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John Carpenter is a legend of the horror genre, blessing the world of cinema with the absolute classics like "Halloween" and "The Thing" and peppering in cult favorites like "The Fog" and "Prince of Darkness." Somewhat surprisingly, the however, man who practically created the slasher movie and embraced groundbreaking gore effects is reportedly not a fan of "Hostel," Eli Roth's ultra violent horror film that became one of the cornerstones of the "torture porn" wave upon its premiere in 2005.

Although "splatter films" showcasing extreme violence are nothing new, the 2000's ushered in an era of horror that focused on shockingly graphic torture and gore. New York Magazine film critic David Edelstein dismayingly dubbed this style of horror "torture porn," denouncing the films in this category as "so viciously nihilistic that the only point seems to be to force you to suspend moral judgments altogether." Of course, as with any controversial leap in intensity,...

Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, that showcase of contemporary British acting, has opened in the UK this weekend, and that roundup has been updated through today. The entry on Gus Van Sant's Restless has been updated with pointers to pieces related to the Museum of the Moving Image's retrospective, running through September 30. And of course, we've got roundups running on Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and Rod Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. Meantime, two weeks after the release of Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, we've entered the think piece stage, so that roundup's been kept up-to-date through today as well.

"Imagine that a semi-pagan society quietly survives in the heartland of Russia, amid the leftover Soviet-era factories, the old shops and stores strung along the roadsides, the new concrete towns with their shopping malls." Stuart Klawans in the Nation: "Imagine that the people of...

Julia Roberts has yet to be surpassed. Back in September of last year I asked Who's the Next Big Male Movie Star? At the time Robert Pattinson Fever had spread all over the Internet and the conversation resulted in a wasted experiment as commenters weren't able to have a real debate. However, a few people did ask for a similar feature for the females and I have finally gotten around to putting it together. With the males the name I was looking at in comparison was Will "Guaranteed Box-Office Gold" Smith. With the females I was unable to come up with a name that lives up to the career Julia Roberts put together and she remained my muse. When Pretty Woman came out in 1990 Julia was 22-years-old and had just starred in and won a Golden Globe for Steel Magnolias. Over the following nine years she worked her way into...