One Against the World

Nov 3, 2009 — If ever there was a European art film that could be all things to all people, it’s Wim Wenders’s 1987 masterpiece.

Aug 19, 2009 — I Am Waiting: Port of Call The year: 1957. The city: Yokohama, not far from the piers. The sound of the tide softly lapping against stones in the darkness, cubes of black ice in a tumbler of foam. Night. Rain....

Jan 14, 2009 — Gregory Nava, with his writing partner and producer, Anna Thomas, made the courageous decision to tell their story of a cold-war battleground from the point-of-view of the colonized “natives,” eschewing an English-speaking protagonist.

Jan 21, 2008 — In September 1997, I saw Agnès Varda introduce a brand-new 35 mm print of her first feature film, La Pointe Courte (made in 1954), to an admiring audience at Yale University. More astonishing than the luminous black-and-white images was Varda’s...

Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s subversion of the samurai movie possesses the same gritty, stark realism with regard to imagery and body count, yet the tone is decidedly comic.

May 9, 2005 — Les Blank’s documentary examines the interaction of premodern tribal existence with European modernity, epitomized by a movie narrative about the invidious clash of brute nature and a singular ego bent on his own mission of cultural enlightenment.

Apr 28, 2003 — The fourth installment in François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel saga is a comedy about marriage, the desire to escape it, and the craftiness involved in running from one’s own desires.

May 12, 2001 — Bertrand Tavernier’s adaptation is the story of a saintly madman in a world where the concepts of good and evil have no meaning.

Jan 29, 2001 — Masahiro Shinoda’s historical drama uses traditional elements of Japanese theater to explore the tension between ethics and eroticism.

Dec 4, 1995 — While Carol Reed’s psychological noir is the most compassionate of movies, it’s a poetic summary of twentieth century harshness—of what can be called the inhuman condition.