Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight)

Filmmaker Danny Boyle may be best known for his dark drug story Trainspotting. But now he delivers what might best be described as something of a gritty romantic fairy tale. Slumdog Millionaire (opening November 21 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) is something of a kindred spirit to Boyle's Millions as it spins a narrative rooted in the real world but able transcend reality. You can listen to my radio feature or check out the web video feature on Slumdog Millionaire tomorrow.

Ines Efron plays an intersex child and Ricardo Darin is her understanding father in XXY (Film Movement)

The Argentine film XXY (opening today at Ultrastar Mission Valley Theaters at Hazrd Center as part of the San Diego Latino Film Festival's Cinema En Tu Idioma Film Series) marks the feature directing debut of Lucia Puenzo. The film is based on a story by her husband and produced by her father, director Luis Puenzo. The close relationships behind the camera may have helped the film achieve its onscreen intimacy with a difficult subject. I spoke with the director about her coming of age film with a twist. (Be listening Monday for my radio feature.)

XXY refers to males born with a second X chromosome; a condition known as Klinefelter's Syndrome. Filmmaker Lucia Puenzo says she chose XXY as the title for her film in part, for its visual impact.

Sukiyaki Western Django serves up a spaghetti western samurai style (First Look International)

Imagine a war between the Crips and the Bloods played out as a samurai spaghetti western set in ancient Japan with all the Asian actors delivering their lines in halting English and you'll begin to have an idea of what iconoclastic director Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django (opened October 31 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) is like.

The film opens with a prologue in which QuentinTarantino gathers us around the campfire to spin a tall tale about the Heike (whose color is red) and Genji (who wear white) clans who faced off at the Battle of Dannoura in 1185. Then the film picks up the rivalry a few hundred years later, possibly the 1880s, in the small town Yuta, Nebada. Tarantino's over-the top turn as a poncho-clad gunslinger sets the tone for the film.

Nikki Ferris and Kyra Clifford took part in World Zombie Walk this past Sunday. (Beth Accomando)

With Halloween right around the corner, I wanted to highlight a horror sub-genre that I'm particularly fond of - the zombie film. Those lumbering, vacant-eyed undead have become a horror staple since the 1930s, and they seem to be gaining popularity with recent films such as Shaun of the Dead. So this Halloween I have suggestions for some undead titles you can check out. I've also consulted with author Glenn Kay who just wrote Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide. To put me in the proper mood for all this, I headed over to the World Zombie Walk on Sunday in downtown San Diego and met up with some of the undead hordes.

The 1985 poster for The Breakfast Club and the initial poster designed for American Teen (Paramount Vantage)

The new documentary American Teen (opening August 8 at select theaters) is something of a real life Breakfast Club (you remember that John Hughes film about "a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel, and a recluse..."). American Teen focuses on five teens representing such school cliques as jocks, geeks, and the popular set. I spoke with director Nanette Burstein about capturing contemporary teen life for her film. You can listen to my radio feature or read the extended interview.

We all remember that iconic and epic film The Breakfast Club. Either you were born watching it or your parents got you into it or even the latest fad of being retro required you to have a large knowledge of whether you were a princess, a brain, a criminal, etc. So when you walked down the theatre aisle and saw this new movie poster for the latest documentary directed by Nanette Burstein, American Teen, you probably had to take a second look, to make sure that it isn't a remake. This documentary has been compared to the most famous 80s movie, but this film is most definitely not a remake. This movie, being a documentary, takes a world that has been displayed in fiction, and in over-dramatic television "reality" shows, and it offers a more in depth and sincere look at the lives of the modern high school teen. The film includes the cliques, struggling to graduate, and teen heartbreak. Overall this film is a great model of what preteens have to look forward to, what teenagers have to live through, and what adults have successfully survived. After I had seen this film I had the great opportunity of meeting and interviewing the director, Nanette Burstein. In the way she spoke of her subjects, I saw the love she had for them and it assured me that this director only had the truest intentions in what that life is like, and I was grateful that this woman chose to deliver this message.

-- Candace Kavanagh just graduated from Mount Miguel High School. She spends her life absorbing celluloid images. She loves every type of film from so-called "chick flicks" such as My Fair Lady and Legally Blonde, to mind bending thrillers like Mulholland Drive and Hard Candy -- with every zombie movie, action flick, musical, and comedy in between.

Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode star in a new adaptation of Brideshead Revisited (Miramax)

We get a break from superheroes this week as a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited comes to the big screen. PBS adapted Brideshead Revisited back in 1981. The very popular mini-series concerned class and religion in pre-war England, and it launched Jeremy Irons' career. But a mini-series has the luxury of time that a single feature film does not. So that's the challenge facing Julian Jarrold as he revisits Brideshead Revisited (opened August 1 at Landmark's Hillcrest and La Jolla Village Theaters) and must decide what to cut and what to hold onto from Waugh's novel. So while the PBS series got to cover more of the actual text, this new film offers a truncated but more narrowly focused version of the book.

Drugs for therapy... The Wackness (Sony Pictures Classics)

It's 1994, and Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is spending his summer before college listening to hip-hop and selling drugs from an ice cream cart in New York City. His shrink, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), lets him trade dope for therapy, but Luke's more interested in the doc's sexy step-daughter than any psychobabble. Writer-director Jonathan Levine serves up a funny, sharp, and ultimately compassionate coming of age tale with his sophomore feature The Wackness (opening July 11 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Liste to the KPBS Film Club of the Air Discussion of The Wackness.

Julianne Moore delivers a knockout performance in Savage Grace (IFC Films)

Filmmaker Tom Kalin burst on the indie scene in 1992 with a black and white take on the Loeb-Leopold murder case, Swoon. But he's been relatively silent since then, hovering under the radar making shorts and penning a script for photographer Cindy Sherman's Office Killer. But Kalin returns to art house feature films with an adaptation of Natalie Robins' book Savage Grace (opening July 4 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Harkening back to the kind of uncomfortable mother-son relationship of Bertolucci's Luna, Savage Grace offers us Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne as a perversely interdependent mother and son. The film boasts another sensational performance by Moore and a welcome return to feature directing by Kalin. Listen to our KPBS Film Club discussion of the film.

Encounters at the End of the World or Herzog Goes to the South Pole (Discovery Films)

German filmmaker Werner Herzog is becoming known for more than just his art house films. The man who directed such stellar works as Aguirre, Wrath of God and the recent Rescue Dawn is also starting to get recognized for his appearances in documentaries about him. Burden of Dreams chronicled his obsession to make Fitzcarraldo in the jungle, and in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe the director makes good on a bet and does precisely what the title says. In those documentaries, Herzog displays a dour, anal-retentive, and thoroughly obsessive persona that would be mocked in the faux documentaries Incident at Loch Ness and The Grand. What makes Herzog so entertaining is that he's so serious and he seems completely unaware of how funny that is. In both Loch Ness and The Grand, he acts as if he doesn't realize it's all a joke. In his documentaries, Herzog becomes as much of a character as the people he films. Although he doesn't generally appear on camera in his documentaries, he contributes voiceover narration and asks questions off screen as he pursues people who are as obsessive as he is. Little Dieter Needs to Fly gave us a man obsessed with becoming a pilot and Grizzly Man focused on a man whose passion for bears eventually led to his death. Now Herzog heads down to the South Pole for Encounters at the End of the World, a documentary about the odd collection of folks at the bottom of the world.