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Interview: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Alejandro G. Iñárritu is never one to pull punches, in his films or in conversation. From the horrific dogfight scenes of his 2000 feature debut, Amores Perros, to his recent characterization of...
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Deep Focus: Blackhat
Blackhat, a suspense spectacle about the hunt for a hacker who sabotaged a Chinese nuclear plant and manipulated soy futures on Chicago’s Mercantile Trade Exchange, should be a prize Michael Mann...
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Film of the Week: Gangs of Wasseypur
Late in the five-hour-and-20-minute Indian crime epic Gangs of Wasseypur, the elderly politician and crime lord Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia) asks his minions why they think he is still alive when...
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Review: Medeas
How much can you alter a time-honored story before it becomes something else entirely and loses its distinctive power? The irksome answer to this question lurks behind the haunting, frequently...
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Interview: Peter Strickland
Peter Strickland knows how to create self-contained miniaturist dreamscapes (real or not) in which submissive types can luxuriate in masochistic misery. As the oppressed, manipulated sound recordist...
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Review: Cake
Twenty-first-century Bad Girls come in two basic kinds: the evil beauties of noir who get away with it, and the hags who scorn the niceties of grooming and sex appeal and let themselves go. Rosamund...
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Interview: Shlomi Elkabetz
Directed by Israeli brother-and-sister team Schlomi and Ronit Elkabetz, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem zeroes in on one woman’s attempt to obtain a divorce from her husband in a rabbinical court....
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Deep Focus: The Humbling
Barry Levinson’s The Humbling is frisky and buoyant, with laughs that bubble up unpredictably, often when you least expect them. It’s also improbably moving, especially considering how irreverent it...
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Film of the Week: The Duke of Burgundy
OK, so it’s a little more complicated, but in effect, the pitch for The Duke of Burgundy could be the old joke about the sadist and the masochist. The sadist stands toying with a whip, while the...
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Bombast: True Enough
“There’s the story of the old Irish biddy, to whom the neighbors came for a coffee klatch and said, ‘Is this story true about the young widow up the street?’ She said, ‘It’s not true, but it’s true...
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Interview: Abderrahmane Sissako
In the West, Timbuktu has historically been a synonym for a far-flung or mythical locale. Yet the real Malian city is about as far from an Orientalist Vegas as one could get: a trading post that...
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Film Comment Selects: Nils Malmros
Six films by Nils Malmros will screen—with Malmros appearing in person—February 27 through March 1 as part of Film Comment Selects at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. 1. Pain of Love It’s...
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Film of the Week: Hard to Be a God
The late Russian director Aleksei German once declared: “I am not interested in anything but the possibility of building a world, an entire civilization from scratch.” He achieved his ambition in his...
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Deep Focus: Timbuktu
Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu is bracingly original and unexpected—a welcome shock to the system for American moviegoers who’ve grown used to seeing prosaic melodrama in topical or...
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Bombast: 2014: The Year We Made Content
I’m not late; everyone else was early. And what’s a “year,” anyhow? As we deal with it in end-of-year list-making, it’s the domestic release calendar, a construct imposed by distributors and...
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Sundance Interview: Lily Tomlin
“I don’t have an anger problem,” Elle Reed, played by Lily Tomlin, assures her granddaughter after berating an uppity barista in Grandma. “I have a problem with assholes.” Infusing a naturalistic...
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Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York
William Greaves: “Now, a lot black people feel that our reactions to various events that go on here in America are totally reactive. We never seem to initiate things. Black power never seems to have a...
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Sundance Interview: Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin’s phantasmagoric opus, The Forbidden Room, comes packaged with a warning: “Stay safe, and have fun!” reads the filmmaker’s statement in the press notes. Working with co-director Evan...
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Deep Focus: The Voices
It’s no surprise that Ryan Reynolds is splendid and unsettling as a wholesome-looking serial killer in Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices. This perennially underrated actor has one extraordinary specialty....
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