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Film Reviews
by David Walsh
WSWS Arts Editor
9 May 2008
Battle for Haditha: A remarkable
film about the Iraq war
19 March 2008
In Bruges: neither especially
fresh nor insightful
6 February 2008
There Will Be Blood: a
promising subject but terribly weak results
28 January 2008
80th
Academy Award nominations: a very poor showing
31 December 2007
Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of
Fleet Street
24 August 2007
The Bourne Ultimatum--Action-packed,
and it pays the price
25 July 2007
A further exchange: Sicko and American politics
and cinema
14 July 2007
An exchange on Michael Moore's Sicko
7 July 2007
Michael Moore’s Sicko: very limited conceptions,
very limited results
29 June 2007
Édith Piaf's life in La Vie en Rose:
a modern biopic
22 June 2007
Steven Soderbergh and Ocean's Thirteen
6 June 2007
Knocked Up and a certain
generation's "family values"
7 March 2007
One-quarter or one-third of an understanding: Breaking
and Entering; not much of anything: Breach
6 February 2007
Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima: Remarkable,
in many ways
13 January 2007
Cuarón's Children of Men: Despair and
hope in the near future
30 December 2006
David
Walsh picks his favorite films of 2006
21 December 2006
The Robert Kennedy phenomenon goes unexplored in Bobby
14 December 2006
Mel Gibson's Apocalypto: a painful experience
8 December 2006
Casino Royale: the new
James Bond film
5 December 2006
Scorsese's The Departed: Stop and think
29 November 2006
Borat: Whose pie and whose
face?
8 November 2006
All the King's Men and
Man of the Year: Simply unserious
4 September 2006
The Illusionist: The filmmaker,
in fact, can't have it both ways
23 August 2006
Michael Mann's Miami Vice: Why this film?
12 August 2006
Oliver Stone's World Trade Center: a crude
and dishonest work
27 July 2006
Superman Returns, Pirates II, Clerks II: No 'fount of impressions and emotions' at present
18 July 2006
Glancing blows: A Scanner Darkly and Strangers
with Candy
30 June 2006
The Dardenne brothers' L'Enfant: an argument
for a far more critical appraisal
17 June 2006
The film version of A Prairie Home Companion:
Less than might have been hoped for
10 June 2006
Friends With Money and
The Break-Up Who's to blame?
25 May 2006
The Da Vinci Code, novel
and film, and 'countercultural' myth
21 April 2006
Michael Haneke's Caché
The artist has not done the most difficult work
12 April 2006
Spike Lee's Inside Man: Asking for so little
27 March 2006
Confused, not thought through: V for Vendetta
directed by James McTeigue, written by the Wachowski Brothers
16 February 2006
Not a film review, properly speaking: Michael Winterbottom's
Tristram Shandy
10 February 2006
The New World's terrible
paradox
1 February 2006
78th
Academy Award nominations: realities begin to sink in
11 January 2006
Lasse Hallström's direction of Casanova:
more purposeful than usual
Casanova, directed by Lasse Hallström
5 January 2006
Two recent films: Brokeback Mountain and Walk
the Line
30 December 2005
Art as humanization
Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg
David Walsh picks his favorite films of 2005
17 November 2005
American artists and American tragedy
Capote, directed by Bennett Miller
25 August 2005
What would genuine nonconformism look like?
Broken Flowers, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch
17 August 2005
The character is confused, but so is the filmmaker
Hustle & Flow, written and directed by Craig Brewer
14 July 2005
Ambivalence, unease and discomfort--but not enough
War of the Worlds, directed by Steven Spielberg
4 July 2005
Letters on Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Batman
29 June 2005
Over his head
Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan
24 June 2005
Why are they smirking?
Mr. & Mrs. Smith, directed by Doug Liman
16 June 2005
Everyone's hope is no one's hope Cinderella Man,
directed by Ron Howard
31 May 2005
The third episode, or the sixth, or is this merely
a zero?
Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, written and
directed by George Lucas
14 May 2005
San Francisco International Film Festival 2005--Part
3
There is no shortage of subjects
12 May 2005
San Francisco International Film Festival 2005--Part
2
Problems with history
10 May 2005
San Francisco International Film Festival 2005--Part
1
What should be encouraged
6 April 2005
A culture at the end of its rope, continued Sin City,
directed by Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
6 April 2005
Ghost town
Melinda and Melinda, written and directed by Woody Allen
22 January 2005
The absence of democratic sensibility in American
filmmaking
Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood
13 January 2005
Why this dishonest portrait of a despicable figure?
