, like any film festival, you get to see far-flung friends; every film festival's press corps is like a high school reunion, but only for the A.V. Club. And it's not just that you know these people; it's that you respect them, and their opinions, and you respect them so much you're willing to argue with them, and that's better juice than five shots of French espresso. Or they lean over and share some unprintable joke or improbably funny aside that only makes sense because you're here. I mean, I can't tell you why simple phrases like "Elijah's Dead!" or "Pants!" are amusing to me right now -- but later on in the year, when you see these films, you'll understand.

 

This author just became the 73,481st person to check out this newly released television spot for this July's rapidly approaching "The Dark Knight Rises." 

 

Once upon a time, TV-star and recording artist Will Smith felt like becoming one of the biggest movie  stars in the world, and so he did. One of the most important films in that process was 1997's "Men in Black," which saw Smith teamed up with Tommy Lee Jones in pursuit of space aliens on Earth. Full of the kind of action that sells worldwide -- and with Smith proving he could get laughs on the big screen, as well -- it was followed by a sequel in 2002 with a follow-up coming out this week 10 years later. The pre-production was rumored to be challenged -- but the end result saw Smith's Agent J sent back to 1969 to prevent his current partner Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) from being killed by a time-travelling alien bad guy... in 3D. It's a pitch that not only allows for Josh Brolin to impress as the younger version of K, but also that, as Smith notes "was the perfect idea" to keep the movies where they work best, "when Agent J is a fish out of water." We spoke with Smith in L.A.

 

More on Bing: Alien Translation

 

It's been fourteen years between the first film, and this, the third. Were you literally just waiting for the right circumstance, the right story, the right script?

 

Smith: When you're going to do a third movie ... people tend to make a great one, and then go down, and then it goes up. We just wanted to make sure that we were making a movie that was great on its own, not great because it was a part of the other films, like it needs one and two to be good. This was the first idea that felt like it was a complete idea on its own.

 

A lot of big franchises like this, a studio will switch out directors, but Barry Sonnenfeld has always been there. Is he kind of a secret weapon?

 

Smith: You know, there is a very distinct comedic voice that is Barry Sonnenfeld. You really couldn't make these movies -- for sure not the way that they are -- without Barry Sonnenfeld. He came out of the world of the Coen brothers, so there's just a slight twisted point of view. It's like the way he creates helps me create Agent J, with things I would never do on my own ... some of the jokes and the way that they are are very distinctly Barry.