A Poet

Jan 12, 2010 — 8½: a bizarre and puzzling title, but one precisely appropriate for this film, which announces in its first frame that modernism has reached the cinema. If the mark of modernism in art is self-reference, 8½ surely goes beyond any predecessor...

Feb 22, 2009 — “Let me have men about me that are fat.” —Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2 Just as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe admired small, brave men who stick to their principles, I like—in the movies at least—heavyset, flamboyant types who walk...

Nov 19, 2008 — Albert Lamorisse’s principled balancing of objective fact with childish wish fulfillment results in a new, paradoxical genre—the documentary of dreams.

From artistically refined epics to gory, pulpy spectacles, these films showcase the richness of a uniquely Japanese action subgenre.

Jun 23, 2008 — Five years of increasingly horrific news from the former Yugoslavia made Milcho Manchevski’s searing yet lyrical film timely to a degree that few filmmakers have ever achieved.

May 12, 2008 — This intensely personal work about a self-destructive young man would help alleviate Louis Malle’s doubts about his career.

Jan 21, 2008 — Lindsay Anderson’s adaptation of David Storey’s novel is a clenched fist of a movie that follows a professional Rugby League player who instinctively channels feeling through physical aggression.

Jan 21, 2008 — Married thrice and divorced from all of his wives at a time in Western culture when such marital fluctuation was rare, the playwright August Strindberg undoubtedly used his own dramatic life as a sourcebook.

Aug 20, 2007 — David Mamet’s debut film was a welcome throwback to the primacy of character and careful story construction, at a time when narrative intricacy was in short supply on American movie screens.

Dec 4, 2006 — A companion piece to Grey Gardens, this documentary stands on its own as a portrait of two women creatively passing the time as Rome burns.