IFC FilmsJust when you started thinking no one in Hollywood wanted anything to do with "The Canyons," it turns out the small budget film with the stacks of not-so-good press had several noted distributors eager to put it in theaters.

Dwayne Johnson in 'Snitch' (Photo: Summit Entertainment)Dwayne Johnson is arguably Hollywood's reigning action hero. And he could owe it all to a derailed football career.

With four movies out in the next four months, The Rock is rolling. "Snitch" hits February 22; "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" enters theaters March 28; "Pain & Gain" will be released on April 26; "Fast & Furious 6" speeds to screens May 24.

But before racking up 142 acting credits and counting, the 6-foot-4, 40-year-old powerhouse had athletic ambitions.

Photo: Everett Collection

Over forty years after they broke up, the Beatles are still the biggest rock group of all time, and they don't have to do anything they don't feel like doing. So why did they give a little known documentary filmmaker permission to use four classic tracks in an upcoming documentary? Call it a favor to an old friend.

Ryan White's film "Good Ol' Freda" will debut at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March, and the soundtrack will include four vintage Beatles recordings, including "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Love Me Do." Tunes by the Fab Four would be out of the price range of most documentary filmmakers even if they were to secure permission from the band, their music publishers, and their record company. After all, the producers of "Mad Men" had to pay $250,000 to use part of "Tomorrow Never Knows" in one episode.

Sony Picture Classics

Straight off, "No" is one ugly movie. Shot on a grainy 1980s U-Matic video camera with a muddy gray-and-brown color palette, the Oscar-nominated flick by director Pablo Larrain is not going to win you over with pretty pictures.

Of course, the movie takes place in a very ugly period in history: the waning days of Augusto Pinochet's brutal regime. No Chilean needs to be reminded that the military strongman seized power in 1973 following a CIA-led coup and then brutally crushed all dissent. Yet what made sense back during the realpolitik of the '70s became an embarrassment in the late '80s when the Soviet Union was gasping its last breath. Bowing to international pressure, Pinochet grudgingly allows a referendum on his reign to go forward in 1988. A yes would give the mustached generalissimo another eight years in power. A no, in theory, would not.

[Related: Steven Soderbergh talks about his retirement, becoming a ‘a primitive’ and the next iternation of cinema]

Enter Gene Saavedra (a

Director Jafar Panahi (Getty)Filmmaker Jafar Panahi is in trouble with the Iranian government. Again. Panahi won Best Screenplay for his movie “Closed Curtain” at the Berlin Film Festival, even though the acclaimed director has been banned from filmmaking. The award prompted the Iranian government to send the Berlinale jury an official complaint. The head of Iran's national film organization, Javad Shamaqdari, called the award inappropriate, as Panahi is prohibited from making films under Iranian law.

Enter the Dragon (Photo: Warner Bros.)

Do you remember that time when Bruce Lee took on Chinatown gangsters ... for real?

The story of the martial arts legend veers into "Bubba Ho-Tep" kind of "What If?" territory with "Birth of a Dragon," a decidedly non-traditional kind of biopic from screenwriters Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen Rivele.