Email Author Michael Atkinson

2006 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Prophecies Fulfilled in a Cerebral, Caustic American Classic

  published February 28, 2006

  Two decades later, this iconic American New Wave renegade text is even more startling than it once was—was Hollywood ever this cerebral, this... More >>

• Déjà Vu

  published February 28, 2006

  For the 11th time, Lincoln Center's annual cross-section survey of what's current and courant in French cinema focuses on the native work likely... More >>

• A Whimsical Stand Against Corporate Animation

  published February 28, 2006

  Oscar-winner, New Yorker profilee, and international name above the title, Hayao Miyazaki is the one-man standing answer to the American... More >>

• Man's Favorite Sport

  published February 21, 2006

  Slowly, we're catching up with the Korean New Wave's answer to the love child Antonioni and Hou Hsiao-hsien never had: If Hong Sang-soo's elusive... More >>

• Do the Wright Thing

  published February 21, 2006

  Post–9-11 issues we're still working through in our pop culture: horror, trauma, phobic dread, vengeful rage, xenophobia, war-zone nostalgia,... More >>

• The Grandest—and Most Existential—of Colonialist Epics

  published February 21, 2006

  A fascinating whatsit never released in the United States, Valerio Zurlini's 1976 adaptation of the revered 1938 Dino Buzzati novel by the same... More >>

• Aging Hollywood Hack Attempts Clumsy B Movie

  published February 21, 2006

  Saying 16 Blocks is Richard Donner's least flatulent, most efficient film is tantamount to saying that Donner's work usually makes me want... More >>

• To Reality and Back: Classic and Contemporary French Documentaries

  published February 21, 2006

  Prefacing the Walter Reade's annual French cinema "Rendez-Vous," this mini-retro of classic and modern docs must begin inevitably with Jean Vigo's... More >>

• 'Al Otro Lado'

  published February 21, 2006

  A competent, earnest ethnographic video doc that never quite rises above its own best intentions, Natalia Almada's Al Otro Lado ( To... More >>

• Media Blackout on Provocative Director Lifts

  published February 21, 2006

  Possessor of one of the most provocative 40-year careers in current moviedom, Peter Watkins may be finally emerging from behind what has been in... More >>

• Gasoline on Fire: Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh

  published February 21, 2006

  Vincent van Gogh has become as much of a biohistorical Rorschach blot as Joan of Arc—was he a tortured romantic, an art martyr, or an... More >>

• Men at Work

  published February 14, 2006

  In this country as in no other, we have difficulty regarding elective politics as much more than a wrestling match between loudmouths, the... More >>

• Sand and Sun

  published February 14, 2006

  Call it art-film nostalgia, but every newly forgotten, newly resurrected "classic" from the post-Truman era of international cinema still looks as... More >>

• Flabby White Guys Wrestling With Racism

  published February 14, 2006

  For the august age of civil rights documentaries comes this serious, confrontational 1967 Oscar nominee, selected last year by the Library of... More >>

• Deeper Throat

  published February 7, 2006

  Just when you thought there might be little or nothing new under the projector-beam sun, Carlos Reygadas's Battle in Heaven ker-blams into... More >>

• The Far Side of the World

  published February 7, 2006

  In its sixth incarnation, the "Film Comment Selects" series serves as something like a film-festival filtering system, scanning last year's global... More >>

• Intimate Bach Piece Finds the Primal Essence of Cinema

  published February 7, 2006

  The European art film may have never come this close to being a non-movie—and to summoning the nascent force of cinema as a primal... More >>

• A Unique Puppet-Theater Universe

  published February 7, 2006

  Certain varietals of grandly gestured cinema inspire crazed, indecipherable, passionate devotion among cinephiles: The films of Welles, Oph Sirk,... More >>

• Fire Bomb

  published January 31, 2006

  Figuring we spend February either catching up with Oscar nominees or never leaving home at all, studios use the season to empty their lots of... More >>

• What's Up, Docs: MOMA's Sixth Annual Nonfiction Festival

  published January 31, 2006

  A meaty buffet of current documentary filmmaking like MOMA's annual retro is as ripe a place as any to examine what's gone drearily wrong and,... More >>

• 'La Scorta'

  published January 24, 2006

  Whimsically re-released, this tense, all-business 1993 thriller may be the only action film ever made about the prevention of violence.... More >>

• 'What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole'

  published January 24, 2006

  Essentially a repackaged, extended director's cut of 2004's minor specialty hit What the Bleep Do We Know!?, this two-hour semi-doc is a... More >>

• A Black-Velvet Comedy for Modern Tweens

  published January 24, 2006

  Tim Burton's success at molding his devotion to old pulp into cooler-than-cool marketing triumph may have peaked with this co-directed (with Mike... More >>

• Binge-Drinking and Despair in Hong's Dour Love Triangle

  published January 17, 2006

  Sensationally pulpy as Korean films tend to be, the New Wave has room at least for one art-film maker: Hong Sang-soo, whose angsty, elusive 1998... More >>

• Welcome to the Doll Factory

  published January 17, 2006

  The circumstances surrounding the genesis and delivery of Steven Soderbergh's new film Bubble—shot on hi-def as the first of six... More >>