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Winnebago Man: Internet Anger Goes Viral
Opening with a deeply sincere “I don’t give a fuck!”, Austin filmmaker Ben Steinbauer’s investigative doc sets out…
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Wild Grass: French Tedium From Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass has plenty of fans—it copped an award at Cannes in 2009—but I don’t see…
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The Kids Are All Right: Surprise, Kids! Mark Ruffalo Is Your Daddy!
Serious comedy, powered by an enthusiastic cast and full of good-natured innuendo, Lisa Cholodenko’s Kids gives adolescent coming-of-age…
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The Killer Inside Me: Jessica Alba Is Beaten to Death
The premise of Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 crime novel could be summed up in a…
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Daddy Longlegs: Bad Parenting in NYC
Suppose what we call “parenting” is just a situation in which overgrown kids take care of smaller ones?…
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Please Give: Catherine Keener Refuses to Feel Liberal Guilt
Nicole Holofcener’s fourth feature is, for the most part, witty and engrossing. Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver…
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Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: An Infomercial for a Product We Know Too Well
Opening with a close-up of the crow’s feet around its subject’s eyes and expanding to reveal her Botox-frozen…
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Trash Humpers: Director Harmony Korine Will Answer Your Questions
Harmony Korine, aging enfant terrible and self-proclaimed “most American” of American indies, finds his level and brings it…
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No One Knows About Persian Cats: Rebel Musicians in Tehran
The great boundary-crosser of Iranian cinema, Bahman Ghobadi purposefully steps over the line with this quasi-documentary, highly unofficial…
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When Youre Strange: A Film About the Doors: Dont Ride the Snake
A rock doc with more than a whiff of fried brain cells, Tom DiCillo’s When You’re Strange serves…
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My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?: Werner Herzog Drives Actors Insane
Although based on the true story of an unstable actor who, cast as Orestes in Sophocles’ Electra, so…
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Greenberg: Ben Stiller Stops Just Short of Unbearable Bitterness
Sad, funny, and acutely self-conscious, Noah Baumbach’s new movie is a mordant character study, unafraid to project a…
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Mother: She Cleans Up Her Son’s Bloody Mess
Mother, Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his killer killer-tadpole allegory The Host, is a subtler yet no less visceral…
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Chloe: Julianne Moore Deploys Amanda Seyfried as Sexual Snare
Atom Egoyan’s Chloe is posh, cool, and never less than obvious. Work for hire, the movie was adapted…
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Green Zone: No WMDs for Matt Damon
Better late than never—a bang-bang pulse-pounder predicated on the Bush administration’s deliberate fabrication of WMDs in Iraq. Paul…
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Police, Adjective: aka CSI: Bucharest
Detective stories imply that mysteries can be solved, or at least rationally explained, and confirm a universe…
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The White Ribbon: Cruel Kinder
Prewar German youth prepare for war in Michael Hanekes masterpiece.
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A Town Called Panic: Animated Whimsy From Belgium
Animals and people are all jumbled up in this hyperactive Belgian puppet animation—as in Panic‘s central ménage of…
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The Lovely Bones: Peter Jackson Stumbles With New Age Adaptation
Cults collide as Peter Jackson tackles Alice Sebold’s bestselling New Age gothic, the story of a rape-murder-dismemberment and…
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The Sun: An Oblivious Emperor During World War II
The most perverse installment in Aleksandr Sokurov’s dictator cycle, The Sun (2005) follows his meditations on Hitler (Moloch,…