Written and directed by Craig Zobel, the tremendous psychological drama Compliance is based on a series of true crimes in which a man pretending to be a police officer “prank”-called fast-food restaurants. Over the phone, often over the course of hours, the caller used a mix of manipulation, coercion, flattery, and sometimes bullying to convince [...]

When Katie Anne Naylon and Lauren Miller first met at college a decade ago, they couldn’t have known the basics of their experience (their completely different personalities and styles, Katie’s past work as a phone-sex operator) would inspire their co-authored For a Good Time Call… screenplay. The R-rated but charming raunch-com For a Good Time [...]

In 2008, author Matt Bondurant published his second novel, The Wettest County in the World, a fictionalized historical account of his own grandfather and grand uncles’ real-life experiences as rural-Virginia moonshiners in the early 1930s. Bondurant based the novel on family stories and historical records from Franklin County, Virginia, about his grandfather Jack Bondurant and [...]

It seems the world of animated features for children is forever growing more crowded, more competitive, louder, and more about marketing and studio brands than genuinely imaginative and entertaining works. But every year (a couple times, if we’re lucky) an animated film comes along that doesn’t pander to kids and fast-food toys and leaves grown up [...]

These days, for the sake of promotion, it doesn’t hurt for a smaller indie film to have a “meet cute” story behind it. In the case of the alt-minded romantic comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever, the hook is that co-writers Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation, Our Idiot Brother) and Will McCormack dated briefly but intensely [...]