The film “Blood Done Sign My Name,” based on Timothy B. Tyson’s book, looks at a dark moment in the history of a North Carolina town.

When is a documentary not a documentary? That question hovered in the freezing air at the recent Sundance Film Festival.

This week, “The Ladykillers” and “To Live and Die in L. A.” are released on DVD.

The producers of this year’s Oscar ceremony must squeeze 10 potential best pictures, and a total of 197 nominees, into a watchable event.

“My Name Is Khan” is an effective exercise in Bollywood high emotionalism.

“The Ghost Writer” opens this week, and, not for the first time in Roman Polanski’s career, the movie itself is likely to be overshadowed by the man who made it.

The fight over the politics of a film star who has angered the Hindu right is a glimpse of the bitterly parochial politics that still divide India’s most international city.

The Swiss ministry of Justice said it will wait until Los Angeles courts determine whether Roman Polanski must face sentencing in person.

A preservation group hopes that Angelenos can be enticed to donate to an effort to keep development from encroaching on a famed sign.

The filmmakers Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher document a family’s woes in “October Country.”

“To Die for Tano” is a bizarre musical comedy in which the actual severed swordfish heads are not the ugliest things on screen.

How you feel about the odd little documentary “Barefoot to Timbuktu” will depend to an unusually large extent on how you feel about its subject.

“Videocracy” is a queasy-funny and unapologetically biased look at the televisual world that the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has created.

There is a lot of hurting in the family melodrama “The Vicious Kind,” and a lot of healing too.

The dire romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day” is neither romantic nor remotely comedic.

The title character in “The Wolfman” suffers from a vexing identity crisis, and so does the movie.

In “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” virginal teenagers do battle with fire-belching monsters.

“Falling Awake” puts good intentions and appealing performances into the balance against clichés of dead-end neighborhoods and rebellious youth.

“American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein” is a cautiously respectful documentary portrait of a political firebrand.