Film
House of Pleasures: Welcome to Our French Brothel!
Set in the months before and after 1900, Bertrand Bonello’s glamorously louche House of Pleasures projects nostalgia for…
J. Hoberman
Film
A Separation: The Oscar-Nominated Iranian Divorce Drama
Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s fifth feature is an urgently shot courtroom drama designed to put you in the…
Film
A Dangerous Method: Sigmund Freud Battles Carl Jung!
A Dangerous Method, the title of David Cronenberg’s viscerally cerebral new film, is something of an understatement. As…
Film
The 10 Best Films of 2011
1. A Dangerous Method See review. 2. Melancholia On any other day, this might have ranked first. Directed…
Film
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Rooney Mara Makes It Work
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is hardly a personal project. Still, David Fincher’s sveltely malevolent remake of…
Film
War Horse: An Equine Love Story Is Interrupted by World War I
A doggedly overwrought production less felt than facile, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is an essentially uninvolving prestige adaptation.…
Film
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A Stylish, Engrossing Adaptation of John le Carré
John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the 1974 spy novel generally regarded as the writer’s finest, is…
Film
Young Adult: Charlize Theron Will Not Go to Rehab
Described as a “psychotic prom-queen bitch,” the antiheroine of Young Adult, directed by Jason Reitman from a Diablo…
Film
Shame: An NC-17 Tale of Sex Addiction
Steve McQueen’s first two films star Michael Fassbender, feature virtually interchangeable titles, and are nearly as grueling to…
Film
Melancholia: Lars von Trier Imagines the End of the World
The first thing you see in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is a close-up of Kirsten Dunst’s face. Behind…
Film
J. Edgar: Leo DiCaprio as Closet-Case FBI Director
Clint Eastwood goes deep into Oliver Stone territory and emerges victorious with J. Edgar. Although hardly flawless, Eastwood’s…
Film
Le Havre: A Return to Form for Aki Kaurismaki
Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is something of a comeback for the Finnish filmmaker. His warmhearted comedy of underdog,…
Film
Ne change rien: A Musical Salute to French Cabaret Star Jeanne Balibar
Pedro Costa, legendary for his intimate, epic, underlit, and often inaudible portraits of Lisbon slum dwellers, here ponders…
Film
The Rum Diary: Johnny Depp as Drunken Journalist
Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, The Rum Diary adapts a novel Hunter S. Thompson began in the…
Film
Martha Marcy May Marlene: Out of the Cult and Into the Fire
As taut and economical as its title is unwieldy, Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene is a deft,…
Film
The Black Power Mix Tape 1967-1975: Tales From the Revolution
“The revolution will not be televised.” So Gil Scott-Heron asserted in 1970, and so it was not—at least…
Film
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life: The French Pop Icon and His Monsters
French cartoonist Joann Sfar’s first feature is an ambitious attempt to cage the career of legendary French singer/songwriter/scamp…
Film
Aurora: Crime and Existentialism in Romania
Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s Aurora is a continuous search for meaning—a murder mystery, shot vérité-style, in which, for…
Film
Mysteries of Lisbon: Four Hours of Raúl Ruiz
“Convoluted” does not begin to describe this four-hour-plus movie, based on a sprawling three-volume novel by prolific 19th-century…
Film
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness: The Father of Fiddler on the Roof
Joseph Dorman’s film essay–cum–biodoc concerns author Solomon Rabinovich (1859–1916) who, taking as his pen name the Yiddish greeting…