Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters
Emma Watson in 'The Bling Ring' (Photo: A24)

Love her or hate her, Sofia Coppola has cornered the market on the world of privilege and its discontents. And so it goes with the writer-director's latest movie, "The Bling Ring," based on a Vanity Fair true-crime-in-the-Hollywood-Hills article. The film, in limited release this weekend focuses on a celebrity-obsessed Bonnie and Bonnie and Bonnie and Bonnie and Clyde gang that robs from the rich – Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom – and lines their own Prada pockets.

Led by relative newcomers Katie Chung and lush-lipped Israel Broussard, the high school heist comedy benefits from low expectations. Think a dark teen comedy in the tradition of "Mean Girls" and "Heathers." Both Broussard and Chung are delightfully decent as ringleaders Marc and Rebecca, but the film’s focus frequently shifts to supporting player Emma Watson. In micro-minis, her head bobbling on her slender neck, Watson plays La-La lost girl Nicki, a child of divorce incompletely healed by the New Age platitudes of her mother (Leslie Mann).

Clive Owen in Magnolia Pictures' 'Shadow Dancer'

What thrills “Shadow Dancer” star Clive Owen? It’s not skydiving.

Clive Owen is on a bit of a thrill ride. His Brooklyn set crime thriller “Blood Ties” opposite Mila Kunis competed at Cannes last week. Then this week the news hit that he dragged director Steven Soderbergh out of “retirement” for an upcoming Cinemax series, “The Knick.” And now Owen’s Northern Ireland set thriller, “Shadow Dancer,” opens theatrically today.

Owen, 48, plays an MI5 agent charged with running a former IRA activist turned informant (Andrea Riseborough) in the 1990’s. Of the British actor’s performance in this “gripping thriller,” THR critic David Rooney said, “Owen is at his best in these coolly intelligent man-of-integrity roles.” So true!

A thrill a minute – but within reason

“The thing about ‘Shadow Dancer’ for me,” Owen told Yahoo! Movies, “is that it has thriller elements but first and foremost it’s a human drama. It has a very strong opening sequence about enlisting this girl [to inform on her radical

Alexander Skarsgard and Brit Marling in Fox Searchlight's 'The East'

Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters

While thrillers return again and again to the same well of foreigners, zombies and sociopaths to find their villains, so far the eco-terrorists of the world have gotten off scott free in Hollywood movies.

“The East” shrewdly redresses that gap. While raising moral questions about corporate malfeasance (cue shots of pretty sea birds drenched in oil),it dives straight into the ethics of vigilante justice and finds that killing in cold blood is still killing, however noble the cause or clever the execution.

Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgard star in 'What Maisie Knew' (Photo: Millenium)"What scares me," Alexander Skarsgard explains, "is Hollywood parents that live vicariously through their kids." The lanky "True Blood" star knows what it's like to be a screen kid: he started acting in Sweden at seven. Skarsgard, now 36, is currently killing in a role as a Manhattan bartender who marries Julianne Moore’s bad rock 'n roll mamma in the new indie release "What Maisie Knew."

The Stockholm native continued his criticism of typical Hollywood parents: "They love their kids, but they put pressure on them to move out from Arkansas to Hollywood. For the kid, your entire family is suddenly out in Los Angeles and you’re six years old and you’re the breadwinner."

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Sony Pictures Classics' 'Before Midnight'

Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters

"Before Midnight," the third and richest collaboration between Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and director Richard Linklater, finds the French and American couple Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) still talking, talking, talking – and making love.

Having met on a train nearly two decades ago and day-tripped together in Vienna (“Before Sunrise”) then reunited years later in Paris after Jesse published a novel about their night together (“Before Sunset”), the pair are currently coupled, with children. Now, in the waning hours of a summer vacation on a Greek isle, Celine and Jesse struggle to navigate the rocky seas of divorce, domesticity and approaching middle age.

Oh, what a difference nearly two decades together makes – both in the way the couple relates to each other, and the way the audiences relates to them!

[Related: Critic’s Pick: ‘Frances Ha’]

The trilogy’s third day unfolds with end-of-summer sweet-sadness. Jesse bids goodbye to his tween-aged son (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) from his troublesome American

Sondra Currie, right, says Zach Galifianakis is the class clown of 'The Hangover' franchise (Photo: Warner Bros./Getty)It's not easy being a parent – and that goes triple for Sondra Currie, 61. The long-suffering actress has played Zach Galifianakis' mom, Linda Garner, for three movies in "The Hangover Saga." And, just like every mother has her arsenal of embarrassing baby pictures, Currie has a story or two to tell on her screen son Alan. Galifianakis' mission on the set seemed to be to keep his movie mom in a constant state of fumbling unbalance.