Pedro Almodóvar's “The Skin I Live In,” which opens Friday, continues the theme of captivity and powerlessness—whether experienced through a coma, a kidnapping or a permanent, paralyzing handicap—that has permeated films like “Talk to Her,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and “Live Flesh.” Whether they're deranged or romantic, farcical or tragic, Almodóvar's movies always combine melodramatic stories

Jacob Tierney's film career launched in 1993, at the age of thirteen, when he starred—alongside Joan Allen, Martha Plimpton and a young Jake Gyllenhaal—in the adolescent road trip comedy/drama Josh and S.A.M. For the next ten years, the Quebec-born actor was cast in relatively obscure independent films featuring legendary character actors, such as Neon Bible (produced by his father, Kevin Tierney, and starring Gena Rowlands) and Rainbow (directed by and starring Bob Hoskins). In 2003, he made his directing and writing debut with Twist, an adaptation of “Oliver Twist,” and its success in Canada granted Tierney the opportunity to shoot a higher-budget film: The Trotsky, released last year to acclaim and starring geeky heartthrob Jay Baruchel of Knocked Up fame.

For Good Neighbors (which comes out today), Tierney, once again at the directing helm, cast Baruchel and Trotsky co-star Emily Hampshire, as well as Scott Speedman (most known for the TV drama Felicity) as three ill-at-ease neighbors in a dimly-lit Montreal apartment building. Adapted from Chrystine Brouillet's noirish 1982 story Chère Voisine, this black comedy concerns a serial killer on the loose, a war between an equally demented cat killer and cat enthusiast, and one of the more grotesque murder sequences of late. Screen Comment talked with Tierney about his favorite early acting experiences, his break into directing and his distaste for setting movies in our current Internet-dominated era.

On the surface, the 2003 melodrama-turned-cult-masterpiece The Room is just a worse than usual soft-core porn film. There’s lots of horribly wooden dialogue (“Should I try the dress on?” “Sure, it’s yours”) and blocking right out of bush-league theater (characters say “Well, I’ve gotta go” to end virtually every scene). The lead actor has Fabio-length hair and comically over-toned abs and ass. The splendidly unerotic sex scenes feature candle-lit bedrooms, rain-streaked windows, third-rate Stevie Wonder clones on the soundtrack and more emphasis on luxurious satin sheets than the thrusting bodies within them. The plot, of course, is negligible: sensitive hunk’s girlfriend cheats with hunk’s vacant best friend.

Ever notice dead walls, those hidden side of buildings, the façade with sometimes one single tiny window dead in the center? It’s vexing, that window—it raises questions, like why did that one person get a window and not everyone else in the building? Those walls, silent enigmas only architects and city planners could decode, are called “medianeras” in Spanish. New York’s medianeras, visible from far, are often covered with the half-erased brand names of yore or huge banners advertising running shoes or rappers.

First-time Argentine filmmaker Gustavo Taretto has made a movie chronicling solitude and the city on the theme of those hidden surfaces—it’s called, “Medianeras”; the idea of the film being that, behind that solitary window lives a human being in search of a meaningful connection.

Screen Comment. Thank you for accepting to be interviewed for Screen Comment. I’d like you to talk to us about this 64th Cannes Film Festival, of course, but also about what cinema (and the Cannes Film Festival) mean to you. There is no career in the field more prestigious than yours. You are the General Delegate of the Festival and the Director of the Lumière Institute in Lyon. A few years ago, you even declined the position of Director of the Cinémathèque Française, the foremost film institution in the world. You were introduced to what in France is called the Seventh Art at a young age and from then on you never strayed far. Even your graduate dissertation is about cinema. In other words, one can say that you have almost always lived cinema and breathed cinema. Still, if you could see yourself having had a different career, what would it be (beside coach for the OL—the Lyon soccer team)?

Thierry Frémaux. I would have liked to be a writer and a gardener, both at the same time, actually. And I would also have liked to win the Tour de France.

"Orgasm Inc .," which opened nationwide last month, is documentary filmmaker Liz Canner's first-hand, nine-year account of a would-be medical breakthrough shooting itself in the foot. In 2000, she took a job for Vivus—the medical company claiming to have developed the Viagra equivalent for women—editing provocative videos for test subjects supposedly stricken with the “disease” of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). Discovering that certain Vivus employees themselves weren't all that knowledgeable about FSD, she dug deeper, interviewing other drug, patch and device makers (including the inventor of the now-notorious “Orgasmatron”), as well as their proponents, subjects and detractors. The result is a probing, illuminating documentary that could protect scores of healthy women from misdiagnosis and in turn damaging side effects. Screen Comment talked with Liz Canner about making "Orgasm Inc."

How did you develop the idea for “Orgasm Inc”? Was it something you always wanted to make a film about or did the idea come about gradually after working for Vivus?

Liz Canner: I had been shooting documentaries on human rights issues for about a decade, and I was burnt out from looking at footage of genocide and police brutality. Images from my films started to give me nightmares, so I decided that my next film would be on something more upbeat. And then I started having pleasurable dreams.

I decided to work on a film on the history of what medics and scientists had said about women, conception, sexual response and pleasure. I was in the middle of working on that when I got offered the editing job at Vivus, and I realized this would be a great way to look at what the contemporary notions are about women and pleasure. So I asked [the people at Vivus] if I could film them and they said OK.

TV blooper reels are getting to be as routine a […]

Paris-The first thing you notice about Golshifteh Farahani is her […]

James Franco’s short film “The Clerk’s Tale” will close Critics’ Week at Cannes. Screen Comment’s Ali Naderzad did a close reading with Franco on the Spencer Reece poem it is based on.

Ali Naderzad - “The Clerk’s Tale” has a hint of sweet hopelessness. It reminds me of Thoreau’s famous sentence “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”I found the following sentence especially striking:

He does this because his acceptance is finally complete—and complete acceptance is always bittersweet. And then, there’s the extraordinary. We are changed when the transactions are done— older, dirtier, dwarfed."

Filmmaker Bette Gordon launched her career in early-1980s Tribeca, a world far removed from the designer clothing boutiques, expansive walk-up loft art spaces and quaint eateries bombarding the area today. There were no crowds, there were no restaurants, just an abundance of weed-ridden vacant lots and buildings.

One such establishment, located on White Street, would eventually become the Collective for Living Cinema, the stomping ground for a group of artsy SUNY Binghamton graduates and cinema fanatics which Gordon joined forces with. Armed with a self-financed 16mm film projection system, the Collective began screening a warped variety of films, from 1970s horror schlock like “It's Alive!” to the avant-garde works of Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage. The tight-knit group populated what gradually became the hippest venues of their day—the legendary punk rock joint Mudd Club, just down the block; the Performing Garage in SoHo, home of the Wooster Group; the Kitchen arts space on West 19th Street. Connections were formed, ideas were fleshed out, and eventually, with funding aid from the German television station ZDF, England's Channel 4 and other foreign arts-supporting organizations, low-budget films were made.