Film
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to watch Jacques Audiard’s outrageous melodrama without…
Melissa Anderson
Film
My 10 Film Picks for 2013
Most of the blathering this year about the death of film and film culture has already evaporated from…
Film
Francine: Melissa Leo Embraces Her Typecasting
Simultaneously withholding and smothering, Francine, about a woman just released from prison, provides Melissa Leo (in the title…
Film
The Impossible: Naomi Watts Versus the Tsunami
When the words “true story” appear twice in a film’s opening disclaimer, it’s a guarantee that what follows…
Film
Barbara A Superb Story Set in East Germany
Set in East Germany in 1980, Christian Petzold’s superb Barbara is a transfixing Cold War thriller made even…
Film
Any Day Now: Alan Cumming in a Gay Adoption Drama
Homo history repurposed as courtroom soap opera. Director Travis Fine, greatly embellishing a script written decades ago by…
Film
Lay the Favorite: Bruce Willis in a Lightweight Gambling Tale
A wan comedy about gambling that takes no risks, Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite has none of the…
Film
Radio Unnameable: Remember When Talk Radio Was Actually Intelligent?
A sporadically hard-selling homage to a cult hero from an overchronicled era, Radio Unnameable considers the career of…
Film
Holy Motors: Leos Carax’s Unclassifiable Comeback
Unclassifiable, expansive, and breathtaking, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors stars Denis Lavant, the simian, sinewy actor who played the…
Film
Ornette: Made in America: The 1985 Jazz Documentary Gets a Second Spin
The invaluable American independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke (1919–1997) once said: “There is no real difference between a traditional…
Film
Bestiaire: Denis Cote Goes to the Zoo
The Parc Safari in Hemmingford, Quebec, is, per its website, home to 500 animals of 75 different species;…
Film
The House I Live In: The Real Cost of the War on Drugs
Eugene Jarecki’s Sundance award-winning doc is an occasionally muddled disquisition on the colossal failure of the war on…
Film
The Sessions: John Hawkes and Helen Hunt Have Serious Sexytime
“You were really and truly inside me,” Helen Hunt’s sex surrogate Cheryl assures her client, 36-year-old Mark O’Brien…
Film
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel: Remembering the Late Fashion Icon
Raconteuse, epigrammatist, and mythomaniac, peerless fashion editor Diana Vreeland (1903–1989) might have loved words as much as she…
Film
Little White Lies: Marion Cotillard Goes on Vacation
This bloated spin on The Big Chill follows a septet of grating, mostly Gen-X Parisians as they half-guiltily…
Film
Planet of Snail: They’re Not Disabled. They’re Married
An unadorned, unsentimental portrait of a marriage, Yi Seung-jun’s documentary celebrates the daily life of an exceptionally collaborative…
Film
Beloved: Catherine Deneuve Sings Across Time
Writer/director Christophe Honoré revisits the musical—the genre of his biggest stateside hit, Love Songs (2007)—in Beloved, a sprawling…
Film
Farewell, My Queen: Palace Intrigue Before the Revolution
Benoît Jacquot’s soapy, sexy, lezzie adaptation of Chantal Thomas’ 2003 novel about the chaos at Versailles on the…
Film
Take This Waltz: Michelle Williams Strays Into Temptation
Sarah Polley’s second feature, much like her superb Away From Her (2006), thoughtfully probes the pitfalls of coupledom…
Film
Beasts of the Southern Wild: A Half-Charming, Half-Annoying Sundance Darling
A zealous gumbo of regionalism, magical realism, post-Katrina allegory, myth, and ecological parable, Beasts, the southern Louisiana-set debut…