Email Author Michael Atkinson

2011 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• The Limits of Free Love in Deep End

  published December 14, 2011

  A phantom film for more than three decades over a rights issue and only now redelivered to screens, Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End (1970)... More >>

• The Yellow Sea

  published November 30, 2011

  Treating crime drama like a death cage tournament, this rousing, dark-hearted Korean epic doesn’t know quite when to stop once... More >>

• King of Devil’s Island

  published November 16, 2011

  A brooding, evocative Norwegian juvie-hell drama set in 1915, Marius Holst’s movie lands us in a fresh locale: secluded, wintery... More >>

• London Boulevard

  published November 9, 2011

  The gift William Monahan gets from the gods for winning his Departed-screenplay Oscar, this bristly Brit noir has a slick and dazzling... More >>

• Charlotte Rampling: The Look

  published November 2, 2011

  "A self-portrait through others,” as it’s subtitled, this conversational hall of mirrors never takes its microscope off the... More >>

• Killing Bono

  published November 2, 2011

  It seems like an inspired riff: a biopic not about a rock star’s tumultuous and destined rise to fame and fortune, but about his school... More >>

• My Reincarnation

  published October 26, 2011

  A mellow doc that seems all set to cash in on the “spirituality” market, Jennifer Fox’s new film was actually in production for... More >>

• 13

  published October 26, 2011

  Géla Babluani's 13 Tzameti (2005) is a superb, disconcerting, seismic French nightmare in a minor key, and so, of course,... More >>

• A Trucker's Bizarre Drive, Chaos at Every Turn, in My Joy

  published September 28, 2011

  Imagine the early, hellaciously bleak work of Cormac McCarthy transposed to the corrupt outlands of modern Russia and/or Ukraine and composed with... More >>

• Mossad Retiree Helen Mirren Can't Escape Her Nazi-Catching Past in The Debt

  published August 31, 2011

  A remake of the far more brisk 2007 Israeli film with a bullpen of aging stars, this rather old-fashioned espionage drama seems deftly... More >>

• Painted Wasteland: Antonioni's Red Desert at BAM

  published August 31, 2011

  Swoon, ye 21st-century philistines, before the cataract of existential glamour that is Antonioni's Il deserto rosso, its title somehow... More >>

• Mock-doc Horror Endures in Atrocious

  published August 17, 2011

  A Spanish Blair Witch DIY-er with a nutsy pre-emptive title, this trifle scoots and skitters along guilelessly, as if the mock-doc... More >>

• Impolex: A Lot of Mumbling at the End of This Rainbow

  published July 13, 2011

  Impolex (2009) is a DIY nano-indie shot entirely in the Vermont woods, and for a few minutes you think you’ve got your mitts... More >>

• New York Asian Film Fest 2011: As Nuts As Ever

  published June 29, 2011

  Ah, the pungent odor, the fermented esprit, the sulfurous insanity of the New York Asian Film Fest! It’s a new year for the city’s... More >>

• The Perfect Host: This Party Is Not Going Well

  published June 29, 2011

  Something like the beau ideal for fussy, aging, Pinot-sipping demi-queers everywhere, David Hyde Pierce makes this gimmick indie his... More >>

• Terrorist or Activist? Daniel McGowan and the ELF in If a Tree Falls

  published June 22, 2011

  A true-life outlaw tale as stirring as it is tragic, the story of the Earth Liberation Front offers a DeLillo-flavored draught of high-proof... More >>

• Leap Year a Brutal Study in Being Alone

  published June 22, 2011

  Serotonin depletion is a common metabolic state in Mexican movies, but this unsettling indie, the debut of an Australian-born writer living in... More >>

• Reindeerspotting: A Junkie's Tale

  published June 8, 2011

  Junkies are junkies wherever you go, and in this gonzo doc, the ashen, frigid cityscapes of Finland are home to a busy tribe of thieving... More >>

• The 'Epic' Tale of a Chinese Dynasty in Empire of Silver

  published June 1, 2011

  This year's "sweeping" post-post-Fifth-Gen Chinese epic, Empire of Silver is filthy with luxuriant clichés, from the sun-roasted... More >>

• Dirty Old Town: A Low-Budget Ode to No-Budget NY

  published May 25, 2011

  Just as sidewalk wackos aren’t being completely gentrified out of downtown anytime soon, so the post-post-Scorsese hangout Village indie... More >>

• This Is Your Movie on Drugs: Lord Byron

  published May 4, 2011

  Based, it’s said, on some kind of true story, Louisiana native boy Zack Godshall’s languid, toxically goofy little indie... More >>

• Kids Do the Darndest Things: Navigating War, Soccer in The Colors of the Mountain

  published May 4, 2011

  Movie-wise, Colombia is nothing if not a ready-made arena for Everyman-vs.-social-strife gladiatorial engagement, and this earnest debut homes... More >>

• Teenage Girl Meets Adult Self, Disappointment Ensues, in We Go Way Back

  published April 27, 2011

  The 2006 debut of Seattle indie queen Lynn Shelton (My Effortless Brilliance, Humpday), this earnest, inventive micro-drama... More >>

• Patricio Guzman Refuses to Forget the Bloody Past

  published March 30, 2011

  Plenty of major doc-makers have dedicated themselves to being portraitists of their homelands, but no one has done it as relentlessly and... More >>

• Wrecked: An Absorbing Trapped-Actor Micro-Thriller

  published March 30, 2011

  Yet another trapped-actor micro-thriller, this raw-nerved indie opens with shuddering organic close-ups too abstracted for comfort. Director... More >>