The Movies Behind the Study That Finds Movies Might Save Your Relationship

Valentine’s Day is a marketing ploy developed by cynical advertisers whose only aim is to separate suckers from their money. Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to show the person you love how much they mean to you, regardless of its origin. Valentine’s Day is a 2010 Gary Marshall film starring two Jessica’s (Alba, Biel), Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, and about four thousand other famous actors that you were either dragged to see or dragged somebody else to see.

Dinner & A Movie: 10 of the Greatest Dine-In Theaters in America

Whether you call it food and a flick or dinner and a movie, the trend of cinemas offering a full menu with a ticket to the silver screen is red hot right now. Some, like Brooklyn’s now famous Nitehawk Cinema, provide in-theater table seating and waiter service. Others are more casual with a buy-it-in-the lobby and carry-it-to-your-seat policy. Most, if not all, understand the value of a good libation. The ten theaters below run the gamut of service,

Sochi 2014 Olympics: 10 Essential Russian Films

Sochi may be hosting the Olympic Games—the resort city is also home to the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival, held annually in June since 1991—but it’s Russia’s regressive, shameful politics that have dominated the world stage while all eyes are on the host country. What better time to pay tribute to Russian filmmakers, past and present, who are responsible for some of the world’s best films — their achievements all the more remarkable because they’ve often worked under oppressive conditions. 

Sundance: Getting Low Down With John Hawkes & Elle Fanning

Elle Fanning is fantastic in Low Down, a film filled with superb actors. Fanning holds the center of a film as loose and atmospheric as the music it portrays, playing Amy-Jo Albany, the daughter of the brilliant, smack addicted jazz pianist Joe Albany (one of the best character actors in the business, John Hawkes.) It’s a beautifully shot film by experimental filmmaker and cinematographer Jeff Preiss about a perfectly ugly situation.

Sundance: Kristen Wiig & Bill Hader Dig Deep in Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins

You go in to The Skeleton Twins expecting to laugh because it stars Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, and you do, you laugh quite a lot. But then you end up feeling almost blindsided by this bracing look at adult lives gone horribly awry, a story of estranged two siblings who have been so thoroughly messed up from the suicide of their father and their own failed lives. Craig Johnson has created something remarkable here,

Sundance: Trouble in Texas in Jim Mickle’s Thrilling Cold in July

Director Jim Mickle is back at Sundance for a second year in a row with the dark, thrilling Cold in July, based on the novel by Joe R. Landale. After serving up last year’s compelling cannibal family film We Are What We Are, Mickle seems right at home in this neo-noir set in a small Texas town sometime in the 1980s.

Cold in July wastes no time plunging you into an ordinary man’s extraordinary dilemma.

Sundance: Steve James’s Doc Life Itself Captures Spirit of Roger Ebert

For half of the history of cinema, Roger Ebert has been writing about film. This point is made by Richard Corliss, the Film Comment critic, who wrote the infamous piece “All Thumbs,” arguing that the Siskel & Ebert show, along with the rising culture of 'rating' movies with letter grades or thumbs, was damaging true film criticism. That this same man is such a big presence in James' documentary tells you that the scope of the subject's career is too big,

Sundance: Aubrey Plaza’s Deadly Turn in Life After Beth

Last year we interviewed Jeff Levine, the director of Warm Bodies, a zom-rom-com (excuse us) about a young woman and the zombie she falls for. The premise was fresh and the execution commendable. Julie (Teresa Palmer) finds herself falling for R (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie who still seems to retain some flicker of his sweet human soul.

In writer/director Jeff Baena’s directorial debut, Life After Beth, that premised is tweaked slightly,

Sundance: Jenny Slate Charms in Writer/Director Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child

Gillian Robespierre’s first crack at Obvious Child was as a short that she filmed in the winter of 2009. “We were frustrated by the limited representations of young women’s experience with pregnancy, let alone growing up,” she wrote on her Kickstarter page. “We were waiting to see a more honest film, or at least, a story that was closer to many of the stories we knew.” The short starred comedian Jenny Slate, the ex-SNL cast member (who infamously dropped the f-bomb on her very first show),

Sundance: Macon Blair’s Melancholy Assassin in Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin

Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin was a hell of a way to spend an afternoon in the theater here at Sundance. Saulnier’s film is a revenge story marked not by the mindless pursuit of retribution but rather a sad, resigned commitment to a dark task. Our protagonist, Dwight (Macon Blair, outstanding), openly acknowledges the pointlessness of his task while nonetheless trudging along its bloody contours to its bleak endpoint.

