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PICK Summer Hours: Fresh From SIFF, a French Familys Foibles
With Summer Hours, director Olivier Assayas stages a tactical retreat from the hookers and junkies of his Boarding…
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The Girlfriend Experience: Steven Soderbergh Says Its OK to Watch Porn in a Theater
The hardcore teen queen who took the name Sasha Grey and refers to her porn films as performance…
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The Limits of Control: More Low-Key Shenanigans From Jim Jarmusch.
Jim Jarmusch’s anonymous antihero hit man (French-Ivorian actor Isaach De Bankolé), identified in the final credits as the…
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PICK Examined Life: Surprise! Philosophy Isnt Boring
Ideas beam out from Astra Taylor’s engaging new philoso-doc; the viewer basks in the intelligence on-screen and occasionally…
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PICK Hunger: Starvation as Art
Established artists who’ve made mid-career leaps from gallery to movie house have not easily found their footing. But…
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Tokyo!: Three Directors Divide the City
Does anyone remember Japan? The tri-part Tokyo! revisits the Land of the Lost Decade—or at least its largest…
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PICK Silent Light: Adultery and Beauty in Rural Mexico
Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas is part stuntmeister, part visionary—a post-Warhol impresario and trained diplomat who, flirting with fraudulence…
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PICK The Betrayal: Escaping the Misery of Laos
Some 23 years in the making, Ellen Kuras’ first film as a director is a portrait of Laotian…
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Watchmen: Whats With the Blue Naked Dude?
Filming the most ambitious superhero comic book ever written, director Zack Snyder has managed to address the cult…
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PICK Gomorrah: Martin Scorsese Loves It
Martin Scorsese may be presenting Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah, but this corrosive, slapdash exposé of organized crime in and…
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Pick Waltz With Bashir: The Oscar-Nominated War Cartoon
Ari Folman’s broodingly original Waltz With Bashir is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention bearable,…
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PICK Wendy and Lucy: Michelle Williams Stars in One of Last Years Best Reviewed Films
Modest but cosmic, Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy is a movie whose sad pixie heroine, Wendy (Michelle Williams),…
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PICK Che: The Revolution Continues (for Four Hours)
And so the endless campaign wraps up with a flurry of virtual leaders. Richard Nixon will always be…
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PICK The Wrestler: Mickey Rourke Finally Gets His Oscar Shot
The Wrestler may be plenty visceral, but it’s no more a sports movie than professional wrestling is a…
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Virtual JFK: Brown University Prof Insists Vietnam Couldve Been Avoided
This elegantly constructed if misleadingly titled class lecture, written and delivered by Brown professor of international relations James…
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Frost/Nixon: Ron Howard Insists the 70s Still Arent Over
I hear America singing and I see… Richard Nixon. Not the man but the muse: Has any president…
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PICK Milk: Sean Penn Goes Gay for Another Oscar
Gus Van Sant has never been what you’d call a risk-adverse filmmaker, but he directs his Harvey Milk…
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PICK JCVD: Belgian Tough Guy Just Wants Respect
JCVD wastes little time working itself into a pretzel. The action begins under the credits with Jean-Claude Van…
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PICK A Christmas Tale: And You Thought Your Holiday Gatherings Were Messy?
Twelve days of seasonal merriment, and then some. This comic, ultimately touching family melodrama is a heady plum…
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The Romance of Astrea and Celadon: Eric Rohmer in the 17th Century
A film that Eric Rohmer has suggested will be his last, Astrea and Celadon is a costume pageant…