The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese, written by John
Logan
5 January 2005
Four films
Alexander, directed by Oliver Stone; Closer, directed
by Mike Nichols; Ocean's Twelve, directed by Steven Soderbergh;
Ray, directed by Taylor Hackford
31 December 2004
David
Walsh picks his favorite films of 2004
30 November 2004
Confused, struggling America
I Heart Huckabees, directed by David O. Russell, written
by Russell and Jeff Baena
13 October 2004
Some of Hitler's unwilling victims
Rosenstrasse, directed by Margarethe von Trotta
7 September 2004
Chinese filmmakers need to see a way out Hero,
directed by Zhang Yimou
27 August 2004
Small oases and the much larger desert
Collateral, directed by Michael Mann; Before Sunset, directed
by Richard Linklater; Garden State, written and directed
by Zach Braff
5 August 2004
An honorable effort, but it lacks fire
The Manchurian Candidate, directed by Jonathan Demme
12 July 2004
No, this won't do at all
Spiderman 2; The Terminal; The Stepford Wives
30 June 2004
Michael Moore's contribution
Fahrenheit 9/11, written and directed by Michael Moore
25 June 2004
A culture at the end of its rope
Kill Bill, Vol. 2, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
19 June 2004
Warrior and anti-warrior
Troy, directed by Wolfgang Petersen
26 March 2004
The science of remembering
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5 March 2004
Why has The Passion of the Christ evoked such
a popular response in America?
The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Gibson
2 March 2004
76th
Academy Awards ceremony: for the most part, torpor and self-satisfaction
28 January 2004
Academy
Award nominations: the globalization of mediocrity
24 January 2004
Of people at sea
House of Sand and Fog, directed by Vadim Perelman
7 January 2004
Not quite a serious work
Cold Mountain, directed by Anthony Minghella
31 December 2003
David
Walsh picks his favorite films of 2003
18 December 2003
The slight and the reprehensible
Something's Gotta Give, directed by Nancy Meyers; The
Last Samurai, directed by Edward Zwick
10 December 2003
Two recent American films
Bad Santa, directed by Terry Zwigoff; The Station Agent,
written and directed by Thomas McCarthy
22 November 2003
Sylvia Plath is hardly present
Sylvia, directed by Christine Jeffs
18 November 2003
Briefly noted
Love Actually; Intolerable Cruelty; School of
Rock; The Matrix Revolutions
12 November 2003
A convenient vagueness
Elephant, directed and written by Gus Van Sant
3 November 2003
Clint Eastwood, the critics and the “heart of
darkness”
Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood
28 August 2003
A filmmaker sides with the unemployed, but ...
Mondays in the Sun, directed by Fernando León de
Aranoa
25 August 2003
How "entertaining" is the American entertainment
industry?
Charlie's Angels; Hulk; Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Curse of the Black Pearl; Terminator 3: Rise of the
Machines
7 August 2003
A story, not the story of the Depression years
Seabiscuit, written and directed by Gary Ross
5 June 2003
Filmmaking and American social life
Blue Car, written and directed by Karen Moncrieff
21 May 2003
San Francisco International Film Festival--Part 1
A modest proposal: a cinema of ideas
15 May 2003
Buenos Aires 5th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 4
An Argentine tragedy
13 May 2003
Buenos Aires 5th International Festival of Independent
Cinema-Part 3
Structures of evasion
9 May 2003
Buenos Aires 5th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 2
Films on the Middle East, texture in cinema and certain elusive
figures
7 May 2003
Buenos Aires 5th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 1
The two paths
9 April 2003
A certain sensitivity and depth
All the Real Girls, directed by David Gordon Green
22 March 2003
Modes of resistance
Safe Conduct (Laissez-passer), directed by Bertrand
Tavernier
17 March 2003
Is there anything to the Dogme 95 group?
