Film-Forward

Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films Released Theatrically and on DVD/Home Video


June 2010


ALEXANDER THE LAST
THE ART OF THE STEAL
DELTA
THE EXPLODING GIRL
EYES WIDE OPEN
FIX
THE GOOD HEART
THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE
THE LAST STATION
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
MOTHER
THE NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
NORTH FACE
POLICE, ADJECTIVE
PRECIOUS; BASED ON THE NOVEL 'PUSH' BY SAPPHIRE
A PROPHET (UN PROPHÈTE)
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA
THE SECRET OF KELLS
SEVERE CLEAR
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
SHUTTER ISLAND
2010 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS
TALES FROM THE SCRIPT
THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF
Last Updated June 30, 2010

Not to Be Overlooked:
AJAMI
ANGEL OF MINE
TERRIBLY HAPPY
THE WHITE RIBBON

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The Best of 2008

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Current Theatrical Releases


AFGHAN STAR
Pop idols worth fighting for

THE ART OF THE STEAL
Money rules in the Machiavellian art world

Director Agnès Varda in THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS (Photo: Cinema Guild)
THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS
Shooting time’s arrow through sand, sail and the French New Wave

Oshri Cohen as Sergeant Liberti
in BEAUFORT
Photo: Kino International
BEAUFORT
Just following orders has heightened meaning for retreating Israeli soldiers

Marcela (Ana Geislerova) at work
in BEAUTY IN TROUBLE
Photo: Menemsha Films
BEAUTY IN TROUBLE
It’s never too late to change your life (or lover)

THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON)
One family bears harrowing witness to how Uncle Sam uses and abuses his adopted children

Tomas Young
in BODY OF WAR
Photo: The Film sales Company
BODY OF WAR
An inspiring account of one Iraq veteran’s tragedy


THE COVE
Swimming like dolphins, activists can be heroes

Speech therapist Henriette (Marie-Josée Croze)
in THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Photo: Etienne George/Miramax Films
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
No My Left Foot retread (My Left Eye?), but a exceptional, inventive, and, yes, inspirational film adaptation

Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts
in EASTERN PROMISES
Photo: Focus Features
EASTERN PROMISES
Gruesomely and graphically, David Cronenberg penetrates London’s Russian mob

THE ENGLISH SURGEON
The value of a dose of good medicine and a kind heart

Zohar Strauss, left, & Ran Danker in EYES WIDE OPEN(Photo: New American Vision)
EYES WIDE OPEN
Black hats, fast heartbeats in Brokeback Jerusalem

Katie Jarvis & Michael Fassbender in FISH TANK (Photo: Holly Horner/IFC Films)
FISH TANK
Everybody wants to escape, or do they?

Norma Khouri in FORBIDDEN LIES(Photo: Roxie Releasing)
FORBIDDEN LIE$
An authentic documentary about a real fake

Anamaria Marinca as Otilia
in 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
Photo: IFC Films
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
A horror film of a different sort

Émilie Dequenne, left, & Catherine Deneuve in THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (Photo: Strand Releasing)
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
The French girl who cried wolf

Hunter S. Thompson (Photo: Magnolia Pictures)
GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON
He came, he saw, he wrote the death of the American dream

From left, sisters Lotte, Nele and Lena Harlan, granddaughters of filmmaker 
Veit Harlan, in HARLAN: IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SÜSS (Photo: Zeitgeist Films)
HARLAN: IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SÜSS
Springtime for Hitler and Germany – and winter for director Veit Harlan’s family

Jeremy Renner, left, & Anthony Mackie in THE HURT LOCKER (Photo: Summit Entertainment)
THE HURT LOCKER
The war in Iraq: the action movie

Vacation photo of two of the Suri girls
in I FOR INDIA
Photo: First Run/Icarus Films
I FOR INDIA
Watching another family’s home movies has rarely been this engaging

Sara Simmonds & Scoot McNairy in IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS (Photo: Robert Murphy/IFC Films)
IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS
Looking for love where you look for furniture

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INTIMATE ENEMIES
The battles in Algeria

Ivan Barnev as Jan Dite in I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND (Photo: Martin Spelda)
I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND
Life is absurd: Chaplinesque misadventures in wartime

Monique Hennessy & Jean-Paul Belmondo
in LE DOULOS
Photo: Film Forum/Rialto Pictures
LE DOULOS (1963)
Forget the summer blockbusters, Melville's rare film is the coolest hit in town

LÉON MORIN, PRIEST
The French master of noir finds religion

Kelly (Lorraine Stanley, left)
Joanne (Georgia Groome)
in LONDON TO BRIGHTON
Photo: Outsiders Pictures
LONDON TO BRIGHTON
An unsentimental journey well worth the ride

Darrel Ross & two locals in Austria in LOOT (Photo: Film Sales Company)
LOOT
An incredible and absorbing scavenger hunt for wartime bounty

Fan Bingbing as Pingguo, left
Tong Da Wei as An Kun
in LOST IN BEIJING
Photo: New Yorker Films/Red Envelope Entertainment
LOST IN BEIJING
Bribes, kidnapping, ménage a quatre, and social criticism

Marta (Norma Bengell), left, & Nino (Alberto Sordi), center, at the family reunion
in MAFIOSO
Photo: Rialto Pictures
MAFIOSO
Grooming the groom of the mob

Pierce Brosnan as Harry      
Rachel McAdams as Kay
in MARRIED LIFE 
Photo: Joseph Lederer/Sony Pictures Classics
MARRIED LIFE
Pulpy comedy of martial manners and mayhem

 A scene from MID-AUGUST LUNCH (Photo: Zeitgeist Films)
MID-AUGUST LUNCH
A well-aged Italian comedy

 Kim Hye-ja in MOTHER (Photo: Magnolia Pictures)
MOTHER
Mother always knows best

MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH (Photo: Gigantic Releasing)
MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH
Desperate housewife leads life of quiet desperation on tape

A scene from NORTH FACE (Photo: Music Box Films)
NORTH FACE
Climb every mountain

Bernard Fallon's photo of a grain barge at the docks in Liverpool in 1969 in OF TIME AND THE CITY (Photo: Bernard Fallon/Strand Releasing)
OF TIME AND THE CITY
An excavation of Liverpool unearths more than just old memories

Elijah Wood and Muthana Mohmend in OPERATION FILMMAKER (Photo by Nina Davenport)
OPERATION FILMMAKER
An ill-fated American exercise in charity

The court of the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association (Photo: Cinema Guild)
THE ORDER OF MYTHS
We’re all going to the Mardi Gras – separately and not equally

Marjane with two guardians of the revolution
in PERSEPOLIS
Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
PERSEPOLIS
No jewelry, no Iron Maiden, and no booze: growing up, veiled, in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Slavoj Zizek in place of THE BIRDS' Tippi Hedren in THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA (Photo: P Guide)


THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA
A wonderful, comprehensive trip through reality, fantasy, desire, and all three intertwined

Amanda Peet in PLEASE GIVE (Photo: Piotr Redlinski/Sony Pictures Classics)
PLEASE GIVE
Director Nicole Holofcener's smart, caustic comedy

A protest in front of a UN envoy in PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL (Photo: Pewee Flomoku)
PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL
Apartheid dawns and wakes up Indian women

An empty Veronese picture frame after the 
1939 evacuation of the Louvre
in THE RAPE OF EUROPA
Photo: National Archives and Records Administration
THE RAPE OF EUROPA
Hitler’s ravenous plundering of the great works of Western art

Tamara (Irina Potapenko) & a client in REVANCHE (Photo: Janus Films)
REVANCHE
Even in the bucolic country, urban violence lurks

A scene from A ROOM AND A HALF (Photo: Seagull Films)  
A ROOM AND A HALF
Home is never far for exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky

Armando Hernandes as Juan 
Jorge Adrian Espindola as Pedro
in SANGRE DE MI SANGRE
Photo: Igor Martinovic
SANGRE DE MI SANGRE
In the New York back alleys of good and evil; winner of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival’s grand jury prize

Cécile De France as Tania in A SECRET (Photo: Strand Releasing)
A SECRET
The memories of French Jews live again, beautifully

Rym (Hafsia Herzi) & Slimane (Habib Boufares) in THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN (Photo: IFC Films)
THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN
The family ties that lovingly bind and gag

SÉRAPHINE
Inside the mad outsider art of a French modern primitive

Michael Stuhlbarg in A SERIOUS MAN (Photo: Wilson Webb/Focus Features)
A SERIOUS MAN
Jews past, present, and future haunt the Minnesota suburbs with more laughter than tears

Richard Berkowitz in SEX POSITIVE (Photo: Regent Releasing)
SEX POSITIVE
An honest look at the first wave of the AIDS crisis and one of the gay community’s unsung heroes

Kate Beckinsale as Annie Marchand 
in SNOW ANGELS 
Photo: Chris Reardon
SNOW ANGELS
David Gordon Green's beautiful, poignant American tragedy

Lauren Ambrose as Heather Wolfe
Frank Langella as Leonard Schiller
in STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING
Photo: Annabel Clark/Roadside Attractions
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING
In the winter of a literary life, a new bloom

Jack & Ina Polak
in STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME
Photo: Seventh Art Releasing/Red Envelope Entertainment
STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME
Love kept them together while their whole world went to hell

From left, Yui Natsukawa & Hiroshi Abe in STILL WALKING (Photo: IFC Films)
STILL WALKING
Still eating, still not talking, still not getting any younger, still family

Anamaria Marinca, left, & Kerry Fox in STORM (Photo: Film Movement)
STORM
Top-notch war crimes courtroom drama

Algeniz Pérez Soto in SUGAR (Photo: Fernando Calzada/Sony Pictures Classics)
SUGAR
A story of a newcomer from a couple of newcomers themselves

Robert Seelinger as Bill
Svea Lohde as Livia, center
Martina Gedeck as Miriam
in SUMMER ‘04
Photo: The Cinema Guild
SUMMER ‘04
A sauntering and simmering seaside squall

A scene from SWEETGRASS (Photo: Cinema Guild)
SWEETGRASS
Take a stunning ride on a time machine to the Old West

Defense attorney Jacques Vergès
in TERROR’S ADVOCATE 
Photo: Magnolia Pictures
TERROR’S ADVOCATE
Spellbinding connecting of the dots of international terrorism


TETRO
Coppola’s very personal comeback

TOKYO SONATA (Photo: Regent Releasing)
TOKYO SONATA
All in the family on a downward spiral

TREELESS MOUNTAIN
Director So Yong Kim delivers a sophomore feature even more impressive than her debut

Kimberly Roberts and Scott Roberts outside their
flood damaged home in New Orleans (Photo: Zeitgeist Films)
TROUBLE THE WATER
A rapper witnesses the eye of the storm that doesn’t stop

Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson (Photo: Victor Bello/The Weinstein Company
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Woody’s trip to Spain, full of romance and sharp characters

Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
WALTZ WITH BASHIR
War in Lebanon remembered as a cartoonish nightmare of a nightmare reality

Adèle Haenel as Floriane 
Pauline Acquart as Marie
in WATER LILIES
Photo: Koch Lorber Films
WATER LILIES
Teenage girls up close and personal, in and out of the swimming pool


THE WINDMILL MOVIE
The accidentally inspiring life of Richard P. Rogers

Mickey Rourke as Ram (Photo: Niko Tavernise)
THE WRESTLER
Darren Aronofsky & Mickey Rourke go barebones in this raw drama


Other New Releases

ABSOLUTE WILSON
Profile of director Robert Wilson - not for opera queens only

ACT OF GOD
Or is it just stormy weather?

