Film

Bradley Cooper starred as a schoolteacher heading to Vegas for a wild bachelor party in the 2009 raunchy bromance The Hangover. He reprises his role for the sequel, alongside actors Zach Galifanakis and Ed Helms -- and a drug dealing money named Crystal.

The film critic reports his impressions of this year's Cannes Film Festival. On Powers' list of notable films: Terrance Malick's Tree of Life, about a young boy growing up in 1950s Texas, and an Iranian film by a director who was explicitly told by the Iranian government not to make films.

The director's latest comedy stars Owen Wilson as a time-traveling writer who winds up in Paris, in the 1920s, alongside Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Stein. Critic David Edelstein says Wilson's acting is superb -- and the film recalls Woody Allen's earliest days in film.

After six years on Saturday Night Live and many supporting film parts, Kristen Wiig has her first starring role in the romantic comedy Bridesmaids, which has been touted as a Judd Apatow movie for ladies. Critic David Edelstein says it's likely to be a hit with both women and men.

David Edelstein's friends all say they just won't see a Mel Gibson movie. But Edelstein says the actor's new film The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster, might be worth a look -- if only for a certain cameo appearance.

A trio of rousing adventure flicks -- Fast Five, 13 Assassins and Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen -- all opened this past week. David Edelstein says each one is pretty singular, in its own way.

Incendies is a French-Canadian film that was nominated for a 2010 Academy Award. The title translates as "scorched," and the movie tells the brutal story of a woman who lived through her country's civil war. Critic David Edelstein says it's an extraordinary piece of storytelling.

In the splendid documentary Nostalgia for the Light, Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman draws parallels between astronomers searching for stars in the world's driest desert and women searching for the remains of loved ones who were disappeared under the Pinochet regime.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog was one of the few people permitted to enter a cave in France containing the oldest recorded cave paintings. What he saw — and what he imagined — is the subject of a new documentary, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

Robert Redford's historical drama focuses on the months after President Lincoln was assassinated — and on Mary Surratt, the woman alleged to have aided the plotters. Critic David Edelstein says it's a dramatized civil-liberties lecture, both transparent and exaggerated.

Fresh Air remembers director Sidney Lumet — who died Saturday at age 86 — with excerpts from a 1988 interview. One of Hollywood's most prolific directors, Lumet created more than 40 films, including Network, Serpico, Fail-Safe, Dog Day Afternoon, The Wiz, The Verdict and Prince of the City.

Michelle Williams plays settler Emily Tetherow in Kelly Reichardt's frontier drama Meek's Cutoff. Both Williams and Reichardt join Fresh Air's Terry Gross for a discussion about the film, which was shot with exquisite landscapes and virtually no dialogue.

James Franco and Danny McBride set off on a quest in David Gordon Green's action comedy Your Highness — a sword-and-sorcery spoof that David Edelstein says is fantastic if you're in the right gross-minded juvenile mood.

The less you know about the unnerving thrillers Source Code and Insidious the better, says critic David Edelstein. But only one of the two films "has so much emotional heft that it never loses that exhilarating jitter."

Tom McCarthy's new comedy stars Paul Giamatti as a suburban lawyer who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach. Critic David Edelstein says the film is "a symphony of marvelous voices" reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine.

The director's new sci-fi comedy stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as two guys who hit the highway after Comic-Con -- and pick up an ET on the side of the road. The character-driven laughs depend on your buying into a main character who's entirely computer-generated.

Songwriter Hugh Martin, who co-wrote the classic song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" for Judy Garland's 1944 movie, Meet Me in St. Louis died on Friday. He was 96. Fresh Air remembers Martin with highlights from a 1989 interview.

Director and screenwriter Tom McCarthy's film Win-Win stars Paul Giamatti as a high school wrestling coach struggling with a moral dilemma. McCarthy, a former wrestler himself, explains why he left the mats in high school and turned to improv comedy.

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy appears to tell a simple story -- two people, played by Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, are mistaken for a long-married couple. But there are plot twists that will "ping-pong around your mind for days," says critic David Edelstein.

The Danish film In a Better World won the 2011 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Director Susanne Bier explains how stories from her family's escape from the Holocaust inform her work.