CINEMA

 » Starkweather-Fugate - LAS staff writer Zack Hall takes an in-depth look at the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of 1958 and two cinematic revisionist reincarnations of the event - Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994).

CINEMA

 » Cloverfield - Vertigo. Stupid girls in high heels. Cookie-cutter monsters attacking the most obvious and over-used target. Yuppies. There are countless reasons to be extremely angry at the J. J. Abrams-produced film, which is flimsy at best, yet you'll still probably want to shell out the cash at the box office in order to to see it for yourself.

CINEMA

 » El Cid - Directed by Anthony Mann, this 1961 vehicle for pre-NRA gun messiah Charlton Heston and mid-century heartthrob Sofia Loren was re-released today by the Weinstein brothers as part of their "Miriam Collection" of "restored and re-released classics, contemporary classics and notable foreign films" on DVD.

CINEMA

 » There Will Be Blood - Released on limited screens late last month, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and scored by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, is now making full rounds on the strength of its Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

CINEMA

 » Wild Style - Written and directed by Charlie Ahearn and filmed in the South Bronx, this seminal hip-hop film was recently released to DVD in a special 25th Anniversary reissue by Rhino Entertainment and should be considered by any popular music scholar as a cult classic.

CINEMA

 » Atonement - She's seen a number of films lately, but it is the adaptation of Ian McEwan's best-selling 2001 novel of the same name that Susan Howson keep going back to and marveling at film for filmmaking's sake. It's this year's Notes on a Scandal in both its elegant structure and its insistence that, yes, British people DO behave badly once in awhile. Who knew?