Gus Van Sant’s new film, aptly titled Promised Land, is almost paradoxically traditional in that it hearkens back to the classic American films of directors such as Frank Capra and Billy Wilder, but maintains a contemporary feeling throughout.

Given the cooled reaction to much of The Smashing Pumpkins’/Billy Corgan’s output over the past decade or so, one might be tempted to question who the target audience might be for a $140 special edition box set of an album they first released 17 years ago.

If there’s one constant element to Quentin Tarantino’s blood-soaked romps, it’s that he doesn’t write about victims. Sure his characters often start at a Grindhouse-worthy low, but Tarantino is all about second acts—brought about by any means necessary.

Obscurely referential, extremely indulgent, and deliriously over-the-top, Django Unchained is-in other words-everything you’d expect from a Tarantino joint, and well worth the wait.

The fruitful run of collaborations between actress Nina Hoss and director Christian Petzold (Jericho, Yella) continues in their dynamite new film, Barbara.

Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible is a true-to-life account of a family’s experiences during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and it brings the natural disaster to the big screen with an astonishing visual acumen.

One of the biggest challenges facing director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) in making a screen version of Jack Kerouac’s landmark 1957 novel, On the Road, was to give the film a cinematic voice.

Seasons 4-8 of The Simpsons aside, it’s hard to think of much from the ‘90s that has aged well: Britpop, Saved by the Bell, shell suits, and Liverpool Football Club have ignominiously slid from pop culture icons into figures of fun since the turn of the millennium; even the laugh track on Seinfeld sounds dated now.

Dirty Projectors’ songwriter David Longstreth is reported to have written “70 new songs and beats” during the recording process for their wonderful 2012 release Swing Low Magellan.