The Movies That Got Sued Before They Got Released

In honor of this weekend's The People's Joker, I looked at six other films that had to deal with lawsuits before seeing the light of day. Whether it's the State of Massachusetts or Aretha Franklin, sometimes the powers that be have an issue with a movie, and they'll do whatever they can to stop its release. Hope you enjoy.

My Interview With Rodney Ascher, Director of 'A Glitch in the Matrix'

Are we living in a simulation? And if so, does it make any difference? For MEL, I spoke with Rodney Ascher, who makes documentaries about true believers. His latest, A Glitch in the Matrix, concerns everyday people who are convinced that the life around us is actually an illusion. Ascher isn't so interested in figuring out whether they're right or not. As always, he's more invested in why people believe what they believe. Hope you enjoy our conversation.

'The Nightmare' Review

The Nightmare, the new film from Room 237 director Rodney Ascher, opens next Friday in select cities. It's a smart, fascinating documentary about people who suffer from sleep paralysis, a condition that just sounds horrible. I saw The Nightmare at Sundance, liked it quite a lot, and now I'm reviewing it for Paste. Read on.

The Best Movies of the Decade (so far): My Ballot

You may remember the other day I mentioned that The Dissolve had asked me and other critics to contribute ballots to their poll of the best films of the decade (2010-2014). (You can see the master list, with write-ups, of Nos. 50-26 here. Nos. 25-1 are right here.)

For those interested, I decided to publish my ballot below.

Doing some quick number-crunching, I see that 10 of my Top 20 films ended up in the overall Dissolve Top 50. If some of my picks surprise you, well, they surprised me, too -- but I decided to go by instinct and not overthink my choices. If nothing else, this will help give me a guide for "Best of the Decade" lists in about four years, which will be here quicker than you think.

1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. The Turin Horse
3. The Master
4. Boyhood
5. City of Life and Death
6. Lourdes
7. Shutter Island
8. Elena (the Andrei Zvyagintsev film)
9. It's Such a Beautiful Day
10. The Social Network
11. The Clock
12. Compliance
13. Let the Fire Burn
14. Blue Is the Warmest Color
15. Shame
16. Leviathan (the Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel film)
17. Upstream Color
18. Take Shelter
19. Room 237
20. Before Midnight

In Praise of 'Room 237'

At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, one of my favorite discoveries was Room 237, a documentary that compiles all the different conspiracy theories about the hidden meanings buried within Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. This Friday, it finally gets a release. For Deadspin, I try to explain what makes this film so special, especially for Kubrick fans. Hope you enjoy.

2012 in Review: The Year's Best Movies

Well, another year is in the books. Like everyone else has said, 2012 was a pretty great movie year. Coming up with a Top 10 was relatively easy -- although I'm sorry I couldn't find room for Only the Young, Tabu or 28 Hotel Rooms. So here we go ....

1. The Turin Horse
2. Elena
3. The Master
4. Compliance
5. It's Such a Beautiful Day
6. Room 237
7. Zero Dark Thirty
8. Detropia
9. Amour
10. Holy Motors

I go into more detail about my Nos. 10-6 here. And I write about movies Nos. 5-1 here.

What else? Well, there's my Village Voice ballot, where I lay out my picks for Best Actor, Actress and so on and so forth. (If that isn't enough to tempt you, I also reveal my vote for the year's worst film.)

As for my fondest personal movie memories of 2012, this was a year that started with me attending the first public screening of Compliance at Sundance -- yeah, that one -- and ended with a last-minute viewing of the remarkable It's Such a Beautiful Day the night before the LAFCA awards vote. In between, I was proud to bring director Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Banishment to the Los Angeles Film Festival as part of its invaluable "Films That Got Away" series. (I thank Nicholas Bell for his sharp and perceptive review from the festival.) In my own life, 2012 was not without its challenges, but the movies helped keep me going. I'm grateful to them -- and for you for reading. Here's to a healthy and prosperous 2013.

Sundance 2012: Ranking the Best and Worst of the Festival

And so we come to the end of another Sundance film festival. All in all, I saw 32 films, including a couple I checked out at Toronto last year that also played in Park City. Here's my ranking of what I saw, from worst to best...

Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
Red Lights
Lay the Favorite
Goats
Wish You Were Here
LUV
Wrong
Chasing Ice
For a Good Time, Call...
Mosquita y Mari
Celeste and Jesse Forever
The End of Love
I Am Not a Hipster
Black Rock
For Ellen
The Invisible War
The Surrogate
The Imposter
Smashed
The House I Live In
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Words
Gypsy Davy
Sleepwalk With Me
Wuthering Heights
Simon Killer
Your Sister's Sister
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Safety Not Guaranteed
Room 237
28 Hotel Rooms
Compliance

You may notice that Beasts of the Southern Wild isn't as high on my list as it is on many other folks'. I think it's a good film, if a bit overpraised. You also may notice I missed several films that won prizes as last night's awards event. What can I say: There's only so much time, and you can't screen everything. But you can be sure I'll be doing some catchup over the next several months.