Open Hearts, The Lawless Heart
23 January 2003
Virginia Woolf cannot be held responsible The Hours
16 January 2003
Misanthropy and contemporary American filmmaking
Gangs of New York, directed by Martin Scorsese
9 January 2003
The maladjusted and the all-too-easily adjusted
Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg; Adaptation,
directed by Spike Jonze
28 December 2002
David
Walsh picks his favorite films of 2002
HBO film on Gulf War: self-congratulation and banality
instead of history
Live from Baghdad, directed by Mick Jackson
9 December 2002
Bush documentary: an "intimate" portrait
of an empty vessel
Journeys with George, directed by Aaron Lubarsky and Alexandra
Pelosi
5 December 2002
Remade, and not for the better
Solaris, directed by Steven Soderbergh; Far From Heaven,
directed by Todd Haynes
13 November 2002
The business of glorifying backwardness
8 Mile, directed by Curtis Hanson
6 November 2002
Histories of love and sexuality
Punch-Drunk Love, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson; Auto
Focus, directed by Paul Schrader
4 October 2002
Toronto
International Film Festival 2002: Films on social and historical
questions
Interview with Travis Wilkerson director of An
Injury to One
2 October 2002
Toronto International Film Festival 2002: An interview
with Frederick Wiseman, director of The Last Letter
26 September 2002
Toronto
International Film Festival 2002: Even in success, problems
23 September 2002
Toronto
International Film Festival 2002: Why are there so many disappointing
films?
20 September 2002
The
Toronto International Film Festival 2002: A conversation about
cinema
4 September 2002
Two toothless, pointless films about the film industry
Full Frontal, directed by Steven Soderbergh; Simone,
written and directed by Andrew Niccol
1 August 2002
Liberating and not-so liberating efforts
Sunshine State, Goldmember and The Emperor's
New Clothes
30 May 2002
San Francisco International Film Festival 2002--Part
3
Pasolini and other questions
24 May 2002
San Francisco International Film Festival 2002--Part
1
Rewards, disappointments and surprises
22 May 2002
Buenos Aires 4th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 4
Discussions on the Argentine crisis
20 May 2002
Buenos Aires 4th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 3
Drama, ideas and life
17 May 2002
Buenos Aires 4th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 2
Films of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, and a number of
documentaries
15 May 2002
Buenos Aires 4th International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 1
Changed conditions and some of the same problems
5 April 2002
What is notable by its absence
Iris, directed by Richard Eyre
26 March 2002
The
74th Academy Awards: of race, war and a lack of backbone
22 March 2002
An unwelcome trend in British filmmaking
Last Orders, written and directed by Fred Schepisi
13 March 2002
The loss of objectivity
Storytelling, written and directed by Todd Solondz
22 February 2002
This
year's Academy Awards nominations
12 February 2002
The promise of Iranian cinema - Close-up, directed
by Abbas Kiarostami (1990)
30 January 2002
A life is more than the sum total of its details
Ali, directed by Michael Mann
19 January 2002
Passive realism
In the Bedroom, directed by Todd Field
12 January 2002
Clever, well-read. And what else?
The Royal Tenenbaums, directed by Wes Anderson
5 January 2002
Four recent films
Bandits; Ghost World; Monster's Ball; Vanilla
Sky
29 December 2001
David
Walsh picks his favorite films of 2001
28 December 2001
Class analysis and feeling mean a great deal
Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman
19 December 2001
A serious film requires a serious social viewpoint
Intimacy, directed by Patrice Chéreau
11 December 2001
A dull thud; or, Filmmaking in bad faith
Ocean’s Eleven, directed by Steven Soderbergh, screenplay
by Ted Griffin
5 December 2001
The lack of any real feeling for the world
Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan;
Sexy Beast, directed by Jonathan Glazer
28 November 2001
Nothing to say, badly said
Novocaine, written and directed by David Atkins
Sidewalks of New York, written and directed by Edward
Burns
13 November 2001
The Barber of Santa Rosa:
The Man Who Wasn't There
3 November 2001
Vancouver International Film Festival--Part 3
I'm Going Home and Mulholland Drive
31 October 2001
Vancouver International Film Festival--Part 2
Too modest by half
24 October 2001
Vancouver International Film Festival--Part 1
Once again on the problem of perspective
8 October 2001
2001 Toronto International Film Festival--Part 4
Films by Godard, Cox, Imamura and others
4 October 2001
2001 Toronto International Film Festival--Part 3
Struggling, alive, contradictory...
