Film Reviews
Waltz With Bashir: “Memory takes us where we need to go”
By David Walsh, December 24, 2008
Israeli director Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir is one of the most extraordinary and haunting films of the year. Folman has made an animated film that ends with the tragic events at the Sabra and Sh...
Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon: Trivializing a war criminal
By Patrick Martin, December 23, 2008
There are many problems with Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard’s film adaptation of the play by Peter Morgan, but the main one is the subject matter itself: British television talk show host David Frost’s i...
The blues in Chicago: Cadillac Records
By Joanne Laurier, December 20, 2008
Director Darnell Martin traces the rise and fall of Chess Records, whose roster at one time or another included such musical giants as Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Chuck ...
Baz Luhrmann’s Australia: a superficial jumble
By Richard Phillips, December 18, 2008
Luhrmann’s $A190 million movie—the most expensive in Australian film history—is a syrupy and patronising mish-mash.
Milk, identity politics and Gus Van Sant’s art
By Joanne Laurier, December 9, 2008
Veteran US director Gus Van Sant has made a new film about the life and times of gay politician Harvey Milk, assassinated in San Francisco in 1978, with mixed results.
Quantum of Solace: James Bond vs. imperialism
By Hiram Lee, December 3, 2008
Daniel Craig returns as Agent 007 for the twenty-second installment of the popular James Bond franchise.
Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky: A film about life and people being worth something
By David Walsh, December 2, 2008
In Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is an irrepressible personality, a teacher in London who looks for the best in people and situations. The WSWS will be posting an interview with...
Clever, all too clever: Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York
By Joanne Laurier, December 1, 2008
Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York goes for the surreal while The Boy in the Striped Pajamas concerns itself with the very real.
The Silence of the Quandts: The history of a wealthy German family
A documentary film by Eric Friedler and Barbara Siebert
By Emma Bode and Brigitte Fehlau, November 29, 2008
The award-winning The Silence of the Quandts deals with the unscrupulous rise of one of Germany’s richest and most influential families. The family, which owns 47 percent of auto manufacturer BMW, i...
Rachel Getting Married: Something, but not everything
By Hiram Lee, November 29, 2008
The latest film from director Jonathan Demme and first-time screenwriter Jenny Lumet is a moving story about a troubled daughter's return to her family. While intelligent and sincere, the work is not...
A Woman in Berlin: Germany at the end of World War II
By Bernd Reinhardt, November 25, 2008
In his film A Woman in Berlin, Max Färberböck deals with a topic that has long been taboo in Germany: the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers at the end of the Second World War.
Few surprises in What Just Happened
By Joanne Laurier, November 22, 2008
Barry Levinson’s new film is an adaptation of the autobiography of veteran producer Art Linson, who also wrote the screenplay. It recounts two weeks in the life of a big-time Hollywood producer, who...
