Film
Happy-Go-Lucky: Mike Leigh Finds the Brighter Side of Life
The protag of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky is a modestly gaudy people’s heroine industriously repairing the social world, one…
Film
W.: Oliver Stone Presents Our Sad Recent National History
W. may be less frenzied than the usual Oliver Stone sensory bombardment, but in revisiting the early ’00s…
Film
PICK A Girl Cut in Two: Claude Chabrol Isnt Done With Adultery and Murder
Claude Chabrol, who should soon be shooting his 70th feature, is at once wildly prolific and utterly faithful—at…
Film
Religulous: Bill Maher Wipes Ass on Bible, Blows Nose on Koran
Bill Maher’s one-man stand-up attack on religious fundamentalism is a dog that has more bark than bite—a skeptical,…
Film
Allah Made Me Funny: Bomb Me if Youve Heard This One Before .
For the three Muslim-American stand-up comics showcased in this concert film, terror is something more than stage fright.…
Film
Still Life: Old China Is Made New and Strange
The world’s oldest civilization is in some respects the world’s newest. And 37-year-old filmmaker Jia Zhangke, the preeminent…
Film
Burn After Reading: Coen Brothers Make a Sour Business of Comedy
Masters of the carefully crafted cheap shot, Joel and Ethan Coen have built a career on flippancy. Given…
Film
PICK La France: WWI Treated as a Horrible Fairytale
La France is a platoon film unlike any I’ve ever seen. Director Serge Bozon treats the first total…
Film
Full Battle Rattle: How We Teach Our Troops to Kill (and Survive) in Iraq
A combat doc once removed from combat and twice mediated by stagecraft, Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’ Iraq…
Film
The Silence Before Bach: Europeans lord their culture over us
At once cerebral film essay and unsweetened ear candy, Pere Portabella’s Silence Before Bach is nearly as tough…
Film
PICK Alexandra: Meanwhile, the Russian war in Chechnya drags on
Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra is founded on contradiction. Musing…
Film
PICK The Last Mistress: Asia Argento is too sexy for history
Catherine Breillat hitches her wagon to the hottest of European stars, Asia Argento, in a highly entertaining adaptation…
Film
PICK My Winnipeg: Guy Maddin reimagines his Canadian childhood.
Guy Maddin’s frozen reverie on Canada’s “Gateway to the West” is barely defrosted by the warmth…
Film
Standard Operating Procedure: Torture Made Beautiful
It’s been 20 years since Errol Morris made The Thin Blue Line—a found “noir” that served to free…
Film
Jellyfish: Israeli Comedy Forgoes the Usual Politics
Predicated on the spectacle of functionally depressed types stuck in mildly ridiculous situations not entirely of their own…
Film
Flight of the Red Balloon: The Return of Hou Hsiao-hsien
The Red Balloon was the art-house E.T. of 1956. Flight of the Red Balloon is something far more…
Film
Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? : Morgan Spurlock Makes Like Lawrence of Arabia. Not.
Morgan Spurlock, the daredevil documentarian who lived on Big Macs for a month and turned this exercise in…
Film
Boarding Gate: Asia Argento Is Our New Eurotrash-Diva Icon
There’s basically one reason to see Olivier Assayas’ self-consciously meta-sleazy English-French-Chinese-language globo-thriller, and her name is Asia Argento.…