These days, any slacker with the scratch for a video game can effortlessly morph into a Guitar Hero or even stand in for George Harrison on a Beatles classic. So there’s something exquisitely right about the timing of the fascinating new documentary from Davis (An Inconvenient Truth) Guggenheim. Where his earlier film offered a riveting lesson on the science of climate change, his latest expounds on the musical theories and aesthetic philosophies of three indisputable rock gods.... Read more

Faubourg Tremé is a documentary steeped in the music and atmosphere of New Orleans. And it has an unlikely Vermont connection, as Venice, Calif., filmmaker Todd Darling discovered after he arranged to bring his brand-new Burning Fuse Film Festival to Merrill’s Roxy Cinema in Burlington.... Read more

More than any other starlet working today, Megan Fox of the Transformers films appears to be made purely of pixels. She looks like a 3-D version of the girl some guy would airbrush on the side of his van, which makes her an inspired casting choice for a movie about a high school cheerleader who has to consume human flesh to maintain her frightening physical perfection.... Read more

Let’s put it this way: With every new project, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that Steven Soderbergh is the same filmmaker who received Oscar nominations for Traffic and Erin Brockovich in a single year. His movies have become increasingly self-indulgent, and he seems to have lost his gift for turning compelling true stories into equally gripping cinema.... Read more

Talkies may be the norm, but some films are still better off without dialogue. WALL-E won audiences over in its initial silent half-hour. And animator Shane Acker’s 10-minute film “9” (2005) was a weirdly compelling vision of vulnerable, rag-doll-like humanoids fighting to survive in a bleak landscape — no conversation or exposition necessary.... Read more

Once upon a time, way back in the 1960s, millions of Americans gathered around the family television each week to watch a program starring ... a dolphin. That, of course, was before the current laws mandating creators of TV to limit production to “CSI”-style forensics crime dramas and talent competitions.... Read more

Short films seldom hit theaters, which means many movie-goers don’t give them a thought till they hear the nominees in that category read at the Oscars. Even then, we may assume they’re just glorified film-school assignments. But the animated flick 9 got its start as an acclaimed short ... so, for that matter, did the recent sci-fi hit District 9. (Click on the titles to see the short versions of both on YouTube.)... Read more

If Kyle Bergman wasn’t an architect, he’d be a filmmaker. That’s why the 47-year-old New York resident combined his profession with his passion to create the Architecture and Design Film Festival, a new four-day event taking place at Waitsfield’s Big Picture Theater.... Read more

Note to screenwriters: If you’re going to write a comedy about a socially awkward smart person, try hanging out with smart people first. In the misbegotten rom com All About Steve, Sandra Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a crossword-puzzle constructor (or “cruciverbalist,” as she puts it) for a Sacramento daily paper.... Read more

Ten years after turning out the immortal workplace comedy Office Space, writer-director Mike Judge has revisited the genre and handed in an exercise in pointlessness whose early dailies should’ve inspired Miramax to hand him a pink slip. Easily the most disappointing movie of the summer, Extract is, more significantly, the biggest letdown of its esteemed creator’s career.... Read more