Film Reviews
Billy the Kid: “Can you see inside me?”
By Joanne Laurier, March 31, 2009
Billy the Kid is an unusual independent film, about a teenager in a small town in Maine.
Duplicity: The essential unseriousness of it
By David Walsh, March 27, 2009
After the relatively critical edge of Michael Clayton, filmmaker Tony Gilroy appears to offer an olive branch to Hollywood in the form of the trivial, unengaged Duplicity.
The 59th Berlinale–Part 3
Intimations of changes to come—but nothing more
On the film series: After Winter Comes Spring—Films presaging the fall of the Berlin Wall
By Bernd Reinhardt, March 19, 2009
The German Kinemathek at this year’s Berlinale showed a retrospective series of Eastern European films made between 1977 and 1989: dramas, documentaries, experimental films and animated films from t...
Watchmen and Hollywood’s advanced state of decay
By David Walsh, March 13, 2009
Films are only going to get worse before they get better, if Watchmen and the noisy, bombastic trailers accompanying it are any indication.
The 81st Annual Academy Awards: Lifeless for the most part
By Hiram Lee, February 24, 2009
The 81st Annual Academy Awards were held Sunday night in Hollywood. The broadcast and the films it celebrated did not shed a great deal of light on contemporary life.
Wendy and Lucy: A picture of American life
By Joanne Laurier, February 20, 2009
On her way to Alaska in hopes of earning some money, a young woman at loose ends gets stranded in a depressed Oregon town where nearly everyone’s life is as precarious as her own.
The Class—inside a Parisian working class school
By Richard Phillips, February 17, 2009
The Class, written and directed by Laurent Cantet, is set in a tough multi-racial Parisian junior high school. Cantet avoids the usual cinematic clichés about dedicated teachers being able to inspire...
Valkyrie: A thriller, but not a historical film
By Peter Schwarz, February 2, 2009
Tom Cruise has slipped into the uniform of the Hitler assassin Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg in order to play one of those positive heroes of which there are dozens in the cinema.
Defiance: Those who did not “wait for God”
By Joanne Laurier, January 31, 2009
Four Jewish brothers in the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union organize a partisan group in the Belarusian forest and save the lives of more than 1,000 people.
Behind the times: the nominees for the 81st Annual Academy Awards
By Hiram Lee and David Walsh, January 23, 2009
The nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards were announced on Thursday. In general, it’s a poor showing of films not up to the task of treating real life with any complexity.
Prayers for Bobby: Blurring out the most painful aspects
By Jordan Mattos, January 21, 2009
Prayers for Bobby recounts the true story of Bobby Griffiths, a gay California youth who committed suicide in the 1970s after rejection by his Christian family.
Salute: A moving tribute
By Richard Phillips and Ismet Redzovic, January 20, 2009
Salute is a documentary about Australian sprinter Peter Norman and his public gesture of political solidarity with African American athletes John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the 1968 Olympic Games.
