Film Reviews
Immokalee U.S.A.: Bleak but sympathetic view of migrant farmworkers’ conditions
By James Brewer, January 19, 2009
An independent documentary which sympathetically presents the plight of farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida.
The school of hard knocks: Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire
By Hiram Lee, January 16, 2009
Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai, who defies all odds to win a fortune on India’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
It’s all right to be resigned to your fate: Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road
By Sandy English, January 15, 2009
Revolutionary Road, director Sam Mendes’s second attempt, following on American Beauty, to say something meaningful about the tensions of American life is a more substantial effort, at least when it...
The Reader: Entering into history light-mindedly
By Joanne Laurier, January 10, 2009
In post-World War II Germany, a young law student discovers that his former lover is on trial for Nazi war crimes.
Gran Torino: What school have film writers and directors passed through?
By David Walsh, January 9, 2009
In Clint Eastwood’s newest film, the actor-director plays a retired auto worker, Walt Kowalski, who’s chosen to go on living in his old, seriously deteriorating neighborhood in metropolitan Detroi...
John Adams: A serious rendering of the American Revolution
By Charles Bogle, January 8, 2009
John Adams, first aired on HBO in early 2008 and now released on DVD, is the latest and in some ways most satisfying rendering of the American Revolution on film. The television series covers the last...
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Too little made of a life led in reverse
By Kevin Martinez, January 6, 2009
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button concerns itself with the fate of an individual who ages in reverse. Born a shriveled old man, Benjamin Button experiences the natural aging process backward.
Doubt: Nothing ‘beautiful’ about this ‘question’
By David Walsh, January 3, 2009
Doubt takes place in the Bronx, New York in 1964. A conflict emerges at a Catholic school between a relatively young and ‘progressive’ parish priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and a b...
Bad Faith: Bill Maher’s Religulous
By Hiram Lee, January 2, 2009
Comedian Bill Maher and director Larry Charles take on religion in their new documentary. The results are less than enlightening.
David Walsh selects his favorite films of 2008
By David Walsh, December 31, 2008
2008 will be remembered as the year of a great economic crash and a turning point in modern history. It will not be recalled as a great year in filmmaking, despite a few bright spots.
La Fille Coupée En Deux, the new film from Claude Chabrol
By Hiram Lee, December 29, 2008
Veteran French New Wave director Claude Chabrol returns to the screen with an interesting but limited work inspired by the life of Evelyn Nesbit.
The Wrestler: Vigorous, but opaque
By Jordan Mattos, December 27, 2008
In Darren Aronofsky’s fourth feature film, The Wrestler, veteran actor Mickey Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a professional wrestler in his fifties who is coping with life as a prisoner ...
