More than most, Japan has traditionally held genre filmmaking as an artistic endeavor equal to that of dramatic cinema. From Akira Kurosawa to John Woo, the country's elite directors have cast an immense shadow that contemporary Japanese filmmakers likely revere and resent in equal measure. Takashi Miike and Johnnie To, two of the best in the business right now, personify this dichotomy to a fascinating degree. Both Miike's muscular chase flick Shield of Straw and To's wildly compounded romantic policier Blind Detective make an asset out of their respective pillaging of genre signifiers. That these individual films succeed to varying to degrees—in some instances in spite of themselves—matters little in the grand scheme of their creators' narratives: Each have made more original films, more consistently compelling films, and flat-out better films. But there's something oddly compelling about their unique existence's as notable entries in what now could be considered prestigious filmographies.

Violent tornado in Oklahoma leaves an unconfirmed number of people dead.

Unbelievable footage of the storm.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn seeks to offset emergency tornado aide.

Remembering the Doors' co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

Thousands rallied against recent LGBT-related violence in New York City last night.

Listen to Beyoncé's new single, "Grown Woman."

Orphans has got some major daddy issues. Lyle Kessler's 30-year-old regional theater mainstay is the Field of Dreams of plays: Men go to laugh, whoop it up, and cry, wishing they could get a hug from Papa. The plot, as simple and primal as a fable, serves as a delivery system for sensations: Phillip and Treat have made it out of adolescence all on their own; Mom died and Dad ran off early on, and perhaps as a result, the brothers are mentally and emotionally stunted, respectively. Treat kidnaps Harold, a shady businessman, for ransom; after wriggling free, he stays on to domesticate the wild boys, but trouble follows him to his new home.

"I'm not one of them storybook characters," a charismatic young man assures his girl of the moment. As the plot develops, we watch the girl be seduced and then disillusioned by the man she thought was one-of-a-kind. Her hard lesson captures in microcosm the appeal of adapting John Cassavetes's 1959 film Shadows to the stage, a project taken on two years ago by the ensemble company Hoi Polloi and now in revival at the company's new theatrical home, Jack in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Cassavetes's film, his first, is a barely plotted, hyper-naturalized slice of life in the "shadows" of New York City's jazz scene. The film's credits call it an "improvisation," a typically coy claim by Cassavetes to make his audience feel they've witnessed an authentic experience rather than a carefully crafted representation. (The film was made without a script, and most of the characters were given the same names as their actors, but that doesn't mean the scenes were unplanned.) Bringing the film to theatrical life—scene by scene, line by line, gesture by gesture—is to be wiser than the girl. It is to be charmed but never tricked by those who claim to be "real," but are, in fact, characters from a human imagination.

It's been a long haul since the seventh season premiere almost nine months ago, but showrunner Steven Moffat has finally delivered a tremendous resolution to the mystery of Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman), the "impossible girl" who the Doctor (Matt Smith) has encountered multiple times, living apparently unconnected lives in different times and places. "The Name of the Doctor" is a superb finale, providing a satisfying payoff for the season plot arc while still ending with a huge twist to lead into Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special in November.

Car bomb attacks sweep across Baghdad, killing at least 70.

Beyoncé is expecting baby number two...or is she?

Chinese hackers resume their attacks on U.S. targets.

The 59th annual Drama Desk Awards were announced yesterday.

Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis makes its Cannes debut.

Can gay New Yorker Marc Carson's murder have as big an impact as Matthew Shepard's?

The Coen brothers switch gears so often and with such gleeful finesse that their restlessness can no longer qualify as genre-hopping pastiche, if it ever did. At this point they're simply a style unto themselves, a self-sufficient duo with a built in audience, art-house cred, and, when they want to indulge, box-office potential. Inside Llewyn Davis, then, isn't a curveball so much as another stopover on a now-two-decade-plus journey that's taken on noir, slapstick, thriller, western, and everything in between. It's also one of their strongest recent efforts, an alternately world-weary and hilarious ode to a period of relatively recent vintage that's nonetheless cherished as an era of new ideas, free-thinking, and artistic progression.

It's become more and more rare in contemporary cinema for a filmmaker to not only revisit thematic territory, but to essentially re-examine the same basic narrative dynamic from different angles. It's a tack few filmmakers continue to utilize, perhaps to avoid accusations of redundancy, but Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has made the most of his purposefully modest cinematic constructs. Like Father, Like Son, his latest in a long line of unassuming family dramas, is one of his most heartbreaking works yet.

The American Jewish Story Through Cinema, the latest book from author/scholar Eric A. Goldman, is a difficult work to evaluate, primarily because Goldman is quite proficient in one sense (contextualizing the development and production of American Jewish stories/films within Hollywood cinema) and wholly deficient in another (offering a critical lens from which to form nuanced considerations). When presented with these problems, the deficiencies inevitably outweigh the proficiencies, because even the adept historicizing is tainted by a sense that what's being presented merely gets at the surface of these complex issues. Moreover, Goldman has written an academic book that's constructed in such a basic, often needlessly explanatory manner, that one cannot help conclude his ultimate aim is less an appeal to academics seeking a thorough, methodologically rigorous framework, than a more biographically inclined reader, whose interest lies purely in the historical context within which the chosen films of study were produced.

Just like many of his fellow countrymen, including compatriot Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has been forced to ply his trade outside his homeland's borders under threat of government intervention. Whatever the logistics, however, Farhadi's latest domestic drama, The Past, while produced in France, is a seamless translation of both his stylistic and thematic sensibilities. Farhadi arrived on an international level with 2011's A Separation, a typically knotty character study which netted awards all the way from festivals to the Academy. He'd done similar, equally compelling work prior to his breakthrough (2009's About Elly stands as arguably his strongest film), but with an increased eye on Middle Eastern cinema in the wake of Kiarostami's Certified Copy and the jailing of the more radical, uncompromising Jafar Panahi, coupled with the film's heart-tugging narrative, A Separation arrived at an opportune time for his country's rise to international cinematic prominence. The Past parlays this goodwill with even more wide-reaching potential, extending Farhadi's streak of strong work while cementing him as one of world cinema's most universal storytellers.