About a third of the 82-minute running length of Neil Young’s latest Jonthan Demme-directed concert film is taken up by just two songs, “Ambulance Blues” and “No Hidden Path”. The former is played as a serene meditation performed solo on acoustic guitar and harmonica, while the latter serves as a springboard for eighteen minutes’ worth of frantic, explosive guitar soloing. Placed together in the middle of the film, they paint a picture of the subject at his most extreme. These aren’t songs that had any hope of finding their way onto radio, but to a certain part of his fanbase, they’re what makes him the real deal. There’s a certain fearlessness about doing a song for that long, a confidence that audience should be willing to follow wherever you want to go, which is what lets you go where no one else does. more ›

For a certain sub-section of filmgoers (e.g. people who fucking rule), the arrival of a new Noah Baumbach movie is cause for celebration. By most accounts, Greenberg is as strong as The Squid and the Whale. This, folks, is a very, very good thing. I couldn't get through the book, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has me intrigued. Don't be scared off by the subtitles, people! I'm sort of tired of Kristen Stewart so The Runaways is low on my list. Plus, Dakota Fanning is just terrible, right? Pass. I typically hate movies with and about kids, but Diary of a Wimpy Kid has Chloe Moretz (who should kick-ass in Kick-Ass). Consider it a maybe. more ›

Let the Right One In was a fiendishly good reimainging of the vampire story. Naturallly, it is now being re-made into what will surely be an inferior, American film. I thought Mickey Rourke gave the performance of the year in The Wrestler, but Sean Penn was almost as impressive with his rendering of the late Harvey Milk. Speaking of fine actors, Anne Hathaway stirs my drink. While I liked Synedoche, New York, I was let down by it because of my absurdly high expectations for Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. Role Models was better than it had any right to be. I'm still amazed that Seann William Scott is the sole survivor of the American Pie crowd. more ›

Big Bad Mama, a 1974, Roger Corman-produced breasts-and-bullets flick, features the brilliant tagline, "The family that slays together, stays together." This B-movie version of Bonnie & Clyde is set in 1932 Texas and stars Angie Dickinson as a bootlegging, bank-robbing mom who joins up with Tom Skerritt and William Shatner to bilk society for all they can get. In between the robbing and killing are numerous sexy romps. more ›

LAist reader Craig showed up at the Arclight for the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense on the wrong night (Tuesday) only to find it wasn't playing and was furious at us. Don't worry, Craig, even if you had shown up on Wednesday, you wouldn't have gotten in (update: Craig did better than we did and made it in). Tickets for the Jonathan Demme directed concert film have been mostly sold out for the last two weeks. LAist couldn't get in either so we decided to do the next best thing: watch it at home with friends. more ›