Late in Alex Gibney’s Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a damning but top-heavy indictment of clearly evil Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff,…
The debate over the 1989 children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies seems like a cultural millennium ago, but that doesn’t mean the era ushered…
Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be…
Toward the end of Jacques Rivette’s Around a Small Mountain, one of the film’s cast of circus performers botches a routine. As part of…
Only the resentful or the contrarian could undervalue Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother as an achievement both professional and cinematic. Written, produced, and…
Like a vengeful cornered beast, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising exhibits a desperate ferociousness during even its most lyrical moments. Set in 1000 AD…
Ongoing military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq define the last decade of American foreign policy, not only for their historical representation of a shady…
I love Mumblecore! Well, I hate the word “Mumblecore,” but I love many of the films that get this label. These are films from…
In a summer season besieged by stinkers, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender took very little time to gather a reputation as the most…
Even at the ripe old age of 88, Alain Resnais’s filmmaking engine seems to have an endless supply of creative fuel left. Like clockwork,…
Most films never expand past their 16:9 rectangular tombs, passively projecting until they inevitably fade to black. But a film like I Am Love…
It’s an ironic kind of blessing when the tag “Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present” is appended to a film’s opening titles.…
The chill comes off the screen. Ice hangs from the roofs and tree limbs. Frost covers the ground. The girl is in a boat,…
Not many films possess the mindset of a black widow — eager to lure you in, chew you up, and spit you out as…
Mia Hansen-Løve wears many creative hats; actress, film critic, screenwriter, and director. After starring in two of fiancé Oliver Assayas’s films in her late…
“A crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a…
A witless, calculated attempt to start another Pirates of the Caribbean-style franchise (this one based on a video game series), Mike Newell’s Jerry Bruckheimer-produced…
In wildly different ways, Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl and The Last Mistress envision the collective invasion of the female psyche by male oppressors. In…