I can’t believe I watched 85 minutes of a man driving a car, at night, by himself, without getting bored. Ivan Locke, played by Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises)—the sole visible actor in the film—begins driving home from a construction site the night before the biggest job of his career as a successful construction foreman. If I had known this film was just a guy in a car, I wouldn’t have seen it. The writing, directing and acting were all spot-on. I could have ridden around with Hardy and listened to him talk for another half-hour, at least. … read more

In Alive Inside, Michael Rossato-Bennett follows social worker Dan Cohen, who uses the connective power of music to reach otherwise unreachable people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. With first-hand footage, we see the music of Louis Armstrong, The Beatles and others bring people essentially back from the dead—their loved ones and fellow patients marvel as the subjects recall memories and emotions that have been blacked out for years … read more

Gradually, the campy thriller turns from weird to bizarre as the protagonist finds himself over his head in the world of S&M. When a dominatrix called Queen of Saliva spits gallons of smoothie-flavored phlegm on our bound and gagged protagonist while dancing to disco music, you’ll think the film has reached its peak of insanity. You’d be wrong, though—just wait till the Queen of Gobbling shows up. … read more

Kristen Stewart plays Amy Cole, a small-town girl who joins the Army to do something important with her life and is assigned to Guantanamo Bay. Despite orders not to treat the prisoners, er, detainees as humans, Cole forms a kind of friendship with Ali (Payman Maadi), one of the imprisoned Jihadists. Camp X-Ray is worth seeing, if not for its criticism of US military practices, then for the only film performance by Stewart that I think doesn’t suck—although she still bites her bottom lip about a hundred times. … read more