Upstream Color is beautiful, complex, and hard to stop thinking about. Whether Carruth earned that success with the work itself, or its mystique and cultural standing compelled me to build a critical case on its behalf, I’m still not sure.

A brief overview of this year’s LA Film Fest selections, with a list of the top films that really floored me this year.

Our panel of two sat down for an epic virtual discussion of our absolute favorites of 2009 — in every category we could think of — and set about explaining why each one made the list.

Where The Ram’s story is about an addiction to life in the spotlight, Paul Aufiero’s is about a working class brand of loyalty that looks an awful lot like religion, and all the contradictions that entails.

A slew of smarter, more stylish takes on romance give movie snobs something they can get mushy over without the guilt: love stories with substance.

Two smaller-scale films stand up against blockbuster season, and get so much more out of so much less by brutally focusing on their subjects.