Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films
Released Theatrically and on DVD/Home Video
June 2010
Last Updated June 30, 2010
Not to Be Overlooked:
AJAMI
ANGEL OF MINE
TERRIBLY HAPPY
THE WHITE RIBBON
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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
THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS Shooting time’s arrow through sand, sail and the
French New Wave
BEAUFORT Just following orders has heightened meaning for retreating Israeli soldiers
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
BODY OF WAR An inspiring account of one Iraq veteran’s tragedy
THE COVE Swimming like dolphins, activists can be heroes
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY No My Left Foot retread (My Left Eye ?), but a exceptional, inventive, and, yes, inspirational film adaptation
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
EYES WIDE OPEN Black hats, fast heartbeats in Brokeback
Jerusalem
FISH TANK Everybody wants to escape, or do they?
FORBIDDEN LIE$ An authentic documentary about a real fake
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS A horror film of a different sort
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN The French girl who cried wolf
GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON He came, he saw, he wrote the death of the
American dream
HARLAN: IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SÜSS Springtime for Hitler and Germany – and winter for director
Veit Harlan’s family
THE HURT LOCKER The war in Iraq: the action movie
I FOR INDIA Watching another family’s home movies has rarely been this engaging
IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS Looking
for love where you look for furniture
INTIMATE ENEMIES The battles in Algeria
I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND Life is absurd: Chaplinesque misadventures in wartime
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
LONDON TO BRIGHTON An unsentimental journey well worth the ride
LOOT An incredible and absorbing scavenger hunt for
wartime bounty
LOST IN BEIJING Bribes, kidnapping, ménage a quatre, and social criticism
MAFIOSO Grooming the groom of the mob
MARRIED LIFE Pulpy comedy of martial manners and mayhem
MID-AUGUST LUNCH A
well-aged Italian comedy
MOTHER Mother always knows
best
MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH Desperate housewife leads life of quiet desperation on tape
NORTH FACE Climb every mountain
OF TIME AND THE CITY An excavation of Liverpool unearths more than just old memories
OPERATION FILMMAKER An ill-fated American exercise in charity
THE ORDER OF MYTHS We’re all going to the Mardi Gras – separately and not equally
PERSEPOLIS No jewelry, no Iron Maiden, and no booze: growing up,
veiled, in the Islamic Republic of Iran
THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA A wonderful, comprehensive trip through reality,
fantasy, desire, and all three intertwined
PLEASE GIVE Director Nicole
Holofcener's smart, caustic comedy
PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL Apartheid dawns and wakes up Indian women
THE RAPE OF EUROPA Hitler’s ravenous plundering of the great works of Western art
REVANCHE Even in the bucolic country, urban violence lurks
A ROOM AND A HALF Home is never far for exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky
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
A SECRET The memories of French Jews live again,
beautifully
THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN The
family ties that lovingly bind and gag
SÉRAPHINE Inside the mad outsider art of a French modern
primitive
A SERIOUS MAN Jews past, present, and future haunt the Minnesota suburbs with
more laughter than tears
SEX POSITIVE An honest look at the first wave of the AIDS
crisis and one of the gay community’s unsung heroes
SNOW ANGELS David Gordon Green's beautiful, poignant American tragedy
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING In the winter of a literary life, a new bloom
STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME Love kept them together while their whole world went to hell
STILL WALKING Still eating, still not talking, still not
getting any younger, still family
STORM Top-notch war crimes courtroom drama
SUGAR A
story of a newcomer from a couple of newcomers themselves
SUMMER ‘04 A sauntering and simmering seaside squall
SWEETGRASS Take a
stunning ride on a time machine to the Old West
TERROR’S ADVOCATE Spellbinding connecting of the dots of international terrorism
TETRO
Coppola’s very personal comeback
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
TROUBLE THE WATER A rapper witnesses the eye of the storm that doesn’t
stop
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA Woody’s trip to Spain, full of romance and sharp characters
WALTZ WITH BASHIR War in Lebanon remembered as a cartoonish
nightmare of a nightmare reality
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
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
AMERICAN CANNIBAL Would you greenlight a competitive reality show
involving starvation and cannibalism?
AWAY FROM HER With much grace, actress Sarah Polley makes an inspired directorial debut
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
CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY A Hollywood golden and gay couple
THE COUNTERFEITERS The morality of surviving in a Nazi concentration camp
DELIVER US FROM EVIL A searing documentary of a sexual abuse scandal within
the Catholic Church
HOT FUZZ The makers and
stars of Shaun of the Dead return for another parody – taking on action/buddy flicks
JINDABYNE The submerged disturbances and the fragile bonds
between couples, friends, and a community
JOSHUA Postpartum paranoia for mom, an ass kicking for dad
KILLER OF SHEEP A little-seen classic of African-American life beautifully reborn
LE PETIT LIEUTENANT A stark cop drama with an emotional backbone
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA Clint Eastwood's incisive samurai/World War II
epic
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE Family values and the American lack thereof
THE LIVES OF OTHERS Orwellian and voyeuristic East German
cat-and-mouse thriller set in, appropriately, 1984
A MIGHTY HEART Star power propels Michael Winterbottom’s political drama
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
PAN'S LABYRINTH The fantastic and the fascist: A Spanish young girl's flight into fantasy under Franco
POISON FRIENDS A cutthroat paper chase where words are weapons
THE QUEEN Baffled lies the head that wears the crown
RESCUE DAWN A Vietnam POW epic Herzog style – and one of the most gripping movies in years
ROCKET SCIENCE Resolved: an unpredictably delightful, funny, and touching coming of age
story
SICKO Nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, and counting
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE Errol Morris’s horror-doc is his best film in years
TEN CANOES Ancient personalities of the Australian bush come
freshly alive in a uniquely guided tour
U-CARMEN The classic opera vibrantly transplanted to a South African township
VENUS Peter O’Toole headlines a cast of acting giants (plus one ingénue)
VOLVER Lost (and found) in Almodóvar’s La Mancha
THE WAR TAPES Our men in Fallujah: Three National Guardsmen's piquant point of view
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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