Film
Like Everest CSI
Did Mallory make it to the top? Thats not the only investigation on Everest.
Film
South of the Border: Oliver Stones Mash Note to Dictators
So one-sided that it nearly validates what the right says about Hollywood’s liberal crusaders, Oliver Stone’s essay/lecture/travelogue is…
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Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo: Not a Monster Movie, but a Paean to Bugs
An expansive take on the world in miniature, Jessica Oreck’s documentary debut pursues all angles on a novel…
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Dinner for Schmucks: Paul Rudd and Steve Carell Deserve Much Better
In Steve Carell’s first few episodes of The Office, the series hewed closely to Ricky Gervais’ BBC template.…
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Countdown to Zero: Old Fears, Badly Packaged
The title of Lucy Walker’s pro-nuclear-disarmament tract has two meanings: a paranoiac’s ticking down the last moments until…
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Stonewall Uprising: An Important Event, Awkwardly Remembered
In the early-morning hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, at a dive at 53 Christopher Street in New…
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Charlie St. Cloud: Zac Efron Pulls Our Heartstrings
In a go-nowhere Pacific Northwest town, dreamy high-school sailor Charlie (played mostly by Zac Efron’s abs and piercing…
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Salt: Angelina Jolie Plays Both the Good Spy and the Bad Spy
Salt, famously the Spy Flick Rewritten for Angelina Jolie After Tom Cruise Dropped Out, has been publicized as…
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Eccentricities of a Blonde Hair Girl: Sober Disillusionment in Portugal
Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira, cinema’s only centenarian and an indefatigable bard of subtle, insidiously devastating irony, approaches…
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Agora: A Funny Thing Happened to Rachel Weisz on the Way to the Forum
Not lacking for conviction or cojones, Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora is a big, broad, stridently atheistic sword-and-sandal entertainment that…
Film
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…
Film
Inception: Leo Di Caprio Gets Caught in Chris Nolans Dreams
Inception is a chilling trip into the psyche…of writer/director Christopher Nolan, an Anglo-American action director who shattered the…
Film
La Mission: Benjamin Bratt Reconsiders His Macho
Watered-down Jungian analysis meets a GLAAD-approved weepie in Peter Bratt’s second feature, starring brother Benjamin (who also produces)…
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Killing Kasztner: A Little-Known Tale of the Holocaust
For the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors who still remember him, and the thousands of young Jews and…
Film
Perriers Bounty: Crime and Blarney in Ireland
While Hollywood has belatedly cooled on snarky, loud-quiet-loud proto-Tarantino gangster comedies, our English-speaking brethren across the Atlantic remain…
Film
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…
Film
Restrepo: Sebastian Jungers War Report From Afghanistan
The worst violence Sebastian Junger reports in his new book War, based on his Vanity Fair dispatches from…
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A Sit-Down With the Directors of Restrepo
A prizewinning documentary at Sundance, Restrepo reached SIFF at the same time as co-director Sebastian Junger’s companion book,…
Film
Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky: Famous Names, Familiar Story
Coco Chanel. Igor Stravinsky. Two iconoclasts whose contributions to their respective artistic fields left an indelible mark on…
Film
Johanna: Joan of Arc as Hungarian Opera
More of an opera than a movie, this rather strange and daring Hungarian musical follows a street junkie…