ADAM RESURRECTED
Jeff Goldblum and Paul Schrader take on the Holocaust with very mixed results

ADAM
Asperger’s syndrome receives the movie-of-the-week treatment

ADAM'S APPLES
A darkly comic interpretation of the Book of Job

ADORATION
Every family has its own version of the truth

ADVENTURES OF POWER
This is Spinal Tap meets Air Guitar Nation

AFTERSCHOOL
Fear, offense, and provocation for the upper middle class

THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF PHIL SPECTOR
The rock ‘n’ roll genius loses that lovin’ feelin’

AIR GUITAR NATION
“It’s less absurd to watch than figure skating”

THE AIR I BREATHE
Airless allegory, by way of the school of Crash

AJAMI
Tinderbox tensions in Israel explode without warning

ALEXANDRA
Russian antiwar film attacks war without showing it

ALICE’S HOUSE
Quiet portrait of working-class Brazilian family imploding room by room

ALIEN TRESPASS
A 1950’s science fiction “homage”

AMAZING GRACE
Handsome but halfhearted biopic of the British crusader who took on the slave trade

THE AMAZING TRUTH ABOUT QUEEN RAQUELA
The almost true story of a girl who's a boy who's looking for a good man

AN AMERICAN AFFAIR
Curious but uneasy mix of a coming-of-age tale and the Kennedy assassination

AMERICAN TEEN
A real-life drama about high school in the heartland

ANAMORPH
Se7en/CSI knockoff without much punch, save for Willem Dafoe

ANGEL-A
Light and heavy romantic comedy with a gangster and his guardian angel(-a)

ANGEL OF MINE
Mommie dearest, depressed, and dangerous

ANITA O’DAY: THE LIFE OF A JAZZ SINGER
Lady lives the blues so she can sing, sing, sing

ANOTHER GAY SEQUEL
Crude, rude, and not as funny as the first time

THE ANSWER MAN
Heaven, not hell, is other people

ANTARCTICA
One by one by one by one, one-night stands grow longer in Tel Aviv

ANTICHRIST
The name of the game (and the film) is shock value

ANTÔNIA
A city of women – strong, beautiful, and rapping

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL
Heavy metal head-bangers won't let their glory days pass them by

ARAYA
A visually beautiful rediscovered documentary

ARMY OF SHADOWS
Jean-Pierre Melville's riveting Resistance drama re-emerges

ARRANGED
Two religious women grow an unusual friendship in Brooklyn

THE ART OF BEING STRAIGHT
This softcore fantasy would be better suited by the title “The Drama of Being Bisexual”

ASHES OF TIME REDUX
Wong Kar Wai dazzles in an accomplishment of visual style

ATONEMENT
A girl’s febrile lie harvests a romantic tragedy mowed down by World War II

AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
“Every bit we delay them is another whale saved”

AUGUST
A hip dud about a failed dot-com

AUGUST EVENING
A lyrical stroll into the lives of a Mexican family

AVENUE MONTAIGNE
The boulevard of fulfilled dreams

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX
Big Brother watches the rise and fall of the German Red Army Faction

BAB’AZIZ: THE PRINCE WHO CONTEMPLATED HIS SOUL
A meditation on faith in Ali Baba robes and denim jackets

THE BABYSITTERS
Babysitters club becomes brothel in dark comedy gem

BACKSEAT
Two dudes off to see Donald Sutherland; hijinks ensue

BADLAND
Daddy goes postal and meets a cute waitress

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
A big, nutty, thrilling surprise from Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage

BAGHEAD
A mix of comedy and horror? It’s in the bag

BALLERINA
More than just pretty dancers in this on-pointe documentary

BALLAST
Down in the Delta a determined mother trumps despair

BAMAKO
African agitprop indicts the West

THE BAND’S VISIT
Music is the universal language when an Egyptian band sojourns in Israel

BAREFOOT TO TIMBUKTU
It takes an artist to raise a village

BART GOT A ROOM
A teen sex comedy that boldly trades teen sex for Yiddish humor

BATTLE FOR HADITHA
Powerful direction, sometimes preachy script

BATTLE IN SEATTLE
You don’t have to be a tree hugger to like this anti-corp. flick

BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
The scene-y story of a drifty, pro-capitalist counterculture

BECOMING JANE
Surely Jane Austen must have had a romance? Perhaps she was in love once?

BEESWAX
An acquired, but rewarding, taste of a film

BEFORE I FORGET
Strangely uninvolving reflection of a gigolo’s life

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
Sidney Lumet returns to form in this New York family drama with a body count

BEFORE THE RAINS
A passion in India

BEFORE TOMORROW
The Arctic teems with legends and poignant life stories

BEN X
A bullied teen with Asperger’s at the end of his rope

BEYOND BELIEF
Two 9/11 widows reach out to others who’ve lost husbands to war – in Afghanistan

BEYOND THE GATES
The Rwandan genocide crystallized into one harrowing week

BIG FAN
From the writer of The Wrestler: it’s lonely at the bottom

BIG MAN JAPAN
Sending up cornball superhero flicks with moments of inspired madness

THE BIG SHOT-CALLER
A lonely man salsas to mental well-being

BILLY THE KID
A real-life Napoleon Dynamite?

THE BLACK BALLOON
Try being your brother’s keeper when he’s autistic

BLACK DYNAMITE
A completely over-the-top and wonderfully tasteless salute to blaxploitation cinema

BLAME IT ON FIDEL
From conservative school girl to a protester in her Mary Janes

BLAST!
Nerds vs. polar bears: a scientific (mis)adventure

BLESSED IS THE MATCH: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HANNAH SENESH
A Jewish plaster saint becomes an action figure

BLIND DATE
Meeting at the same place with the same person, but with a different identity

BLIND MOUNTAIN
The farmer takes a wife in a brutal Chinese dell

BLINDNESS
Out of sight, out of mind

BLINDSIGHT
Blind kids climbing Mount Everest as the ultimate act of symbolism

BLISS
Secrets set sail on an East-to-West Turkish odyssey

BLOCKADE/AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER
The Soviet Union under Nazi assault in these two absorbing documentaries

BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME
A well-meaning film of the civil rights movement that never finds its footing

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE
Schoolgirl with a samurai sword

BOARDING GATE
You’d be better off missing this flight

BOOGIE MAN: THE LEE ATWATER STORY
Fascinating profile on the man who wrote the Republican playbook

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY
Ready or not, a sequel to the DVD cult hit/box-office flop

BOTTLE SHOCK
British oenophile uncorks Napa Valley vinoculture for the world

THE BOYS ARE BACK
How to raise two sons by yourself, the hard way

BRA BOYS
Totally tubular men behaving badly and brotherly Down Under

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
A nectar of everlasting youth, illicit young love, and a resurrection

BREAKFAST WITH SCOT
Can a macho gay ex-hockey player learn to love a son who’s a tiny queen-in-training?

BRICK LANE
The subtle, masterful story of a woman finding her home in the world

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
Evelyn Waugh's classic handsomely revised

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN
Ambitious failure from the star of The Office

BRIGHTON ROCK
Bawdy Hermione Baddeley bulldozes through Brit noir

BRIGHT STAR
When XOXO was: Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/And so live ever—or else swoon to death

BROKEN ENGLISH
Transatlantic romance translates into cute clichés

BRONSON
Surreal biopic about a theatrical British prisoner’s death wish (not, alas, a B-movie actor’s)

BROOKLYN RULES
Both a personal tale of Brooklyn life, circa ’85, and a genre knockoff

BROTHERS (2009)
A Danish film reborn as a long gone daddy in the USA

THE BUBBLE
Three’s company but all’s not fair in love and war

BUG
Ashley Judd, possessed, in William Friedkin’s adaptation of the Off-Broadway play

BURMA VJ: REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY
Smuggled out of Burma, the underground protests

THE BURNING PLAIN
Suffering is beautiful

THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN
Congratulations! You have nine months to challenge the medical establishment

BUSTIN’ DOWN THE DOOR
From a surfing safari to leaders of the pack

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'
The new kid from the Bloc

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
Michael Moore’s latest plea and battle cry

CARAMEL
A Lebanese treat, as sweet and tasty as it sounds

CARGO 200
A grim and macabre riff on the former Soviet Union

CARMEN & GEOFFREY
Easing on down the road with legends of dance, theater, art, fashion, and love

CASHBACK
Horny art student's coming of age – aisle 7

CASSANDRA’S DREAM
Time for Woody to come back home?

CASTING ABOUT
Dozens of talented young actresses, but only three roles

THE CATS OF MIRIKITANI
From a Japanese internment camp to 9/11, an intimate and sweeping profile of a homeless outsider artist

CHAPTER 27
An American indie version of The Killing of John Lennon

CHARLIE BARTLETT
With a little help from Ritalin, the new kid in school just wants to be liked

CHE
You’ve worn the T-shirt, now see the biopic

CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS
The fading glory days of the Chelsea Hotel

CHÉRI
A courtesan/cougar’s last hurrah

CHERRY BLOSSOMS
Marriage, mourning, and the best use of Butoh to be found in German cinema

CHICAGO 10
The whole world was watching Chicago, from the 1968 convention to disorder in the court

THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI
Crouching hero, hidden children flee war on the silk road to freedom

CHILDREN OF INVENTION
A bumpy road to the American Dream

CHOKE
Chuck Palahniuk’s outrageousness back on the screen

CHOKING MAN
Everyday life in a Queens diner unites sights and sounds with magic, realism, and animation

CHOP SHOP
A boy of summer grows up too fast in the Iron Triangle of Queens, NY

A CHRISTMAS TALE
Harangued for the holidays

CIAO
Ciao Andrea, your pen pal is dead

CIVIC DUTY
Post-9/11 paranoid thriller with ideas to spare and style to flaunt

CITY OF MEN
Rio’s slums are no country for old – or young – men

CJ7
An adorable pup of a family movie

THE CLASS
For whom the school bell tolls

CLOUD 9
You’re never too old for lust, love, and infidelity

COBRA VERDE
The last epic collaboration between Herzog and Kinski – not their best, but far from either’s worst

COCO BEFORE CHANEL
The designing courtesan

COLD SOULS
Won’t sell your soul? Ever considered renting?

CONSTANTINE’S SWORD
Two thousand years of Christianity & anti-Semitism

CONTROL
Portrait of rocker Ian Curtis as a depressed young man, in black and white silhouette

THE COOL SCHOOL
The rise and fall of an LA art scene

CRAZY LOVE
A pulp non-fiction couple in and out of the tabloids

CREATION
Charles Darwin biopic fails to adapt

CROSSING THE LINE
First time before a Western camera: an American defector in North Korea

CSNY: DÉJÁ VU
The more their bodies change, the more these rock n’ roll stars stay the same

CZECH DREAM
Sly and snide documentary – hilarious hoax or wake-up call?

DANS PARIS (INSIDE PARIS)
A tender tribute to the French New Wave

DARFUR NOW
Nice guys around the world try to do the right thing, stopping genocide in Africa

THE DARJEELING LIMITED
A spiritual journey perhaps but don’t forget the cough medicine

DARK MATTER
Infinity and beyond crashes down on a Chinese student in the U.S.

DARK STREETS
It was a dark night in a city that never sleeps – welcome to the blues

DAYBREAKERS
These vampires come out at sunlight

DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT
A female suicide bomber on the loose in New York City

DAYS & CLOUDS
Dire times ahead for chic Italian couple

DAY WATCH
Russia’s answer to the epic fantasy/trilogy phenomenon

DAY ZERO
The melodramatic meltdown before Johnny goes off to war

DEADGIRL
She’s three in one – dead, a zombie, and a sex toy

DEAD SNOW
Fails to bring dead Nazis to life

DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER
When bad things happen to good people: a family’s fight for justice

DEATH DEFYING ACTS
A sentimental look at the secret love life of Harry Houdini

DEATH IN LOVE
The sins of the Jewish mother along with sex, lies, and guilt

DECEMBER BOYS
In his first non-Harry Potter role, Daniel Radcliffe, Down Under and dour

DEEP WATER
Sailing into oblivion: The disastrous “race of the century”

DEFIANCE
Charismatic brothers rescue Jews from the Holocaust in a forest Jerusalem

DELIRIOUS
Tom DiCillo’s dark comedy of idiots and tricksters

DELTA
Incest on the Danube (it looks better than it sounds)

DEPARTURES
For whom the bell tolls? Everyone

DESCENT
A case of rape and an eye for an eye

THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK
Darfur turns a GI Joe into an anti-genocide activist

DIED YOUNG, STAYED PRETTY
Punk rock posturing

DIMINISHED CAPACITY
A film about baseball and memory that’s better forgotten

DISGRACE
Bleak allegory of South Africa’s present and future

DISTRICT 13: ULTIMATUM
The Warriors meets RoboCop 2 meets wirework

DOC
A major American novelist rediscovered

DONKEY PUNCH
A provocative title with a decent drive-in movie payoff

THE DOORMAN
Sexier than a bouncer, dumber than a velvet rope

DOUBLE TAKE
If you see your double, you must kill him

DOUBT
From the stage to a scream: John Patrick Shanley’s play at full bluster

DOWNLOADING NANCY
A grim and disturbing online hook-up

DRAMA/MEX
An indie drama that cost 10 cents to make and doesn’t deserve to earn it back

DREAMING LHASA
The first fictional tour of the violent past, confused present and conflicted future of the Tibetan diaspora

THE DUCHESS
The dramatic (and dreary) dilemmas of the duchess of Devonshire

THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS
The tragic taming of the coquette

DUST
Everything you could ever want to know about schmutz

EARTH DAYS
When green was just a color: the genesis of environmentalism

EAST OF HAVANA
Cuban home-grown hip-hop

EDEN
A cold bed in a sleepy Irish town

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
A film about everything brings Fatih Akin closer to the edge of greatness

THE EDGE OF LOVE
We’ll always have Wales – a foursome does not go gentle into that good war

AN EDUCATION
English schoolgirl learns about love at the school of hard knocks

EIGHT MILES HIGH
Catching the whirlwind of a decade of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll

EL CANTANTE
A flashy life of sex, drugs, and salsa sings and dances with no insight

ELDORADO
A bittersweet Belgian road trip/Western

ELEGY
Ben Kingsley as a quintessential Philip Roth character

ELEVEN MINUTES
Answers questions you never asked about Project Runway’s first winner

ELITE SQUAD
City of God: The Next Generation, only not as amazing

ELSA & FRED
La Dolce Vita grows old and sentimental

THE 11TH HOUR
An Inconvenient Truth revisited

EMPTY NEST
Separation anxiety ticks off a grandfather’s biological clock

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Director Werner Herzog’s crazy documentary/poetry, this time in Antarctica

ENLIGHTEN UP!
Here a yogi, there a yogi, everywhere a yogi

EVENING
A picturesque message from 1950’s mothers to today’s daughters: be happy

EVERYBODY'S FINE
Familial feuds and Hallmark moments

EVERLASTING MOMENTS
Through a lens brightly of a hard knock life

EVEN MONEY
Will split the audience, as Crash did, with its hit-and-miss ensemble cast and storylines

EVERY LITTLE STEP
Dancing to be stars

EVERYTHING’S COOL
Is there really still a global warming debate?

EXAMINED LIFE
Philosophy’s heavyweights tackle the reigning champion – morality

EXILED
Johnnie To’s stylistic exercise will appeal to die-hard Hong Kong crime fans

THE EXILES
Lost world of Native Americans in old downtown Los Angeles

THE EXPLODING GIRL
Bottled up emotion only leads to one thing

EXTRACT
Ben Affleck nearly steals the show in this pleasant, if rather uninspired, low-key comedy

EZRA
Ezra, we hardly knew you – the conflicted homecoming of a child soldier

FADOS
Come on, baby, don't you want to go, to that sweet home Lisbon and hear some fado

THE FALL
A visual masterstroke with the power and pain of storytelling at its core

FALLING AWAKE
A student-grade Bronx tale

FAT GIRLS
High school angst and gay drama meld in this indie debut

THE FAVOR
A middle-aged New Jersey man adopts his high-school sweetheart’s son

FAY GRIM
From Queens with love, the mysterious Henry Fool’s peripatetic past catches up with his wife and friends in a deadpan sequel of international intrigue

FEAR(S) OF THE DARK
A rare masterpiece of the omnibus form

FEAST OF LOVE
What’s love got to do with it? Everything

FELON
Hard-hitting, well-acted naturalistic prison drama

FIDO
A winning combo of Lassie, Douglas Sirk and George Romero

FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING
You can't just pack up the Troubles in an old spy bag

51 BIRCH STREET
For one American family, a mother's diary is Pandora's box

FILTH AND WISDOM
Madonna, desperately seeking substance

FILM COMMENT SELECTS (2009)
The Mugger, Paradise, The Tiger's Tale, and A Woman in Berlin

FILM COMMENT SELECTS (2010)
Down-and-dirty genre films stand out

FINISHING THE GAME
A bright take-off on the legacy of Bruce Lee

FIRST SNOW
Guy Pearce returns to twisted psychological terrain

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
“You like the Smiths, too?”

FIX
They try to make me go to rehab

FLAKES
A soggy comedy about cereal and hipsters

FLAME & CITRON
Copenhagen life during wartime – this ain’t no fooling around

FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON
Sweetly meandering tribute to a classic film and a child’s view of Paris

FLOW
Water, water everywhere but not enough to drink

FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN
Is freedom another word for nothing left to lose for a single woman in her 40’s?

FOOD BEWARE: THE FRENCH ORGANIC REVOLUTION
A diet in Provence

FOOD, INC.
The secret behind corporate corn-fed cash cows

THE FOOT FIST WAY
Sometimes fun, sometimes obnoxious ultra low-budget Tae Kwon Do comedy

FOREVER STRONG
How to tackle friends and love people: life lessons on the rugby field

FORGIVENESS
Beware of blind prophets in tunnels under massacred villages and insane asylums

FOR MY FATHER
Falling in love in the wrong place and at the wrong time

FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO
The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so

FOUR SEASONS LODGE
Something to think about, something to dance about, l'chai-im, to life!

FRAGMENTS
Making sense of a deadly rampage

FRAULEIN
3 women take Balkanization very personally

A FRENCH GIGOLO
Not quite a love story, but almost

FRONTRUNNERS
A high school election documentary that loses the race

FROWNLAND
Personality disorders without punch lines

FUGITIVE PIECES
Memories float into men’s minds haunted by history and pretty women

FULL BATTLE RATTLE
The U.S. Army brings the war in Iraq to the California desert

GARBAGE DREAMS
Slumdoc extraordinaire

GARDENS OF THE NIGHT
Harrowing drama of lost childhoods

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS
Lame sci-fi parody-meets-nerd fest

GHOSTS OF CITÉ SOLEIL
Close-up view of the apocalypse now with the gangsters of Port au Prince

GIGANTE
Quite a quiet love story

GIGANTIC
Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel blush, hold hands, and shift their quirks into overdrive

THE GIRL FROM MONACO
Upper-class attorney falls head over high heels with the local tramp

GIRLS ROCK!
Music doc unable to keep up with the beat

GIVE ME YOUR HAND
A modern Day Cain and Abel, complete with jeans and existentialist angst

GOLDEN DOOR
An immigrant family's harsh yet sentimental journey to the New World

GOMORRAH
The gripping hold of the Neapolitan mob’s widespread tentacles

GONE BABY GONE
Crime doesn’t #&!@*^’ play, you #&!@

GOOD
A step-by-step guide to the perplexed good German

GOODBYE MOMO (A DIOS MOMO)
A boy’s magical mystery tour through life and language during Montevideo’s Carnival

GOODBYE SOLO
New friends learn when to stick to their guns and when to put ’em down

THE GOOD GUY
TV stars in a TV-size movie

GOOD HAIR
Chris Rock teases out the dollars and sense of black women’s hair care

THE GOOD HEART
Brian Cox & Paul Dano reunited in this cornucopia of quirk

GRACE IS GONE
When Mom goes off to war

THE GRAND
Mockumentary à la Guest on high stakes Las Vegas poker

GRAND CANYON ADVENTURE: A RIVER AT RISK
An inconvenient truth the whole family can enjoy

THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD
For my next effect, I will put the audience to sleep

THE GREATEST
First you don’t cry, and then life goes on

GREAT WORLD OF SOUND
There’s still a sucker born every minute – but they have real feelings

THE GROCER’S SON
Prodigal hunk delivers charming lessons for life and love in Provençe

GUEST OF CINDY SHERMAN
A revealing exposé on the queen of camouflage

GYPSY CARAVAN: WHEN THE ROAD BENDS…
Viva tradition – Gypsies colorfully dance and sing through North America and their home towns

HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS
Navel-gazing mutterings, love duets in the afternoon

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
Life is sweet in Mike Leigh’s high-spirited film

HAROLD
Harold is 13, bald, and not funny

HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29
In November, 1968, rival students had more at stake than just a winning score

HEARTBEAT DETECTOR
Tracing a corporation’s dark past through its managers’ twisted family trees

HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD
Where the dangers of headbanging include more than a neck cramp

HELL RIDE
Larry Bishop’s biker movie homage – a nonsensical failure

HENRY POOLE IS HERE
The writing on the wall spells Jesus

THE HIP HOP PROJECT
Lives saved by rap – and caring role models

THE HOAX
The truth is mightier than the pen

HOLLY
Important message, broken bottle

HOME
The ultimate anti-road trip movie

HOUNDDOG
Ripe southern Gothic coming of age

HOUSE (1977)
Midnight madness makes a long-awaited premiere

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL
They still make ’em like they used to

HOUSE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES
The sinister goings-on in a disturbingly unique brothel

HOW ABOUT YOU
British actors don’t grow old, just eccentric

HOW TO COOK YOUR LIKE
A Zen priest kneading happiness

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The whole world should be watching

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE
The WTF movie of the year

HUMBOLDT COUNTY
An accidental tourist, lost amongst billows of smoke

HUMPDAY
A bromance turns to porno

HUNGER
Bringing the Troubles to life through death

I HAVE NEVER FORGOTTEN YOU: THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF SIMON WIESENTHAL
Conventional laudatory biography of the unconventional Nazi hunter

IF I DIDN’T CARE
Too dull and too short to make the impact intended in spite of low-key noir tone

IMAGINARY WITNESS: HOLLYWOOD AND THE HOLOCAUST
La La Land bobbed and weaved but finally confronted the Final Solution

I’M NOT THERE
Todd Haynes’s biopic fun house, featuring the six faces of Bob Dylan

IN BETWEEN DAYS
A beautiful meditation linking the experience of being an immigrant and a teenager

IN BRUGES
Price of humor too high in crime comedy

IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN
The man, the myth, the music

IN THE LOOP
What’s so funny about peace, love, and misunderstandings

IN THE PIT
Earthy documentary stays grounded until it takes to the sky

INTO GREAT SILENCE
Inside the quiet world of a Carthusian monastery

INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS
A sweet and funny mother and child reunion is only a dirty joke away

IRA & ABBY
Love and marriage go together again and again like love and divorce

IRINA PALM
Droll comedy of a spunky granny with a naughty secret

I SELL THE DEAD
Digging out the dirt, selling corpses, getting hurt

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY
Beautiful b & w Brit noir rich in colorful East End characters and streetscapes

IT MIGHT GET LOUD
Three guitar gods talk and strum on their thrones

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
“What would Jane Austen do?” as a charming guide to love today

JAR CITY
How to make a murder mystery more sinister? Set it in Iceland

JELLYFISH
3 women bob and float through an eccentric Tel Aviv

JERICHOW
Lust makes the walls of Jerichow tumble down

JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS
Can an esteemed elder statesman get the American media to give peace a chance?

JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN
Memories burn for a rock legend

JULIA
Tilda Swinton’s most captivating performance to date

JUNO
Glib, gabby, and geeky: a knocked-up teen’s coming of age

KABLUEY
An off-beat comedy of spherical, blue proportions

KILLING KASZTNER: THE JEW WHO DEALT WITH NAZIS
To deal or not to deal: what did Kasztner know when and what more could he have done?

THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON
Inside the assassin’s obsession and madness

KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS
Return to the glory days of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man

THE KITE RUNNER
An Americanized Afghani belatedly comes of age during the Taliban

LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET
An exhausting and not always en pointe documentary

LADY CHATTERLEY
D.H. Lawrence’s heroine made respectable

LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL
Life as fashion, fashion as life

LAKE CITY
Home is where the hard luck is

LAKE OF FIRE
Abortion, extremely up close and personal

LA LEÓN
This river isn’t big enough for the two of us…

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
The bloody butcher and his bonnie young doctor

THE LAST MISTRESS
Asia Argento rips her own bodice in this torrid melodramatic romance

THE LAST STATION
For a weighty Russian writer, a light touch

THE LAST WINTER
A thriller that skims a tight line between preachy talk and sinister horror

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
The opaque has never been so glamorous

LA VIE EN ROSE
Powerful Piaf, bombastic bio

LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE
From out of the French New Wave past, a pungent contemporary warning

LEFT BANK
Leave the sexy horror flicks to the Flemish

LEMON TREE
Lemon trees are more than very pretty for a Palestinian Erin Brockovich

LEONARD COHEN LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT 1970
Like a bird on a wire, a troubadour leads a historic post-midnight choir

LET’S GET LOST
Homage to Chet Baker and California cool – the music, the man, and especially, the image

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Coming-of-age vampire tale out of Sweden

L’ICEBERG
A runaway wife, a persistent husband, and Le Titanique

THE LIFE OF REILLY
What a part! Charles Nelson Reilly as himself

LIFE. SUPPORT. MUSIC.
Rockers. Rally. Behind. One. Of. Their. Own.

THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
The lone killer gets a cold, masterly revamp from Jim Jarmusch

LION'S DEN
In the slammer – with children

LITTLE ASHES
A disappointing trip with Dalí, Lorca & Buñuel

THE LITTLE TRAITOR
Reality trumps the imagination for a boy in 1947 Jerusalem

LIVE AND BECOME
Semi-sentimental journey from Africa to the Promised Land, without the milk and honey

THE LODGER
Less a Hitchcock remake than a sad M. Night Shyamalan wannabe

LONELY HEARTS
A neo-noir of the Lonely Hearts Killers (The Honeymoon Killers)

LOOK
You better smile – we’re all on Candid Camera now

LOREN CASS
Elliptical ennui

LORNA'S SILENCE
An enigmatic woman hiding many secrets

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE
A not-to-be missed study of a major sculptor

LOU REED'S BERLIN
Lou Reed’s masterpiece finally brought wonderfully to film

LOVE COMES LATELY
Sex, lies, and nightmares inspire I. B. Singer’s alter-ego to write stories of magic realism

LOVE RANCH
At this Nevada brothel, amateur night

LOVE SONGS
Doesn’t everyone sing about love in the streets of Paris?

LUST, CAUTION
Virgin prostitutes herself for the Resistance in Ang Lee’s war-torn hothouse melodrama

LYMELIFE
The Ice Storm hits Long Island

LYNCH
If you already know David Lynch, this documentary offers nothing new, but an interesting peek all the same

MACBETH
Shakespeare's tragedy, gangsta style

MADE IN U.S.A.
Godard quickie where fiction overtakes reality

THE MAID
One hell of a black sheep

MAMMOTH
The third world haunts Soho

MANAGEMENT
Knocked Up and ripped off

MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)
Brazilian Robin Hoods rob the rich while the rich rob the poor

A MAN NAMED PEARL
The sunny-side up portrait of a self-made artist

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
Visual survey of the human and environmental price tag for “Made in China”

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
Margot in the Afternoon, the film Eric Rohmer never made

MARY AND MAX
A chubby, lonely eight-year-old Australian girl’s pen-pal friendship with an obese, middle-aged New Yorker

THE MATADOR
Documentary on bullfighting: there will be blood

ME AND ORSON WELLES
Backstage brouhahas bury the Bard

MEETING RESISTANCE
The first year of the Iraqi insurgency, arriving years late

MEMORIAL DAY
Baghdad – the new city of lost children

THE MEMORY THIEF
Ich bin ein Auschwitz survivor

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
New Age hippies go off to war

MIRIAM
A Lithuanian woman’s remarkable journey from the Jewish ghetto to the Catholic Church to the Soviet KGB to Israel made unremarkable

MINE
Another victim of Hurricane Karina: household pets

THE MISSING PERSON
Post-9/11 film noir

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
Wan Coward cocktail chatter, creaky plot

MISTER FOE
A dark, modern Edinburgh fairy tale

MOMMA’S MAN
A brief existential crisis on the road to adulthood

THE MONASTERY: MR. VIG & THE NUN
An 82-year-old bachelor (“I am not expansive by nature with all kinds of emotions”) meets his obstinate match

MOON
Thoughtful, amusing, serious science fiction with two Sam Rockwells

MORE THAN A GAME
Less than great, but more (maybe) than an ESPN special

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS
“Sometimes there’s nothing more dangerous than saying aloud what’s in your heart”

MOVING MIDWAY
The past is never dead – it can just be moved away

MOTHERHOOD
Muddled middle-class maternal maelstrom

THE MOTHER OF TEARS
Madness? This is Argento!

MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS
Wong Kar Wai, lost in America

MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD
Accio and his brother: the ‘60s seen through the eyes of a commie and a fascist

MY BROTHER'S WEDDING
Another lost Charles Burnett film is restored, for the academically curious

MY FATHER MY LORD
A devout family heads out on Highway 61 in Jerusalem

MY FÜHRER: THE TRULY TRUEST TRUTH ABOUT ADOLF HITLER
Autumn for Hitler and Germany – there goes the master race

MY ONE AND ONLY
A road trip valentine to actor George Hamilton’s Southern belle-turned-single mother

THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH
Another long hot summer in the ’80s

NAKED BOYS SINGING!
One well-groomed cast proudly singing with their hearts on display

THE NAMESAKE
Jhumpa Lahiri’s best-selling novel gracefully brought to life

NANKING
Harrowing history of the Chinese holocaust

THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE
The Arctic teems with legends and poignant life stories

NEVER FOREVER
The transience of love and marriage, anchored by a strong Vera Farmiga

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2009, PART ONE
Amreeka to Treeless Mountain

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2009, PART TWO
Featuring the sleeper Mid-August Lunch

NEW WORLD ORDER
It’s all a conspiracy. Yawwwwn

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2009, PART ONE
Old masters, young love, history preserved, and manipulated

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2009, PART TWO
Death and the dying drag queen

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2009, PART THREE
Love, oh careless love – old and young, past and present, in words spoken and sung

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2009, PART FOUR
Transgressors, a machete-wielding Huppert, and a living saint

NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU
The metropolis at the center of the film remains elusive

THE 2010 NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
Fact-based films enrich this year’s selections

NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS
A relationship under the mumblecore microscope

9
The end of the world, the Disney version

$9.99
Full-frontal puppet nudity and the meaning of life and love

9 STAR HOTEL
Migrant Palestinians follow the money to illegally work in Israel

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
High blood Chigurh

NO END IN SIGHT
The war in Iraq: The sky is falling, Henny Penny

NO IMPACT MAN
Sometimes leaving no impact can make the biggest one of all

NOTE BY NOTE: THE MAKING OF STEINWAY L1037
The Steinway piano receives a pitch perfect homage

NOTORIOUS
If you don’t know, now you know: Biggie Smalls ain’t notorious for nothing

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION!
Waltzing Matilda with blood, bikes, blasts, bashes, brutes, bare boobs, and low budgets

OBJECTIFIED
An overdose of talking heads and product design

OBLIVION
Director Heddy Honigmann returns to Lima’s impoverished streets with a sympathetic ear

OCTOBER COUNTRY
Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house they return (with problems)

OFF AND RUNNING
An African-American girl on the run from her rainbow family

OFF JACKSON AVENUE
Hey buddy, gentrify this!

O'HORTEN
Taking planes, trains, automobiles, boats and skis to a quirky retirement

O JERUSALEM
The whole world was watching – but not this melodrama with contrived composites

ONCE
Old-fashioned boy-meets-girl musical in contemporary Dublin

ONE DAY YOU’LL UNDERSTAND
Jeanne Moreau as enigmatic mère or mamela

ONE TO ANOTHER
Sex-drenched days, even more sex at night

ONG BAK 2: THE BEGINNING
Bak is Back!

ON THE RUMBA RIVER
Up a depressing river where musical masters joyously reunite

2009 OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA
The mob, a moppet, and Mussolini

THE ORPHANAGE
Frightening gothic ghost story from Guillermo del Toro

ORTHODOX STANCE
Finding God in Brooklyn through boxing

OSS 117: CAIRO NEST OF SPIES
French spy spoof, surprisingly less randy than Austin Powers

OSWALD’S GHOST
The JFK assassination and post-9/11 America

THE 2ND ANNUAL OTHER ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL
Christians, Muslims, Lebanese, Bedouins, Palestinians, and Druze – they’re all Israelis and they’re all angry

THE OTHER MAN
A perfectly cast romantic non-thriller

OUR CITY DREAMS
Five women artists make it in NYC so they can make it anywhere

OUTRAGE
Outings in the Washington closet

OUTSOURCED
American kitsch, assembled in India

PAPRIKA
Eye-popping anime submerged in a neurotic dream world

PAPER MAN
Writer's block writ large in quirky comedy

PARANOID PARK
A master filmmaker drifts too far into teen anomie

THE PARANOIDS
Sluggish slacker meets hot girl and finally comes alive

PARIS
Searching for a heart transplant, finding out there’s no place like home

PARIS, JE T’AIME
Love X 18 = Life in all of Paris’ neighborhoods

PARIS 36
All of the Parisian clichés put to song

PASSING STRANGE
Spike Lee films Broadway play – a movie not quite like the “real” thing

PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE
An artsy, atmospheric trip into the life of a punk-poet icon

PETER AND VANDY
Another time-bending, twentysomething romcom

PHYLLIS AND HAROLD
Talkin’ ‘bout the greatest generation – and why they don’t just fade away

PHOEBE IN WONDERLAND
Special children find themselves down the rabbit hole

PIERREPOINT – THE LAST HANGMAN
No gallows humor in this bio of professional executioner Albert Pierrepoint

PING PONG PLAYA
Sino-Americans serve sprightly satire and spin on stereotypes

THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED
The poetry in kleptomania

POISONED BY POLONIUM: THE LITVINENKO FILE
From Russian with Polonium: Ex-Spy’s death stinks of corruption

POLICE, ADJECTIVE
Filmmaking at its most passive

PONTYPOOL
Not your average, everyday zombies

THE POOL
A deceptively simple, globally conscious story of rich and poor that hits its mark

THE POPE’S TOILET
Hoping for flush times

POP STAR ON ICE
A vodka-shot-with-a-champagne-chaser on ice

PRAYING WITH LIOR
The little rebbe that could

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL 'PUSH' BY SAPPHIRE
A genre is born: the social horror film

PRESSURE COOKER
Save your appetite for this modest but tasty documentary

PRICELESS
The gold digger and the bellhop, fetching romantic comedy at its most cynical

PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES
When Alain met Alan: Resnais does Ayckbourn

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE
The seven ages of a woman: daughter, rebel, muse, lover, wife, mother, herself

THE PROMOTION
Climbing the social ladder has never been so dull

A PROPHET (UN PROPHÈTE)
Rube learns the big house ropes

PROTAGONIST
A gay evangelical, a bank robber, a terrorist, and a kung fu fighting runt: real life as epic drama

THE PROVIDENCE EFFECT
Afterschool special: keeping it real

PROVOKED
Bollywood superstar Aishwarya Rai's Lifetime version of The Burning Bed

PUCCINI FOR BEGINNERS
No geishas or starving artists here, but a gay/bi/straight rom-com

QUID PRO QUO
Intriguing premise, if not altogether successful

QUIET CHAOS
That guy sitting on the park bench everyday? He’s no perv, he’s my dad

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
Demme goes Dogme-style for wedding day drama queens

THE READER
What would you do if your teen fantasy figure had more secrets than you?

RED
A man driven to vengeance

REDACTED
Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War tour of Iraq

RED CLIFF
John Woo offers a better yesterday

THE RED RIDING TRILOGY
An unholy trinity of bloody good Yorkshire noir

RED ROAD
A rocky road to redemption

REFUSENIK
The whole world was watching: the plight of Soviet Jews

REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUSE
Unlocking the mesmerizing mysteries of Rembrandt’s masterpiece The Night Watch

RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA 2009
The standouts: The Girl on the Train and The Beaches of Agnès

RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA 2010
The César Awards, a sex-inducing root, and Gina Lollobrigida, to boot

REPO!: THE GENETIC OPERA
The songs people sing when organs are sparse

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
Sam Mendes’s triumphant return to suburbia

REVOLVER
Guy Ritchie gets metaphysical

RFK MUST DIE: THE ASSASSINATION OF BOBBY KENNEDY
Enter Conspiracy Theory 101

RICHARD SERRA: THINKING ON YOUR FEET
An art star documentary that’s slower than watching paint dry

THE ROAD
Road warrior and son

ROBERT BLECKER WANTS ME DEAD
Death penalty crusader profiled in plodding documentary

ROMANCE & CIGARETTES
Love and death in Queens has a good beat and you can dance to it

ROMAN DE GARE
A man and a woman in a twisty Claude Lelouch treat

RUDO Y CURSI
Send in the clowns and watch them cry

SACCO AND VANZETTI
An injustice from the early 20th century made present

SAINT JOHN OF LAS VEGAS
What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas

SAVAGE GRACE
True crime turns pulp fiction

THE SAVAGES
Practically orphans, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman stumble between pathos and dark humor

SAVE ME
A dull tale of sexual reorientation

SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN
How a Walker Brother didn’t make it easy on himself or his music

THE SECRET OF KELLS
Irish eyes are dazzling

SERBIS
The most pornographic Filipino family drama ever made

SERIOUS MOONLIGHT
How to use duct tape to save a marriage

SEVERANCE
Think of it is as Eli Roth without the lack of humility and comic timing, if only by a little

SEVERE CLEAR
The war in Iraq, the home movie

SEX AND DEATH 101
Stud has happy ending after happy ending until he meets his fate

SHADOWS
One family’s unburied secrets

SHERMAN’S WAY
A road trip down a familiar road

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
Naomi Klein’s bestseller: the CliffNotes

THE SHORT LIFE OF JOSÉ ANTONIO GUTIÉRREZ
The contradictory account of the first U.S. casualty of the Iraq War

SHOWBUSINESS
The rocky road for Broadway babies

SHRINK
My boyfriend’s my agent’s therapist

SHUTTER ISLAND
B-movie material elevated by A-list cast and craft

THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH
A figuratively off-beat exploration of music, stillness, and history

THE SINGING REVOLUTION
Saving a counry through song

SING NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE
Peter Pans reunite again, this time in the Hamptons with a few jokes

SIN NOMBRE
On the rough-and-tumble train to freedom, villains close behind

THE SITUATION
The war in Iraq as blunt, but not as simple, as its title

‘SIX DAYS’ JUNE 1967: THE WAR THAT CHANGED THE MIDDLE EAST
Witness the day-by-day countdown to the genesis of today’s Mess O’Potamia

65 REVISITED
It’s not all over baby blue – the road warrior as a romantic troubadour in 1965

SKILLS LIKE THIS
A crime caper that’s as unforeseen as it is unsatisfying

SKIN
She’s white, no – she’s “colored,” no – she’s black, no – she’s human

SLEUTH
Modern cave men in Pinteresque psychological combat

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
For 20 million rupees, is that your final answer?

SMILEY FACE
Gregg Araki follows Mysterious Skin with a cultish stoner romp

SNOW CAKE
Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver reunite

SOMERS TOWN
The start of a beautiful (and rowdy) friendship

SO MUCH SO FAST
“Time is such a bastard” - A tight-knit family fights ALS

THE SONG OF SPARROWS
Charming and involving morality tale of stocky Everyman losing his way in the big, materialist world

SON OF RAMBOW
Two tough but tender tykes worship at the altar of Stallone

SOUL POWER
In Zaire 1974: sing and dance it loud (I’m black and I’m proud)

SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION
The civil rights movement made vivid and tangible

SOUTHLAND TALES
It’s the end of the world as we know it

SPECIAL
A reason to loathe superheroes

SPINNING INTO BUTTER
Drawing the race card drags and dampens drama

SPLINTER
Cool ideas keep this horror flick hot

SPUTNIK MANIA
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love President Eisenhower

STALAGS
Pornography and Holocaust remembrance in 1960s Israel

STARTER FOR 10
First love against the backdrop of Thatcher and the Psychedelic Furs

STILL LIFE
Jia Zhang-ke’s quiet, unassuming meditation of a soon-to-vanish China

THE STONING OF SORAYA M.
It takes a village to throw the first stone, and the last

STRANDED: I’VE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS
Bringing Alive back to life

STREET KINGS
Serpico meets surfer dude

STUFF AND DOUGH
From Romania, with ennui

SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
Prolific wild man Takashi Miike’s fun, violent, and crazy Western pastiche

SUMMER HOURS
Family ties that unravel and drift away

SUMMER PALACE
Banned in China: Sexual awakenings, Tiananmen Square, and the loss of idealism

THE SUN
At home with Hirohito

THE 2010 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Discomfort seems to be the name of the game

THE 2010 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS
The revenge of the cane toads

SUNSHINE
“So if you wake up one morning and it's a particularly beautiful day, you'll know we made it”

SUNSHINE CLEANING
Sunshine showdown: Little Miss vs. Cleaners

SURFWISE
A wandering Jew with a wife, nine kids, and surfboards for all

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK
A colossal film about death, theater, and everything

TAKING WOODSTOCK
Experience the iconic fest deeper than a documentary could allow

TALES FROM THE SCRIPT
Screenwriters tell bloody war stories from the trenches of Hell-ywood

TALES OF THE BROTHERS QUAY
A pure smorgasbord of Quay brothers work – too much in one sitting

TALK TO ME
Faithfully capturing a tumultuous era via the Washington DC radio scene

TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
When identifying terrorists becomes fuzzy

TAXIDERMIA
Even more disgusting than Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

TEETH
Film about vagina dentata is worse than pulling teeth

TEKKONKINKREET
Amazing anime/scattered story

TELL NO ONE
A fun, guilty pleasure-cum-thriller

THE TEN
Comedic – but lame – vignettes loosely related to the Ten Commandments

TERRIBLY HAPPY
Terrible title, decent noir comedy

THAT EVENING SUN
Gran Torino meets Sling Blade in this rural drama

THEATER OF WAR
Meryl Streep takes on Mother Courage

THEN SHE FOUND ME
Baby mama drama x 2

THIRST
Father, bite me, for I have sinned

35 SHOTS OF RUM
Low key and melancholic, a family gently moves apart

THIS IS ENGLAND
British director Shane Meadows takes another stab at depicting his ’80s childhood – and succeeds

A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS
New Chinese saying: Father and daughter emotional reunion is only a confession away

THREE MONKEYS
Hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil

THROW DOWN YOUR HEART
Béla Fleck comes to Africa with his banjo on his knee

TICKLING LEO
This Leo is a lion that’s all roar and no bite

TIDELAND
Down the rabbit hole, one more time, with Terry Gilliam

TIME
Crazy love, South Korean style

TIMECRIMES
History repeats itself in this twisted time travel thriller

‘TIS AUTUMAN: THE SEARCH FOR JACKIE PARIS
Searching for this jazz singer leaves you searching for answers

TOKYO!
A rare triptych that (nearly) hits it out of the park

TO THE LIMIT
A slow look at some fast climbing

TOWELHEAD
A dark comedy about the exploitation of a 13-year-old Arab-American girl

TRAILER PARK BOYS: THE MOVIE
Canadian My Name Is Earl without the class (believe it or not)

TRAITOR
Some solid thrills in hit-or-miss terror flick

THE TRAP
A suspenseful, provocative Crime and Punishment by way of Serbia

THE TREE OF LIFE
So if you talk loudly with your hands, is that more Jewish or Italian?

TRIAD ELECTION
An original crime film unto itself, even as much as it’s an homage

2009 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, PART 1
The bottom-line recommendations

2009 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, PART 2
A rising rap star and master debators

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, PART 3
The Bronx is in the house

TRUMBO
Prolific and blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo reverently honored

TULPAN
On the steppes of Kazakhstan, where the women are stubborn and the men dream

TUYA’S MARRIAGE
Tough times for a heroine to survive the steppes and studs of Inner Mongolia

12
The audience will remain in the theater until the jury has reached a verdict

12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST
After communist control, comedy chaos, caught on-camera

28 WEEKS LATER
If you’re going to a sequel, skip Spider-Man 3 and see this

24 CITY
Director Jia Zhang-ke humanizes factory workers in urbanized China

2 DAYS IN PARIS
Julie Delpy's smart, funny, and harsh directorial debut

TWO LOVERS
Love is a little crazy sometimes

UNBORN IN THE USA: INSIDE THE WAR ON ABORTION
Eye-opening examination of the Pro-Life movement on many fronts

UNDER OUR SKIN
Tick, tick, tick: a medical time bomb

UNDER THE BOMBS
Taking the high road through a ceasefire during wartime

UNDER THE SAME MOON (LA MISMA LUNA)
Pushing mother and child love over the borderline

THE UNFORESEEN
A once-pristine river runs through Austin

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
War crimes my grandfather never told me

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN
The director of Cinema Paradiso gets dark and twisted

UNSETTLED
Six twentysomething Israelis face history and each other on the Gaza Strip

UNTITLED
An art movie without much art

UP THE YANGTZE
Upper deck, lower deck on a slow boat to the heart of the new China

U2 3D
Goodbye nosebleeds…U2 in 3D

VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR
The last sashay

THE VALET
French comedy writer/director Francis Veber’s latest confection

THE VANISHED EMPIRE
To the Soviet Union with love

A VERY BRITISH GANGSTER
Intriguing and stylistically-muddled profile of a notorious mob boss

VERY YOUNG GIRLS
A starter documentary on the overlooked problem of teen prostitution

VIDEOCRACY
Girls, girls, girls, and one balding mogul/politician

VIOLENT SATURDAY
A tough ‘50s melodrama in the guise of a tough film noir

THE VIOLIN
Noble campesinos fight brutal soldiers with their wits, music, and beautiful b&w cinematography

THE VISITOR
Drumbeat takes prof from malaise to border control

VITUS
A gifted child delightfully teaches everyone a lesson

VIVA
Shy suburban housewife sheds her inhibitions (and clothes) in this skin flick send-up

THE WACKNESS
The Class of 1994 learns to see the dopeness in life

WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON
Making an appointment now for the End of Days

WAITRESS
Cooks up a frothy confection spiced with sadness

A WALK INTO THE SEA: DANNY WILLIAMS AND THE WARHOL FACTORY
A niece looks back to her uncle’s murky past with Warhol

A WALK TO BEAUTIFUL
Young Ethiopian women reclaim their lives and dignity after suffering humiliating childbirth injuries

WAR AND PEACE
The Soviet adaptation of War and Peace is Tolstoy to the T

WAR/DANCE
Children of war restore their humanity through music and dance

WAR MADE EASY: HOW PRESIDENTS AND PUNDITS KEEP SPINNING US TO DEATH
From the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to the war in Iraq

THE WAY WE GET BY
Elderly volunteers greet Iraqi war vets – as blatantly heartwarming as it sounds

WE ARE WIZARDS
A mostly for-the-fans-only look at the Harry Potter “cult”

THE WEDDING SONG
A sensual, unsubtle view of wartime Tunisia

THE WENDELL BAKER STORY
Not much “there” there in the latest Wilson brothers comic romp

WENDY AND LUCY
On the fringe and on the road

WETLANDS PRESERVED: THE STORY OF AN ACTIVIST ROCK CLUB
Kicking out the jams in New York City, now with a touch of grey

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU
A traditional crime drama offers more drama than crime

WHATEVER WORKS
Woody Allen’s best comedy in over a decade: it works

WHAT GOES UP
An explosion of bad taste

WHAT JUST HAPPENED
A Hollywood satire preserving the status quo

WHAT WE DO IS SECRET
Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll (and death), the LA punk way

WHERE GOD LEFT HIS SHOES
A beggar’s backstory: a New York family down and out

WHIP IT
Beauty queen turns into derby girl

WHO IS NORMAN LLOYD?
According to producer Tom Fontana, part Peter Pan and part Father Time

WHOLE NEW THING
A teenager learns to be himself (it’s even less exciting than it sounds)

THE WINDOW
Death takes a walkabout

WITHOUT THE KING
Inside Africa’s last absolute monarchy

THE WITNESSES
La Vie Bohème updated to the highs and lows of the 1980’s

A WOMAN IN BERLIN
Postwar survival among the ruins

WOMAN ON A BEACH
Young and neurotic (and chatty) in South Korea

WONDERFUL TOWN
City boy, country girl make the world go round – and stop

WONDERFUL WORLD
A “nice” movie about growing a suburban Grinch’s heart

WORLD'S GREATEST DAD
Watch for Bobcat Goldthwait’s screenwriting, but stay for Robin Williams’s full-frontal nudity

THE WORLD UNSEEN
Apartheid dawns and wakes up Indian women

WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY
Purgatory is painful

XXY
Startlingly and knotty sexual coming-of-age drama

YASUKUNI
Japanese war crimes enshrined

THE YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION
Politics fouls the World Cup for a lonely son of activists in 1970 Brazil

YEAR OF THE DOG
And they call it puppy love...

YEAR OF THE FISH
An uneven animated Chinatown Cinderella

YELLA
A metaphysical mystery meets brutal corporate shenanigans

THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF
Road trip with Kristen Stewart turns weepy

YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE STORY
An unsinkable diva refuses to let a culture go down

YONKERS JOE
Family relations are a toss of the dice

YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG
Meet the most famous Jewish mother of the 20th century

YOU CANNOT START WITHOUT ME
Portrait of a Whirlwind: Valery Gergiev

YOU KILL ME
Surprisingly light for its subject matter, clever but not as deep as it thinks it is

YOUNG & RESTLESS IN CHINA
Four years inside China’s rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape

YOUNG@HEART
You’re only as old as the songs you sing

YOUSSOU N’DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE
He’s got the whole word in his groove, inshallah

YOU, THE LIVING
The human condition, in all of its variety, as a farce

YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH
Coppola’s brilliant mess

 


Recent DVD & Home Video Releases

Contestants Monique Capelta &
Zachary Yurcisin
in AMERICAN CANNIBAL
Photo: Erika Rand
AMERICAN CANNIBAL
Would you greenlight a competitive reality show involving starvation and cannibalism?

