With the innumerable remakes, reboots and sequels deluging Hollywood recently, “Riddick,” the third installment in the “Riddick” series, warrants anticipatory disappointment. However, “Riddick” proves to be an exception, never rising above expectations for a summer action movie but still remaining an enjoyable distraction. Read more...

Leaving El Paso, Texas, five years ago, Iliana Sosa knew she would one day return to her hometown. But what she did not know was she would return to produce an award-winning thesis film. Read more...

Photo: “Child of the Desert” follows a mother traveling to the final resting site of her military son, befriending a Spanish-speaking immigrant along the way.

The first time Dehanza Rogers saw her film in a theater she began to cry. Rogers, a UCLA master of fine arts candidate in directing and cinematography, said she was emotional because, after several months of strenuous work to create her short film, “Sweet, Sweet Country,” she could finally see her hard work in front of her. Read more...

Photo: “Sweet, Sweet Country” follows Ndizeye, a young girl who must support both herself and the family she left behind at a Kenyan refugee camp.

A teenage girl, a mentally disabled boy and a lost horse. Nicole Gordon, master of fine arts candidate in film production and directing at UCLA, wanted to save these characters for her final thesis, but she knew she could no longer wait to see them on screen. Read more...

Photo: “The Last Wild” is the story of a troubled teenage girl who searches for her lost horse with the help of a young boy.

“The World’s End” has the most fitting movie title of the summer. After an apocalyptic “World War Z,” abysmal adventure flick “After Earth” and so many more of the same fictionally destructive caliber, a blatantly world-ending comedy seems like the kind of film to place squarely at the butt of it all. Read more...

In one jam-packed day of filming, director Manhea Joey Kim got the opportunity to experience the real world of directing firsthand. Read more...

Photo: UCLA graduate producer Wesley Ambrecht helped Kim produce his short “No Doubt About It.”

"Ain't Them Bodies Saints,” as its honky-tonk title implies, is a sort of western. The film opts for a Terrence Malick-esque approach in order to assure skeptics that, at its core, it's just a good, old American art film pretending to be a western. Read more...

Photo: “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” is an independent drama fim directed by David Lowery, and follows the tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison.