Email Author Michael Atkinson

2012 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Yelling to the Sky

  published December 12, 2012

  A heavy-handed, Precious-manqué teen-tribulation indie, Victoria Mahoney's Yelling to the Sky plops us down in an unlikely... More >>

• Heleno Is Defeated by Movie Formula

  published December 5, 2012

  Brazilian soccer demigod Heleno de Freitas comes packing a résumé irresistible to biopic-makers: stunning good looks, unbeatable... More >>

• Otelo Burning

  published November 28, 2012

  An earnest, unthinking, life-is-beautiful global indie of the sort Miramax used to scarf up by the dozens every year, this South African ditty... More >>

• La Rafle

  published November 14, 2012

  A standard-issue mezzobrow Holocaust melodrama of the sort you'd have thought Roberto Benigni had assassinated, this popular French film... More >>

• Buffalo Girls

  published November 14, 2012

  There's no underestimating man's beetle-browed jones to exploit anything and anyone small and weak for fun and profit, so perhaps it's no... More >>

• With The The First Time, Teen Romance Seems New Again

  published October 17, 2012

  Objectively, what the world needs now is another teen-romance-slash-virginity-loss dramedy like we need a hole in our collective movie heads.... More >>

• Wuthering Heights: Black Like Me

  published October 3, 2012

  British filmmaker Andrea Arnold's remarkable new adaptation of Wuthering Heights comes packing some redoubtable weapons, including the... More >>

• Solomon Kane

  published September 26, 2012

  Nobody seemed to have faith in this benighted, Robert E. Howard–based sword-and-sorcery demi-epic, which is three years old, has already... More >>

• The Double Steps (Los Pasos Dobles)

  published September 26, 2012

  A bedeviling, blithe Spanish meta-film shot entirely in the dunes and cliff villages of Mali, The Double Steps begins with the tale of... More >>

• About About Cherry

  published September 19, 2012

  The new, semi-gritty indie About Cherry is all about a semi-reluctant slide into the porn industry, and it's also the first mainstream... More >>

• Arbitrage

  published September 12, 2012

  Slick and grown-up as Richard Gere himself, this intricate fiscal thriller takes a dead bead on extreme privilege, with Gere's Madoff-like... More >>

• The Manzanar Fishing Club

  published September 12, 2012

  A charming if tone-deaf pro-am doc edited on someone's Mac, Cory Shiozaki's film slices out yet another unexplored layer of bizarre World War... More >>

• Branded

  published September 12, 2012

  Are we being bamboozled? Released with minimum print ads, no review screenings, and an outrageously misleading TV trailer, this forsaken... More >>

• For Ellen

  published September 5, 2012

  The method-y, elfin-brooder, hipster-star-of-the-moment Paul Dano has four movies out this year, but here is his one-man show, a... More >>

• Little Birds

  published August 29, 2012

  The first feature from gang member/punk rocker/semi-notorious homeless-kid-turned-Sundance-protégé Elgin James, this polished but... More >>

• Brother, Can You Spare a Dollar

  published August 15, 2012

  A well-meaning amateur doc apparently shot with a camcorder and assembled on an old Mac with Final Cut Express, Hoffman’s home-movie-ish... More >>

• The Bourne Legacy: Who's the New Guy?

  published August 8, 2012

  The Bourne films have more than just overstayed their welcome and outlasted the Ludlum books—they've been Van Halenized, with an... More >>

• Almayer's Folly

  published August 8, 2012

  One of the year's most hypnotic and fascinating films, Chantal Akerman's newest is a provocative adaptation of Conrad's novel of the same name,... More >>

• Max et les Ferrailleurs

  published August 8, 2012

  A rather bizarre genre film from erratic extra-New Wave auteur Claude Sautet, this 1971 policier pivots on Michel Piccoli as a necktie detective... More >>

• Dreams of a Life

  published August 1, 2012

  This investigative doc prods into a profoundly mysterious social cavity—the case of Joyce Vincent, a 38-year-old woman whose skeletonized... More >>

• Takashi Miike's Epic Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai Might Be His Best Film Yet

  published July 18, 2012

  The transformation might be complete: The crap-and-gore, genre-mincing Tasmanian devil of Asian pulp psychosis Takashi Miike we’ve come... More >>

• 'Universal 100': Better Than the Studio Tour

  published July 11, 2012

  This is what you get when you retro a major Hollywood studio's centennial—a Mall of America–size grab bag of indulgences, leaving... More >>

• Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours

  published July 11, 2012

  The most absolutely bullshit-free cinema experience you’ll have in 2012, this epic-length Thai documentary takes the observational jungle... More >>

• The Imposter

  published July 11, 2012

  This deft, atmospheric Errol Morris–style tour through the phenomenon that is “serial imposter” Frédéric Bourdin... More >>

• The Do-Deca-Pentathlon

  published July 4, 2012

  The ubiquitous Duplass brothers, those micro godheads of post-mumble indies, stoke the furnace of sibling tension in this single-minded but... More >>