By Peter Travers (Rolling Stone Magazine) August 30, 2013

There are three schools of thought on sex addiction. Some experts think that it’s analogous to drug and alcohol addiction; some think it’s a form of obsessive compulsive disorder; and others think that it doesn’t exist at all.

Like the fading of day into twilight, the ephemeral nature of youth is deftly captured in The Kings of Summer. The coming-of-age film is poignant and comical, sitting squarely on that threshold, focusing on the time when a teen is part boy, part man and all adolescent. That transitional period is encompassed in a pivotal summer.

The feeling of dread is palpable from the first frames of "Blackfish," where we are taken underwater while hearing 911 tapes that describe a SeaWorld trainer's fatal encounter with a killer whale in Orlando. The frightening setup recalls the classic opening scene from "Jaws" - and lets us know right away that the filmmakers intend to make a storytelling splash.

"Do you love her?" Wistful and hoping for a yes, the rough-hewn Arkansas boy who asks that question can't quite hold the gaze of the stranger, but his voice is insistent. The question comes early in "Mud" and will haunt the 14-year-old and the movie until the final frame.

François Ozon’s latest film is one of his best. Some of his previous works have betrayed a taste for the hectic and the farcical, while others have crept toward a more insidious darkness; here, for once, the two impulses are fused.

Joss Whedon’s impact on youth culture is already hard to overestimate. Now he’s made the first great contemporary Shakespeare since Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Not that it’s just for the kids –the serious theatre crowd, too, should extend this warm embrace.

It’s probably too much to hope that director Margarethe von Trotta and her star, Barbara Sukowa, will do for Hannah Arendt what Nora Ephron and Meryl Streep did for Julia Child, but surely a fellow can dream.

The Grandmaster is the story of two kung fu masters: he comes from China’s south; she is from the north. His name is Ip Man; hers is Gong Er. Their paths cross in his hometown of Foshan on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1936. Gong Er’s father is a renowned grandmaster, who also travels to Foshan, for his retirement ceremony.

I’ve been paying tribute to Fruitvale Station since I first saw this emotional powerhouse at Sundance in January. And why not? It’s a movie that matters.