Kirby Dick's last documentary was titled Outrage, but you could call his newest the same thing. A measured, expertly constructed chronicle of rape in the military, The Invisible War is a humane exposé that does not cease to shock. That includes its own filmmaker. "After we'd done 40 or so......
"They were experimenting on themselves," says David Cronenberg, with no small amount of satisfaction, about the psychoanalytic all-stars of his superb new film, A Dangerous Method. It's the dawn of the 20th century, and we are present for the messy birth of psychoanalysis as handsome, ambitious Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender)......
For a long while, Andrei Ujica's darkly ironic compilation film about dumpy, disastrous Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauescu feels like a pie-in-the-sky daydream. Nicolae toddles about as guest of honor/Mr. Popularity/most valuable comrade at state ceremonies and diplomatic visits everywhere, from the United Kingdom to China, standing before Jimmy Carter, Charles......
Kevin Macdonald's edited compilation of 80,000 donated YouTube videos is billed as a snapshot of the world on July 24, 2010, whatever that would even mean. The resulting object is less about the world than about itself, and feels like a hey-that's-neat troll through the video-sharing website (which co-presents the......
Luce Vigo, the French critic and daughter of the beloved Jean Vigo, finds it funny: At 80 years of age, she's asked to reminisce about her father, who died at a mere 29, when she was but a tot. "It is very strange to be the grandmother of my own......
CERTIFIABLY JONATHAN An uncanny mimic and quick-change improviser, Jonathan Winters is one of those great performers who sweep you along in a flow of natural lunacy, whether by diving into his characters or dropping understated asides. In Jim Pasternak’s patchwork tribute, the big-kid-bulky, Dayton-born comedian gets some welcome playtime, but......
GO THE LAST LIONS As aficionados of the Puppy Bowl can attest, attaching stories to the comings and goings of animals is surefire entertainment. Veteran nature filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert pitch their documentary as a single-mother weepie-thriller about a lioness and her cubs with an impassioned psychological commentary, majestically......
THE HOUSEMAID Fifty years after Kim Ki-young's postwar hothouse original, Im Sang-soo attempts a sleek, breathless update to the tale of a household riven by a sexy domestic. This time around, instead of a family-man music teacher getting ensnared, a bored, feckless maid (Jeon Do-yeon) is seduced by a rich......
Rudolf Arnheim wrote, "The character actor shows man as he is; the heroic actor shows man as he would like to be." The German critic wasn't just singing the praises of "the bloated ship's cook" and his typecast ilk. He wanted lead actors to work up the same scuff marks,......
SUMMER WARS An apocalyptic take on the social network comes from, of all places, Mamoru Hosoda's childlike, yay-go-team japanime about a hijacked Second Life–esque world. Shy math whiz Kenji joins pretty, older schoolmate Natsuki on a trip to her family's rural ancestral home, where he's supposed to pose as her......
