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Kayvan Mashayekh's new film is his first -- and it took the Iranian-born lawyer from Houston five years to make. It's called The Keeper and it parallels his own life story with the tale of Persian poet Omar Kyayyam. Vanessa Redgrave appears in the epic, along with a cast of hundreds. Jacki Lyden talks with the filmmaker and with Mehdi Amin-Razavi, author of The Wine of Wisdom, a new biography of Kyayyam.

Film critic Bob Mondello reviews the DVD release of three classic black films: Hallelujah, Green Pastures and Cabin in the Sky. He says they are interesting, both as history and as works of art.

Comedian Albert Brooks plays himself in the film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which he also wrote and directed. Brooks tells Steve Inskeep about his "government-sponsored" mission to find out what makes Muslims laugh.

Tom Cruise is good as the hero. Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is great as the villain. But in the end, Mission Impossible III is a movie that adds up to two pretty good one-hour TV shows about a battle for a doomsday machine.

Until it was flattened by the latest Ice Age movie, Madea's Family Reunion had the biggest opening weekend of the year. This was the second hit for writer, director and star Tyler Perry, who is transforming himself into an entertainment empire.

For nearly 2,000 years the Dead Sea Scrolls sat undisturbed, hidden in a honeycomb of caves in the Judean desert. Now one of the most important scrolls, a religious critique known as the Temple Scroll, is making its first appearance in the United States, at a museum in Cleveland.

The film Thank You for Smoking follows Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobbyist who defends the rights of smokers with snappy irony. Directed by Jason Reitman and starring Aaron Eckhart, the satire is based on Christopher Buckley's book of the same name.

L'Enfant is a new feature film from Belgian filmmaking brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes.

A new documentary follows Indie singer-song writer Daniel Johnston's decline into mental illness. It combines standard documentary fare with Johnston's own recordings, taped over the course of 20 years. Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition critic Kenneth Turan reviews The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Catherine Keener recently won a second Oscar nomination for her performance in Capote and appeared in the popular comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Now, she stars in Friends with Money, her third collaboration with writer-director Nicole Holofcener.