In his collaboration with Quentin Tarantino on “Grindhouse” (2007), Robert Rodriguez introduced a mock trailer for a fake movie called “Machete,” starring craggy-faced, veteran character actor Danny Trejo (“Desperado,” “Con Air”) as an intimidating Mexican day laborer. Now, in homage to violent, low-budget, ‘70s exploitation pictures, that ‘coming attraction’ has become a testosterone-fueled reality. Read more

Survival of the fittest is the prevailing theme of Animal Kingdom, the assured feature debut of Australian writer-director David Michôd. Read more>>

Move over Ma Barker; there’s a new mastermind crime mama in town. Read more>>

“No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
Social critic/journalist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Read more

Images of a kind of physical equality abound. But in a world in which American women are still prohibited from combat units and physiology insists guys remain physically stronger — damn that upper-body-strength divide — are they even accurate? Read more>>

The story of Pat Tillman’s life and untimely death is one that lends itself to legend. Legend makes for engaging cinema. In the hands of filmmaker Amir Bar Lev, the The Tillman Story is great cinema. Read more>>

“The Tillman Story” is upfront about wanting to challenge that faith, to question political assumptions and seeming historical frameworks. Read more>>

Yael Hersonski’s “A Film Unfinished” is a remarkable holocaust documentary comprised primarily of previously unedited historic footage that was shot by Nazi filmmakers, ostensibly chronicling daily life in the infamous Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Read more>>

The Nazis’ infatuation with documentation is visible everywhere in “A Film Unfinished,” as German soldiers grab residents’ arms or push them along in the street, as starving children sit on curbs and adults hurry along sidewalks. Read more>>

“Woman Rebel,” which was on the 2010 Oscars Short List for Short Documentaries, takes us to Nepal, where Nepalese Maoist guerrillas are at war with the Royal Nepalese Army. Filmmaker Kiran Deol follows ‘Silu,’ a woman battalion commander with the Nepalese Maoists who is a rebel with a cause. Read more>>