27 September 2001
Toronto International Film Festival--Part 2
Five films on historical and political themes
21 September 2001
2001 Toronto International Film Festival--Part 1
The success and failure of the international
"Style of Quality" in cinema
25 August 2001
American Madness
Apocalypse Now Redux
directed by Francis Ford Coppola, written by John Milius, Coppola
and Michael Herr
17 August 2001
Too little
Bride of the Wind, directed by Bruce Beresford, written
by Marilyn Levy
20 July 2001
Acting is not the problem
crazy/beautiful, written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi,
directed by John Stockwell
16 July 2001
Starting over
A.I. Artificial Intelligence,
directed by Steven Spielberg
4 July 2001
Career opportunities
Songcatcher, written and directed by Maggie Greenwald
20 June 2001
Henry James and his adaptors
The Golden Bowl, directed by James Ivory
13 June 2001
2001 San Francisco International Film Festival--Part
2
Some limited but honest films, and the social role of pessimism
11 June 2001
Falsification and unreality
Pearl Harbor, directed by Michael Bay, written by Randall
Wallace
7 June 2001
2001 San Francisco International Film Festival--Part
1
Six films
5 June 2001
Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 4
Some Argentine films
An interview with Ana Poliak, director of La fe
del volcán (The Faith of the Volcano)
1 June 2001
Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent
Cinema-Part 3
Problems in Latin American cinema
19 May 2001
Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent
Cinema-Part 2
Intuition and consciousness in filmmaking
16 May 2001
Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 1
Filmmaking needs a new perspective
21 April 2001
Wasted opportunities--Blow, directed by Ted
Demme
31 March 2001
The
limitations of Ed Harris's Pollock
23 March 2001
Nothing
to boast about Last Resort & When Brendan Met Trudy
20 March 2001
Once more, the emperor's new clothes
In the Mood for Love, written and directed by Wong Kar-wai
21 February 2001
Only self-important
Cast Away, Chocolat and Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon
16 February 2001
The sad life and death of a Cuban poet
Before Night Falls, directed by Julian Schnabel, written
by Cunningham O'Keefe, Lázaro Gómez Carriles and
Julian Schnabel
10 February 2001
Whither the Coen Brothers?
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, directed by Joel Coen, written
by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
22 January 2001
As long as you don't look too closely
State and Main, written and directed by David Mamet
17 January 2001
Nothing to kick about
Almost Famous, written and directed by Cameron Crowe
9 January 2001
Must we celebrate Sade?
Quills, directed by Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Doug
Wright, based on his play
30 December 2000
Terence Davies' The House of Mirth: a comment
and a press conference with the director
20 December 2000
Not so distant, but still distant
You Can Count on Me, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan
29 November 2000
Shouting but not saying much--Requiem for a Dream
8 November 2000
You can lead a horse to water ...
The Yards, directed by James Gray, written by Gray and
Matt Reeves
23 August 2000
The rise and fall and rise again of John Waters
Cecil B. Demented, written and directed by John Waters
17 August 2000
Three recent films
Autumn in New York, directed by Joan Chen
Space Cowboys, directed by Clint Eastwood
Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott
12 August 2000
History and sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien's Good Men,
Good Women
26 July 2000
Youth's anguish
Hamlet,
from the play by William Shakespeare, adapted for the screen
and directed by Michael Almereyda
19 July 2000
They'll wait and see
Jesus' Son & Croupier
14 July 2000
No idea whatsoever:
The Patriot
10 July 2000
A poor attempt to explain the twentieth century
Sunshine, directed by István Szabó, written
by Szabó and Israel Horovitz
23 June 2000
Generalities
The Virgin Suicides, directed by Sofia Coppola, screenplay
by Coppola, from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
21 April 2000
Still pleased with himself
All About My Mother, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
15 April 2000
Stephen Frears contributes something
High Fidelity, directed by Stephen Frears, based on the
novel by Nick Hornby
1 April 2000
The "Jarmusch touch"
Ghost Dog, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch
21 March 2000
Simplifying matters
Erin Brockovich, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written
by Susannah Grant
16 March 2000
A "writer" in name only
Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson, screenplay by
Steve Kloves, based on the novel by Michael Chabon
11 March 2000
Is
all of this inevitable? Five films reviewed
22 February 2000
Quite obedient really
The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Hallström,
screenplay by John Irving, based on the novel by Irving
12 February 2000
Hysteria never helped anyone
Any Given Sunday, directed by Oliver Stone
10 February 2000
Some things are clearer than others Topsy-Turvy,
written and directed by Mike Leigh
2 February 2000
Art and swinishness considered, weakly Sweet and
Lowdown, written and directed by Woody Allen
27 January 2000
A worried face is not enough
Girl, Interrupted
8 January 2000
But here on earth ... Man on the Moon,
directed by Milos Forman, written by Scott Alexander and Larry
Karaszewski
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