Fiona (Julie Christie)
Grant (Gordon Pinsent)
in AWAY FROM HER
Photo: Michael Gibson
AWAY FROM HER
With much grace, actress Sarah Polley makes an inspired directorial debut

Thom Hoffman as Hans Akkermans
Carice van Houten as Rachel/Ellis
in BLACK BOOK
Photo: Jaap Vrenegoor/Sony Pictures Classics
BLACK BOOK
Driving depiction of the derring-do, duplicity, and dark side of the Dutch resistance at the denouement of World War II

CALIGULA: THE IMPERIAL EDITION
The clash of the titanic egos, Gore Vidal vs. Bob Guccione, or rather, the Penthouse Pets do Ancient Rome


CITY OF MEN/FAVELA RISING
Two films essential for anyone who loved City of God

Don Bachardy & Christopher Isherwood in the early ’50s
in CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY
Photo: Arthur Mitchell
CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY
A Hollywood golden and gay couple

Karl Markovics as Salomon Sorowitsch
in THE COUNTERFEITERS
Photo: Jat Jurgen Olczyk/Sony Pictures Classics
THE COUNTERFEITERS
The morality of surviving in a Nazi concentration camp

Convicted pedophile Oliver O'Grady
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Photo: Lionsgate
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
A searing documentary of a sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church

Nick Frost, left
Simon Pegg involved in village mayhem
in HOT FUZZ
Photo: Matt Nettheim/Rogue Pictures
HOT FUZZ
The makers and stars of Shaun of the Dead return for another parody – taking on action/buddy flicks

Laura Linney as Claire
in JINDABYNE
Photo: Matt Nettheim/Sony Pictures Classics
JINDABYNE
The submerged disturbances and the fragile bonds between couples, friends, and a community

Vera Farmiga & Sam Rockwell as Abby & Brad
in JOSHUA
Photo: Jojo Whilden
JOSHUA
Postpartum paranoia for mom, an ass kicking for dad

Henry Gayle Sanders & Kaycee Moore
in KILLER OF SHEEP
Photo: Milestone Film & Video
KILLER OF SHEEP
A little-seen classic of African-American life beautifully reborn

Jalil Lespert as Antoine
in LE PETIT LIEUTENANT
Photo: Cinema Guild
LE PETIT LIEUTENANT
A stark cop drama with an emotional backbone

Shidou Nakamura as Lieutenant Ito
Photo: Merie W. Wallace
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
Clint Eastwood's incisive samurai/World War II epic

 (Left to right) Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, 
Steve Carell & Paul Dano
in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Photo: Eric Lee/Fox Searchlight
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Family values and the American lack thereof

Martina Gedeck as Christa-Maria Sieland
in THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Photo: Hagen Keller/Sony Pictures Classics
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Orwellian and voyeuristic East German cat-and-mouse thriller set in, appropriately, 1984

Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl
in A MIGHTY HEART
Photo: Peter Mountain
A MIGHTY HEART
Star power propels Michael Winterbottom’s political drama

Daniel Auteuil as François
in MY BEST FRIEND
Photo: IFC Films
MY BEST FRIEND
Director Patrice Leconte’s classy take on an odd couple


THE NIGHT OF TRUTH
The land of the living death: the aftermath of a Rwandan-like civil war

Ivana Baquero as Ofelia
in PAN'S LABYRINTH
Photo: Teresa Isasi/Picturehouse
PAN'S LABYRINTH
The fantastic and the fascist: A Spanish young girl's flight into fantasy under Franco

Eloi (Malik Zidi) looking towards
André (Thibault Vinçon), right
in POISON FRIENDS
Photo: Strand Releasing
POISON FRIENDS
A cutthroat paper chase where words are weapons

Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II
James Cromwell as Prince Philip in the background
in THE QUEEN
Photo: Laurie Sparham/Miramax
THE QUEEN
Baffled lies the head that wears the crown

Christian Bale as Dieter Dengler
in RESCUE DAWN
Photo: Lena Herzog
RESCUE DAWN
A Vietnam POW epic Herzog style – and one of the most gripping movies in years

Reece Thompson as Hal Hefner
in ROCKET SCIENCE
Photo: Jim Bridges
ROCKET SCIENCE
Resolved: an unpredictably delightful, funny, and touching coming of age story

Michael Moore with a British physician
in SICKO
Photo: The Weinstein Company
SICKO
Nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, and counting

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Photo: Nubar Alexanian/Sony Pictures Classics
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Errol Morris’s horror-doc is his best film in years

Jamie Gulpilil in TEN CANOES
Photo: Palm Pictures
TEN CANOES
Ancient personalities of the Australian bush come freshly alive in a uniquely guided tour

Pauline Malefane as Carmen
in U-CARMEN
Photo: Koch Lorber Films
U-CARMEN
The classic opera vibrantly transplanted to a South African township

Maurice (Peter O'Toole)
Jessie (Jodie Whittaker)
in VENUS
Photo: Nicola Dove
VENUS
Peter O’Toole headlines a cast of acting giants (plus one ingénue)

(Left to right) Lola Dueñas as Sole
Yohana Cobo as Paula &
Penélope Cruz as  Raimunda
in VOLVER
Photo: Emilio Pereda & Paola Ardizzoni/El Deseo
VOLVER
Lost (and found) in Almodóvar’s La Mancha

Sergeant Zack Bazzi training an
Iraqi policeman in THE WAR TAPES
Photo: SenArt Films & Scranton/Lacy Films
THE WAR TAPES
Our men in Fallujah: Three National Guardsmen's piquant point of view

Brothers Damien (Cillian Murphy) & Teddy (Pádraic Delaney)
in THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY
Photo: IFC First Take
THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY
Brother against brother - the birth of the Republic of Ireland



AFTER THE WEDDING
A wedding crasher asks, who’s your Danish daddy?

ALEXANDER THE LAST
Mumblecore avoids the mundane this time around

ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ
A refreshing, though evasive, look at the effects of war

THE APPRENTICE
Susan Sarandon’s little-seen 1971 nudie flick disappoints as a nudie and a flick

APRÈS LUI (AFTER HIM)
Catherine Deneuve faces an unspeakable loss

THE AURA
A taxidermist comes to life - through crime

BACKSTAGE
An even more twisted All Above Eve

BECKET
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

BLACK WHITE + GRAY: A PORTRAIT OF SAM WAGSTAFF AND ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE
Out of the closet and back in the limelight

BLACK GOLD
A jolting look at java that may make you think twice before going to Starbucks

BLACK SNAKE MOAN
Provocative Southern pulp potboiler of the taming of the sexy shrew

BLESSED BY FIRE
The devastating personal impact of the Falklands War, from the Argentinean point of view

BOBBY
An all-star Grand Hotel on the day Robert Kennedy was shot

BOYSTOWN (CHUECATOWN)
Sex, murder, and mayhem abound in this saucy Spanish screwball

THE BRIDGE
The world's most popular suicide destination

CANDY
Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as two beautiful junkies in love

CATCH A FIRE
Apartheid’s terrorism and freedom fighters in South Africa

THE CAVE OF THE YELLOW DOG
Little Ger on the Steppes

CHALK
The inner workings of high school teachers in a fond mockumentary of sorts

CLASS ACT
Art for our own sake

CLIMATES
Whether it’s summer or winter, the mood is always gloomy

CLOSE TO HOME
Two Israeli women soldiers bond on Jerusalem's frontline

COCAINE COWBOYS
A glib and glorifying look at Miami's cocaine economy

COLOR ME KUBRICK: A TRUE…ISH STORY
A mildly entertaining excursion into delusions of grandeur

COMEDY OF POWER
La petit inspector vs. the fat cats

COME EARLY MORNING
Ashley Judd, honky-tonks, and one-night stands

CONFETTI
Like TLC’s A Wedding Story, but on amphetamines

CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA
A profound history lesson on two of the country’s most notorious gangs

CRUDE IMPACT
A passionate look at the global impact of fossil fuel

CRUEL BUT NECESSARY
A middle-aged, single mom deals with life by videotaping it. All of it

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER
An opulent martial arts soap opera with Gong Li, severely beautiful

DAYS OF GLORY (INDIGÈNES)
A band of North African brothers fighting under the flag of France

THE DEAD GIRL
Straight to the point and hard-hitting

DEATH IN THE GARDEN
An adventure/survival story via Buñuel

DEATH OF A PRESIDENT
A fictional and eyebrow-raising “What if...”

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU
Dreary but dynamic, the Cannes 2005 Un Certain Regard winner

THE DESCENT
Six women explorers discover hell, two miles underground

DOG EAT DOG
The darker and grittier side of Hong Kong police thrillers

THE DRAGON PAINTER
Long before The Bridge on the River Kwai, Sessue Hayakawa was a heartthrob

DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH
The naked writer: Harlan Ellison

DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG
A boy-meets-girl tale, but boy-is-really-a-super-villain boy…

DRIVING LESSONS
Harold and Maude stripped of their eccentricities & reincarnated for family entertainment

EAST L.A. MARINE: THE UNTOLD TRUE STORY OF GUY GABALDON
The Sergeant York of World War II

EL CAMINO
On the road well traveled (and well trod)

EXTERMINATING ANGELS
A taboo-busting director, three obedient women, and one camera

FAMILY LAW
The Lost Embrace turns into a cuddle

FIRED!
What do you after getting fired by Woody Allen? Make a movie about it

FOLLOWING SEAN
A hippie-stoner boy from a notorious documentary grows up

FORGIVENESS
South Africa’s apartheid history is past and fully present in this tense melodrama

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Christopher Guest’s third satire about the business of acting

4
Come visit Russia, the unhappiest place on Earth!

FRATRICIDE
No escape from the past: Ethnic hostilities follow two Kurdish migrants in Germany

FREE ZONE
Natalie Portman as an American adrift in Jordan

F***
A documentary about everyone’s favorite expletive

FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS
Far from your typical biopic and far from successful

GABRIELLE
An elegant, but frosty, Isabelle Huppert vehicle

GAME 6
Will a Red Sox fan's losing streak ever end?

THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF SACHIKO HANAI
What you get when you mix soft-core Japanese porno with pseudo-intellectualism fused with political satire

GOD GREW TIRED OF US
Much like Lost Boys of Sudan, but tamer

GO FOR ZUCKER
1.1 million Germans have; the first German-Jewish comedy in decades

THE GOOD GERMAN
Another ambitious experiment from Steven Soderbergh, chock-full of ‘40’s Hollywood style

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
George Clooney's David & Goliath parable

GRAY MATTERS
A devoted sister realizes love is a many splendored sister-in-law

GRBAVICA: THE LAND OF MY DREAMS
Bosnian mother and daughter forge a separate peace

THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL
The Just-Alright New Middling

GROUNDHOG DAY: 15TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION
Bill Murray gets a chance to start life over again, over and over and over again

GUARDIAN OF THE FRONTIER
Three beautiful women on a camping trip, with a killer and their country on the loose

HACKING DEMOCRACY
Meet the woman some call the "Erin Brockovich of elections"

HALF NELSON
A case of arrested development for beloved teacher, not his troubled student

HELVETICA
Globalized by a font

HERBIE HANCOCK: POSSIBILITIES
The jazz great teams up with pop stars & up-and-comers

HER NAME IS SABINE
Before and after 5 years in an institution – an autistic woman's decline as shown through her sister's camera

HARSH TIMES
Starring Christian Bale, screenwriter David Ayer’s gritty directorial debut has power but not cohesion

THE HISTORY BOYS
The education of a lifetime

THE HOST
From the muck of the Han River to the mayhem on the streets of Seoul

IL DIVO
Murderous politics meet high style for this bio of the heir to Machiavelli

INFAMOUS
In Cold Blood revisited, take two

INLAND EMPIRE
A vast, expansive, challenging trip down the Lynch-hole

INTERVIEW
Starlet (Sienna Miller) turns the tables on journalist Steven Buscemi

IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS
Impressionistic splinters of the wreckage of Iraq

THE ITALIAN
A contemporary Russian Oliver Twist

JACK SMITH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS
A surprisingly lucid and entertaining tale of an obscure, unique underground American filmmaker

JAILBAIT
A wolf circles the fresh meat in the cellblock

JESUS CAMP
Documentary featuring an evangelical summer camp for kids

KEBAB CONNECTION
Wacky kung fu hijinks in Hamburg

KEEPING MUM
Maggie Smith as an amoral Mary Poppins

THE KING
Elvis is alive and dangerous

KUNG FU HUSTLE AXE-KICKN’ EDITION
As exuberant as kung fu movies get, an instant classic for die-hard genre buffs

LA MOUSTACHE
A somewhat compelling existential mystery, but way too satisfied with itself

LASSIE
The loyal collie lovingly comes home to the big screen

LAYER CAKE
British crime drama: Dry (wit) and stale

L'ENFANT
A spare parable of a grifter father offering his baby boy for sale

LEONARD COHEN: I'M YOUR MAN
Platitudinous patter & uneven performances

LOVE
Yugoslav hit-man/espionage tragedy set in New York City – here we go again!

LOVE SONGS (PAROLES ET MUSIQUE)
Catherine Deneuve & Michel LeGrand's music back together again in the synth-pop '80s

LUNACY
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad Marquis de Sade world

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
The dour 1966 Best Picture Oscar winner

MARIE ANTOINETTE
It's like, so Lost in Translation

MARRIED IN AMERICA 2
Five years after “I do”

THE METHOD
Big Brother meets Survivor in the board room

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS: 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Sodomy, brutality, hashish, & hope: Alan Parker’s sensational (in both ways) and career-making hit

MILLIONS: A LOTTERY STORY
A plodding homespun documentary of suddenly striking it rich

MISS POTTER
An Anglophile's treat: a picture-perfect tribute to the writer of The Tale of Peter Rabbit

MONGOLIAN PING PONG
Out of steppe: To a six-year-old boy, a ping pong ball is enchanting

MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN: THE IMMACULATE EDITION
The irreverent stroke of genius from the Pythons on a fresh DVD

MURIEL
Alain Resnais third film, where “Love affairs are like dinners. Some guests behave. Others don’t.”

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT
Marla Olmstead: From media darling to outcast, all by the age of five

THE NEW TWENTY
Is 30 really the new 20?

NIXON: THE ELECTION YEAR EDITION
Oliver Stone's director cut and a more nuanced film

NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Judi Dench is the cat to Cate Blanchett's mouse

NURSERY UNIVERSITY
A nail-biting look at Manhattan’s ultra-competitive nursery school admissions process

OFFSIDE
Where there is a will, there is always a way: a group of Iranian teenage girls disguise themselves as boys to see a forbidden soccer match

OLD JOY
When a friendship exceeds its shelf life

OPAL DREAM
Like Harvey, a girl's best friends are indispensable and invisible

OUR DAILY BREAD
This is where our food comes from

OVERLORD
The lead-up to D-Day, seen through the eyes of a greenhorn and riveting archival footage

THE PAINTED VEIL
An anti-septic love in the time of cholera

THE PANAMA DECEPTION
A cautionary tale of U.S. brutality and media manipulation during the 1989 invasion of Panama

PAPER DOLLS
Care attendants by day, drag performers by night

A PASSAGE TO INDIA
Heat and lust simmer in David Lean’s last film

PETER BEARD: SCRAPBOOKS FROM AFRICA AND BEYOND
Underground film star, photographer, raconteur (“If Michelanglo had a camera or Nikon he probably wouldn’t be chipping rock”)

THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES
The phantom of the diabolical opera

THE PIED PIPER OF HÜTZOVINA
Gypsy punk as something old, new, borrowed, and everything raucous

PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA
The story of how one of California's hottest vacation hotspots turned toxic

PLANET B-BOY
The gyration nation: a breakdancing tale

PLEASE VOTE FOR ME
Chinese third graders give democracy a try

THE PRISONER OR: HOW I PLANNED TO KILL TONY BLAIR
Eyewitness to the Kafka-esque nightmare of Abu Ghraib

PRIVATE PRACTICES: THE STORY OF A SEX SURROGATE
Case studies in sexual neuroses

THE PUSHER TRILOGY
Pulverizing crime pulp straight out of the mean streets of Copenhagen

PUZZLEHEAD
A subtle, low-budget Frankenstein story and a stark duality-of-man complex

QUINCEAÑERA
Two coming-outs: A 14-year-old Latina's debut & her macho cousin's self-acceptance

[REC]
The original Quarantine

REDBELT
Samurai-cum-fight film by Mamet (where everything in life is fixed)

REGULAR LOVERS
The Dreamers awakened: May fools, friends, and lovers of 1968

REQUIEM
The German retelling of the case that also inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Rip!: A REMIX MANIFESTO
Rest in peace, copyright laws

ROMÁNTICO
Documentary of migrant musician, crossing the Mexican border and back

ROMEO & JULIET GET MARRIED
Shakespeare's classic tragedy (now comedy) as told through the eyes of Brazil's crazed soccer fans

RUN GRANNY RUN
A 94-year-old woman goes to…Washington?

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS
It’s not that bad, really

SAAWARIYA
Dazzling eye candy is not enough to distract from the absurd in this Bollywood musical

SCREAMERS
Rockers System of a Down remember the Armenian genocide

THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS
Eccentric and atmospheric, Sarah Polley stars as a deaf factory work (but not a Dancer in the Dark)

SERAPHIM FALLS
Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan fight it out in the bloody West

SEOUL RAIDERS
An action movie with more bark than bite…and tons of music

SHOGUN ASSASSIN 2: LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH
A low-rent bloody samurai spectacle, more talk than action, more dullness than cohesion

SHORTBUS
"The most wonderful thing about New York - it's where people still come to get f***ed"

SHUT UP & SING
The remark heard around the world

SPARE PARTS
Human trafficking and hangovers in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Slovenia

STAGEDOOR
The theater camp that inspired Camp gets its own spotlight

STANLEY KRAMER FILM COLLECTION
Dr. Seuss set to music, Southern angst, biker Brando, Vivien Leigh’s last hurrah, and Hepburn & Tracy

STEEP
A history of things you should not try at home

STONED
Rolling Stone guitarist Brian Jones' life in the fast lane

STRANGER THAN FICTION
One character in search of his author

SWEETLAND
Mail-order bride on the prairie

TAXI DRIVER: LIMITED COLLECTOR’S EDITION
Scorsese’s iconic loner, wanting what he can’t have and having what he doesn’t want

TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER
Shoot 'em up day-glo pulp from Thailand

10 ITEMS OR LESS
A Morgan Freeman trifle, but an fun enjoyable trifle all the same

THINGS TO DO
Garden State in Canada

13 TZAMETI
Fatalistic thriller, well calibrated like a trap

3 NEEDLES
If These Walls Could Talk 3: AIDS

THE TIGER AND THE SNOW
The frantic funnyman Robert Benigni and his straight man, the war in Iraq

THE TREATMENT
The ego and the id attempt romance in Upper Manhattan

UNCONSCIOUS (INCONSCIENTES)
I Heart huckabees travels to Spain

AN UNREASONABLE MAN
Ralph Nader: Egotism or earnestness?

THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON
The showdown between the ex-Beatle and the White House

VERDICT ON AUSCHWITZ: THE FRANKFURT AUSCHWITZ TRIAL 1963-1965
The historic, but not well known, trial of West Germany vs. death camp officers

VIOLETTE
Huppert's homicidal hooker in knee socks

WERE THE WORLD MINE
High School Musical comes out of the closet

THE WEST WITTERING AFFAIR
An improvised sex comedy – as raw and organic as the vegetables covering the naughty bits

WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY?
“We’re addicted, and we’re conflicted; we’re hypnotized, and consumerized.”

WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?
Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth in a predictable but moving father and son reunion

WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES
That's when the thriller's heroine remembers crimes of the past

WHO THE $#%& IS JACKSON POLLOCK?
A scrappy Dumpster-diver extraordinaire takes on the art world establishment

WONDROUS OBLIVION
Coming of age with a calypso beat and a cricket bat

WRANGLER: ANATOMY OF AN ICON
Tell-all bio-doc on the gay porn star Jack Wrangler

THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING
“Who hasn’t got a bad reputation in Egypt,” especially in this potboiler?

YANG BAN XI: THE 8 MODEL WORKS
The all-singing, all-dancing Cultural Revolution

YOU'RE GONNA MISS ME
A casualty of the Summer of Love is rescued by family love


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