On the Ice, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year and opens in wide release this Friday, is an often startling look at life in Barrow, Alaska.  The setting – with its desolate, seemingly endless frozen plains – looks alien to those of us in the Lower 48, but the film creates a vivid portrait of a cultural issues familiar to both rural and urban American citizen, complete with popular music,alcoholism, rebellious teens, drug use, and poverty. 

Despite the well-observed ethnographic qualities of writer-director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean's film, the story centers on two young men, Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) and Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan).  While on seal-hunting trip with their friend James (John Miller), tensions escalate between the three, resulting in a violent confrontation and Frank's death.  Rather than come clean, the two teenagers hide his body and claim he was lost in a snowmobiling accident.

It's an old trope: the accidental death or even murder that must then be kept secret, no matter the moral or personal costs.  In a situation like the one depicted in On the Ice, in which a character deliberately chooses to conceal the horrific truth, it pays to at least be thorough in crafting a believable lie and disposing of any incriminating evidence.  Sometimes, though, characters just do a terrible job of one or both. 

In conjunction with the release of On the Ice, IAR is happy to present, in no particular order, ten films in which a death is covered up with undue sloppiness.

Everyone is stocking up on champagneand ticker tape for 2012.  Earth has completed yet another orbit of the sun, and as wecontinue to cruise through an oblivious and indifferent solar system at about 67,000 miles perhour, it's time to look back on the year that was.  Like every other year, the conclusion of2011 means a veritable avalanche of year-end lists, from chronicles of favorites to bests toworsts to pretty much everything in between.  Here at IAR, we've looked back with Jami Philbrick's picks for the Top Ten Movies of the Year, and we've looked forward with Brett Gursky's Oscar Predictions for the 84th Annual AcademyAwards.

Now, like anydevastatingly handsome individual, IAR is going to look in the mirror and say, "Damn, I looked good this year."  Okay, not quite.  But what we are going to do is showcase some of the content produced this year that showed what the organization is all about and what it does best.  This end-of-the-year compilation is broken down into ten categories: News, Press Conference Coverage, Screenings, Documentary Coverage, On Camera Interviews, Convention Coverage, Oscar Contender Interviews, Comic Book Movie Coverage, Legends, and finally, Scoops and Exclusives.  You'll find all those categories right here, complete with links to all manner of articles.

In 2005, writer-director Géla Babluani's hardboiled bit of criminal suspense, 13 Tzameti, cleaned up at the Sundance and Venice film festivals, becoming a surprise international hit in the process.  For his follow-up, Babluani has created a full-color English-language remake of his black and white original, and he's carried over it's novel premise revolving around a spectacularly illegal Russian Roulette tournament in which contestants put their lives on the line while luckier men place bets on whose gray matter will decorate the walls.  In 13, a down-on-his-luck guy played by Sam Riley adopts a dead man's identity and enters the contest, where's immediately in over his endangered head in a suspenseful story populated by actors like Jason Statham, Michael Shannon, Mickey Rourke, Alexander Skarsgard, David Zayas, 50 Cent, and Ray Winstone.

It's the sort of movie in which almost every character is either a disreputable criminal or a cop on his tail, but it isn't one built upon mustache-twirling villainy.  Riley's character, Vince, enters the tournament out of desperation, and quickly finds his desperation growing exponentially.  While movies in general tend to include no shortage of nefarious criminals, it's the stories of individuals who become embroiled in dangerous situations because of understandably dire circumstances.  So, inspired by tomorrow's limited theatrical release of 13, our latest Rogue 10 catalogs, in no particular order, ten examples of excellent films in which criminal enterprises are defined by desperation.

Netflix's streaming Watch Instantly service is fast becoming America's favorite way to watch movies (instantly). The library of available titles is so vast and mutable that you, the avid instant watcher, could no doubt use a guide as you navigate the streaming frontier.

Luckily for you, we'll be here every Tuesday to update you on the latest titles available for instant-watching, as well as bringing attention some gems and even some enjoyable calamities out there in the instantly watchable wilds.

Netflix's streaming Watch Instantly service is fast becoming America's favorite way to watch movies (instantly). The library of available titles is so vast and mutable that you, the avid instant watcher, could no doubt use a guide as you navigate the streaming frontier.

Luckily for you, we'll be here every Tuesday to update you on the latest titles available for instant-watching, as well as bringing attention some gems and even some enjoyable calamities out there in the instantly watchable wilds.

In this often Puritanical culture of ours, jam packed as it is with hypocritical attitudes on sexuality, the whiff of pornography on any film can drive away audiences in droves, as people often assume that any adult-film connotations must mark the film itself as obscene trash.  This is odd, as we love movies about all manner of criminality, up to and including serial killing, yet we're able to make the distinction between the subject and the art, no matter how heinous the crimes involved.

In the new comedy Meet Monica Velour, now available on Blu-ray and DVD, Kim Catrall plays Linda Romanoli, a retired porn actress who had her heyday in the 1980's and is now a single mother working hard to make ends meet.  When she's tracked down by an awkward teenager, played by Dustin Ingram, who idolizes her based on her days as Monica Velour, the two form an unlikely connection that yields surprising results for both.  Inspired by Meet Monica Velour, our latest Rogue 10 list presents ten films that may involve the porn industry, but that are really about far more than that.

Netflix's streaming Watch Instantly service is fast becoming America's favorite way to watch movies (instantly). The library of available titles is so vast and mutable that you, the avid instant watcher, could no doubt use a guide as you navigate the streaming frontier.

Luckily for you, we'll be here every Tuesday to update you on the latest titles available for instant-watching, as well as bringing attention some gems and even some enjoyable calamities out there in the instantly watchable wilds.