With the first two documentaries in her post–9/11 trilogy — My Country, My Country, a portrait of Iraq under U.S. occupation, and The Oath, which focused on two Guantánamo Bay prisoners — Laura Poitras seemed to be making a bid for the title of film's most vigilant observer of American......
There is a moment of silent incompatibility in Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies that illuminates the entirety of a relationship in a single request. As the lovely, earthy Kate (Olivia Wilde) reclines suggestively on a couch in his tasteful apartment, Chris (Ron Livingston), her gently fussy boyfriend, politely reminds her to......
With his anxious parable I'm So Excited! Pedro Almodóvar imagines a plane malfunction not as a pretext for thrills, as in most films, but for a metaphorical farce: The jet is Spain, and what we should fear for is not just the passengers' lives but the country's. Defective landing gear......
The payoff for solving puzzle films is a collaborative rush — in working out the filmmakers' jigsaws, viewers are invited into the moviemaking process. Look at the uber-combative message boards about Primer, or brave the theorizing of Room 237, the docu-analysis of The Shining (reviewed in this section). One subgenre......
