Reviews

• 
  The Box

  Constrained and restrained, the Donnie Darko director's latest is a hollow package

  The secret is out. Warner Bros. waited to unwrap The Box until two days before its opening because, compared to its madcap predecessors—the psychotic Holden Caulfield update Donnie Darko and the delirious welcome-to-the-21st-century...

  By J. Hoberman

  Tuesday, November 03

  The secret is out. Warner Bros. waited to unwrap The Box until two days before its opening because, compared to its madcap predecessors—the... More >>
• 
  The Men Who Stare at Goats

  We don't mean to sound paranoid, but: Did aliens abduct George Clooney's sense of humor?

  Historical cataclysm produces conspiratorial thinking: Germany's loss in World War I, the JFK assassination, and 9/11 are all naturally understood as the stuff of unimaginable plots, unspeakable cover-ups, and unseen forces.

  The guys who made...

  By J. Hoberman

  Tuesday, November 03

  Historical cataclysm produces conspiratorial thinking: Germany's loss in World War I, the JFK assassination, and 9/11 are all naturally... More >>
• 
  First Lady of Film Alice Guy Blaché at the Whitney

  OFD (original female director) gets some recognition

  Largely written out of U.S. film history, cinema's first woman director—as well as producer and studio head—Alice Guy Blaché enters the pantheon, or at least the Whitney Museum of American Art, with a three-month, 80-film retro....

  By J. Hoberman

  Tuesday, November 03

  Largely written out of U.S. film history, cinema's first woman director—as well as producer and studio head—Alice Guy Blaché... More >>
• 
  Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

  Pushing the limits of taste, but locating the heart—and hell—of its heroine's struggle

  In her broad outlines, Claireece Precious Jones risks sounding like the epitome of ghetto cliché: an obese, illiterate 16-year-old; mother to a four-year-old Down syndrome daughter and now pregnant again; physically and psychologically abused...

  By Scott Foundas

  Tuesday, November 03

  In her broad outlines, Claireece Precious Jones risks sounding like the epitome of ghetto cliché: an obese, illiterate 16-year-old; mother... More >>
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  Could The Messenger Be a Career High for Harrelson?

  Who'd have thought Woody Harrelson would be primed to snag an Oscar nomination just one month after mowing down hordes of flesh-munchers in Zombieland? For playing an American hero, no less. The self-proclaimed hippie is getting That Buzz—deserved—for...

  By Aaron Hillis

  Tuesday, November 03

  Who'd have thought Woody Harrelson would be primed to snag an Oscar nomination just one month after mowing down hordes of flesh-munchers in... More >>
• 
  La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet and The Red Shoes

  A grand duo of ballet films comes to Film Forum. Well choreographed!

  By pure serendipity, two magnificent movies about ballet—one fiction, one fact; one a restored classic, one a brand-new work making its U.S. premiere—open within 48 hours of each other at Film Forum this week. Frederick Wiseman's vérité...

  By Melissa Anderson

  Tuesday, November 03

  By pure serendipity, two magnificent movies about ballet—one fiction, one fact; one a restored classic, one a brand-new work making its... More >>
• 
  The Fourth Kind

  Seventy-one years after Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast snookered a gullible American public with its real-time alien-invasion scenario, The Fourth Kind writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi tries a similar gambit, albeit...

  By Scott Foundas

  Tuesday, November 03

  Seventy-one years after Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast snookered a gullible American public with its real-time alien-invasion... More >>
• 
  A Christmas Carol

  It's not hard to see how the director of Forrest Gump would be thought a good fit to adapt the dearly beloved (and much lampooned) Dickens tale that has survived nearly two centuries of retelling if you count the Flintstone, Muppet,...

  By Ella Taylor

  Tuesday, November 03

  It's not hard to see how the director of Forrest Gump would be thought a good fit to adapt the dearly beloved (and much lampooned)... More >>
• 
  Collapse

  Chris Smith's one-man doc on veteran doomsayer Michael C. Ruppert holds less interest as another sky-is-falling dispatch than as the filmmaker's return to warts-and-all portraiture after 2008's well-received fiction feature The Pool. Ten years...

  By Nicolas Rapold

  Tuesday, November 03

  Chris Smith's one-man doc on veteran doomsayer Michael C. Ruppert holds less interest as another sky-is-falling dispatch than as the filmmaker's... More >>
• 
  Act of God

  Jennifer Baichwal follows up her superb 2007 documentary Manufactured Landscapes, about the willful harm done to nature by man, with another in which the damage is reversed and random. It's hard to imagine a more biblically cinematic threat—or...

  By Ella Taylor

  Tuesday, November 03

  Jennifer Baichwal follows up her superb 2007 documentary Manufactured Landscapes, about the willful harm done to nature by man, with another in... More >>
• 
  That Evening Sun

  First-time writer-director Scott Teems has given 84-year-old master actor Hal Holbrook a dream role in Abner Meecham, a Tennessean who walks out of a nursing home and returns to the remote farm where he spent his life. On arrival, Meecham discovers...

  By Chuck Wilson

  Tuesday, November 03

  First-time writer-director Scott Teems has given 84-year-old master actor Hal Holbrook a dream role in Abner Meecham, a Tennessean who walks out... More >>
• 
  Endgame

  Since it already premiered on PBS as part of "Masterpiece Contemporary" on October 25 (and on British TV in May), the theatrical release of Endgame, about the covert negotiations in the '80s that helped bring down apartheid, is puzzling. (Did...

  By Melissa Anderson

  Tuesday, November 03

  Since it already premiered on PBS as part of "Masterpiece Contemporary" on October 25 (and on British TV in May), the theatrical release of... More >>
• 
  Splinterheads

  Future students of early-21st-century screen comedy will be mystified by just how much film we devoted to fat guys screaming about gettin' pussy. Jason Rogel barks the best friend part here—his complementary archetype, the awkward nice-guyish...

  By Nick Pinkerton

  Tuesday, November 03

  Future students of early-21st-century screen comedy will be mystified by just how much film we devoted to fat guys screaming about gettin' pussy.... More >>
• 
  '1962: New York Film Critics Circle' at BAMcinématek

  Sure, there were missiles in Cuba. But what about the film critics' awards?

  "The past is never dead. It's not even past." So wrote William Faulkner, and so BAM's current series "1962: New York Film Critics Circle" hopes to remind us.

  Pegged to the 75th anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, BAM's "1962" revisits...

  By J. Hoberman

  Tuesday, October 27

  "The past is never dead. It's not even past." So wrote William Faulkner, and so BAM's current series "1962: New York Film Critics Circle" hopes... More >>
• 
  'Roger Corman: Poe and Beyond'

  A schlock genius, king of the Bs and so much more

  When Roger Corman receives his Honorary Oscar next month at the Academy's inaugural Governors Awards ceremony, will it be for his career as a director, an impresario, or both? The Academy's official press release plays things straight down the middle,...

  By Scott Foundas

  Tuesday, October 27

  When Roger Corman receives his Honorary Oscar next month at the Academy's inaugural Governors Awards ceremony, will it be for his career as a... More >>
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