Email Author Michael Atkinson

2002 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Naked Ambition

  published August 6, 2002

  Asia Argento's Scarlet Diva is not what you'd expect of a writing-directing debut by an internationally adored movie starlet, but it's... More >>

• Tried and True

  published July 30, 2002

  This year's Stuart Byron Quiz wreath goes to erstwhile runner-up Andrew Grant of Brooklyn, edging out Ed Gonzalez of Weehawken and Mitchell Katz... More >>

• Ursine Minor

  published July 30, 2002

  Finally, it's happened: a movie based upon a theme park exhibit rather than the reverse. Extrapolated from Disney World's lifeless but... More >>

• Yang + Yin

  published July 23, 2002

  Before Lan Yu, his new melancholy gay tragi-romance, veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan had gone completely undistributed in this... More >>

• After the Fall

  published July 16, 2002

  The Bui brothers—Timothy and Tony, the Silicon Valley-bred Vietnamese brothers behind Three Seasons and the new Green... More >>

• Tragical Mystery Tours

  published July 9, 2002

  To judge by the culture we see, the capitalist fields of East Asia—predominantly Japan, Taiwan, and Korea—are enduring magma slides of... More >>

• The Way We Laughed

  published July 2, 2002

  Since it's a given that Adam Sandler movies are the skivvie skid marks of modern American cinema, and that reviewing them is akin to quantifying... More >>

• Up the Academy

  published June 25, 2002

  Say what you will, James Toback has held faith with his convictions. For more than a quarter- century (if you count his script for 1974's... More >>

• Screen Test 2002

  published June 25, 2002

  This year's Stuart Byron Movie Trivia Quiz again strives to raise the bar of cinemanic savoir faire above the redoubtable cheat resources of the... More >>

• I Am Not Sam

  published June 18, 2002

  Continuing the post-Reagan-era tendency of American movies to patronize and romanticize the mentally impaired, David S. Goyer's ZigZag... More >>

• Stray Dogs

  published June 11, 2002

  Ten years on, American independent moviemakers seem to have come to terms with the anxiety of Quentin Tarantino's influence—the... More >>

• Flights of Clancy

  published June 4, 2002

  The political zinger zone of Tom Clancy might just be the slyest of Pentagon pop-prop delivery systems—righteous naïveté draped... More >>

• Plastic Fantastic

  published June 4, 2002

  One of the most inspired subjects for a metro-retro in years (BAMcinématek, June 7 through 28), Frantisek Vlácil was, with just a... More >>

• Where the Summer Goes

  published May 28, 2002

  Fashioned one frame at a time, animated film is at once obsessive and naturally congenial, and as rediscovered video rarities go, Lotte Reiniger's... More >>

• Double Jeopardy

  published May 28, 2002

  For yet another movie striving to locate amusement and sentimental solace in the shenanigans of the mentally disabled, the Norwegian soaper... More >>

• Reproductive Rites

  published May 14, 2002

  To answer the most pressing question first: Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), now a teenager on his way to becoming Darth Vader, does not... More >>

• Swim Back to Me

  published April 30, 2002

  For a culture in which the vision and craft of septuagenarians have never been less newsworthy, Shohei Imamura's buoyant, embraceable new... More >>

• Extreme Noise Terror

  published April 23, 2002

  Responsible for last year's Tsui Hark and Korean-movie meteor showers, the Subway Cinema collective once again vents the glorious force of... More >>

• Dishonor Among Thieves

  published April 16, 2002

  An unpretentious drill through the stations of Mametian grift, the Argentine film Nine Queens begins portentously: Juan, a young scam... More >>

• Lost in Nowheresville, U.S.A.

  published April 9, 2002

  Whether of the supernatural or merely twisted-human species, the modern horror film only leaves teeth marks when it bothers to chew over the... More >>

• Three Women and an Organ

  published April 2, 2002

  "When I say that I know women," Thackeray wrote, "I mean that I know that I don't know them." Would that first-time Brit filmmaker John McKay were... More >>

• Ace in the Hole

  published April 2, 2002

  What other Hollywood artisan better endured and represented the tumult and cynical narrative of the 20th century than Billy Wilder? Succumbing... More >>

• Story of a Woman

  published March 26, 2002

  "There was no real border," Isabelle Huppert says of her new film, The Piano Teacher, "between the movie as we made it and life." Ain't... More >>

• Bear Market

  published March 26, 2002

  You couldn't ask for a more revealing, asinine, appalling portrait of American power at work in the fields of self-justification than the Bohemian... More >>

• Redeem Upon Purchase

  published March 19, 2002

  Terry Zwigoff's Crumb may be the preeminent hagiographic bio-doc, complicating our view of a cultural icon while awakening us to why he... More >>