The film opens with a beautiful shot of a pristine white tile bathroom filling with steam.

Sundance 2014: Young Hellraiser Fuels Kat Candler’s Impressive Hellion

The first night in Sundance required a deep breath. The Credits is a little more than a year old, so this was our first year here and it’s all slightly overwhelming at the beginning. Although the Festival is a well oiled machine at this point (free shuttles, a slew of press and industry screenings to choose from, and now Uber, expensive as ever), for a first timer here it’s a lot to take in.

We got our bearings and that initial touch of anxiety melted away once the lights went down at the Holiday Village Cinema and the first chords of heavy metal sounded in Kat Candler’s Hellion.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit & 26 More Super Spy Movies

With Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit opening this Friday, Paramount is hoping for a successful re-re-reboot (after 2002’s The Sum of All Fears, with Ben Affleck), to infuse this 24 year old spy fantasy franchise culled from Tom Clancy’s novels, with the realistic grit, vim, and vigor deployed so successfully in the Bourne films, and adapted brilliantly by the James Bond franchise in Casino Royale and Skyfall.

Can Our Social Awards Season App Predict the Oscars?

The Oscar nominations have been announced, which means our Social Awards Season App, the DataViz, which is a collaboration with global social analytics and monitoring company Brandwatch, will begin collecting all the social data mentions for the Academy Award nominees in the run up to one of the most competitive years in recent Oscar history.

When we unveiled our first iteration of our DataViz app last year,

I, Frankenstein Digitally Re-Mastered for IMAX Premiere

“I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” So said Frankenstein’s monster, some 196 years ago in 1818 when Mary Shelley anonymously published her groundbreaking book “Frankenstein” in London. In nine days, her creation will loom larger than ever before when he enters IMAX theaters on January 24 in Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein.

Writer/director Beattie’s film,

From Darryl F. Zanuck to Christine Vachon: The Quotable Producer

Jerry Weintraub, a legendary film producer, took to the stage this past Sunday to accept the Golden Globe for best TV movie or miniseries for Behind the Candelabra. The film was the work of a slew of super talented individuals coming together to create something original and daring. Some of those people include the director Steven Soderbergh, his two stars, Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his young lover Scott Thornson,

Can We Predict the Golden Globes? Our New & Improved Social Awards Season App

The Golden Globes are this Sunday, which means that it’s time for us to roll out our second annual Social Awards Season DataViz (short for data visualization), in collaboration with the brainiacs over at the global social analytics and monitoring company Brandwatch. Last year our one-of-a-kind Oscars prognosticator surveyed social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest for any public mentions relating to the Oscar nominees. The DataViz also tallied the predictions of film critics,

Polar Vortex Film List: Behind-the-Chill of Some Seriously Cold Films

It's been stupidly, horrendously cold outside. It was 5 degrees in New York yesterday morning. It’s a balmy 9 degrees at the moment. And New York has it easy. You need a Tauntuan and several layers of Gortex to get around if you live in the Midwest. Around 500 people got stuck on three Amtrak trains in Illinois on Monday thanks to the polar vortex. And what a name—the polar vortex included a The Day After Tomorrow–

Interstellar, Noah, Fury & More: 2014 Movie Preview

Now that we’ve put a bow on one of the greatest years in recent film history, it’s time to look ahead at the slate of films coming out this year.

We're taking just a small bite here, and we're breaking it down by four genres that have a robust selection of films coming out—science fiction, action/adventure, superhero and historical/period pieces.

Science Fiction

There are a lot of really exciting projects in the sci-fi genre from some very talented directors and huge stars,

Looking Back on Some of our Favorite Stories of 2013

When we launched The Credits a little more than a year ago, we aimed to shed a light on the many talented filmmakers who often don’t get much press for their work. While we’ve occasionally spoken to folks who need no introduction (John Waters, for example), most of the filmmakers we’ve focused on have a little less name recognition but a huge amount of talent. We interviewed a lot of people, so the below roundup is really just a taste—there were far too many people to mention in a single post.

10 Movie Themed Cocktails Crafted by Nitehawk Cinema’s Beverage Manager

As the Beverage Manager at the Nitehawk Cinema, Jen Marshall’s job is to pair cocktails with movies, a kind of cinema sommelier. At the Brooklyn theater, she comes up with cocktails for each movie on the marquee, like The Driver.

This twist on a dark and stormy is made with Gosling’s Ginger Beer and Gosling’s Black Seal Rum in honor of Drive’s moody hero and heartthrob, Ryan Gosling.